The Day of the White-Out

 Writing Ghost Stories during a White-Out

The world was a ghost of itself that day. The trees were ghosts. The building across the way was ghostly through the snow. 

I spent it mostly in my chair by the window, looking out of it from time to time, wondering how much paler the world could get.

 

 

 

The stuff came down thick as cotton, like fluffy rabbit tails, getting caught on everything it happened to touch. The tree outside my window was laden with fluff. The cars out-front disappeared under it, frosted over into hibernation. It filled up the world, disguising the town around me.

 

You forget you live in a town on those days. No cars come by. No people wander out their doors. Paths and roads get lost on those days, and all the town's people go missing under the weight of snowed in rooftops. We all live under ground on those days, like happy moles, the world and the wind barely remembered. 

 

I watched as the wind pack snow onto my windows all throughout the day. It was the most literal snowing-in I could imagine, and it thrilled me. I could faintly see the tree that stands just outside, bare limbs scratching, waving lonesomely.  

 

It thrilled me because I thought my chances were higher this time than the time the streets flooded whilst I stayed home and edited my book. This time wind and sky and snow were banning together, I thought, to build a snow-fort around me. In the morning, all I'd see is the close winter, pressed against the glass of every window, refusing to let me out, letting little in besides a faint impression of light, weakly melting.

I would not complain, not about the mountain on my front steps, too much for one shovel to muster; I would not mind about the car which has gone missing somewhere in a driveway which has equally disappeared. 

We can go dig out the world later.

 

I can go anywhere on the white page. And, though the white winter world is gone and distant, the ghosts on the page are more tangible than the cold seeping through the glass, just so long as the storm lasts. 

 

Still, my windows were only partly covered when the dark settled in, as it comes in winter, somehow softly, touching everything evenly. You look away, and then the day is over, and you bring out the candles and pretend the night will last forever so that the snowday does not end.

A lifetime of snowdays should me enough for me, I think. Books depend on snowdays, after all.

    

 

 

In the meantime, I will sit here in my snowfort through the school days and the times when cafes close. They will start to wonder where I went. They will forget where the front door is.

 

But sometimes in the dark a wanderer will dare the winter, and if they come by the snowfort which has a house under it, and maybe a lonely tree, they might see a light glowing faintly from somewhere under the snow and they will know someone is still in there and that they have not run out of candles. They will know someone inside is still awake, writing in secret.

 

For now, I would like the time to edit. I would like the days to fill themselves with winter, so I can stay snowed in. I would like to stay in my snowfort, safely forgetting that I live in a town, and not inside a book. 

 

Slaughtering the Scene

 Beware: the following contains the dark humours of a writer and should only be taken somewhat seriously.

 

The really tricky part about killing off a character is that, once you've killed them the wrong way, it's hard to bring them back and do it right. 

It's not like you can ask someone how to fix it, because that would spoil their demise and make it altogether less effective the second time around. 

 

 

Killing off a character is between you and that character. No one else should be involved, for I think the writer does their best killing when they think they are doing something wicked and unexpected.

But how do you kill a character right the second time around when you don't think you did it right the first time? They already feel so flimsy now that you've killed them. It's hard to write about them again now that they're already dead. Besides, haven't they already suffered enough through their first poorly done slaying? 

These are the types of questions only a writer has to worry about. These are the types of things that, when asked what we are thinking, we likely wouldn't share, instead choosing to vouch for a nice simple answer such as "not much", another way of saying"nothing all that alarming".

One would think the writer would laugh maliciously to themselves as they do the deed. I don't think I did.

In fact, this character has been dead for over a year now, and strangely I found the first time a breeze. I killed them off quickly last spring, then proceeded to move on without much thought as to what I'd just done. The aftermath is always the most unexpected. That is when you get to see what their death entails. 

 

 

I spent all of last night editing that death scene, trying to make it something a reader would find satisfying. By the end of it all I was almost as great a mess as the scene I was trying to fix. I felt a bit like a surgeon leaving incisions and stitches in all sorts of ugly places, transplanting paragraphs just to find them faulty and cut them out again. 

As it turns out, slaughtering scenes takes a lot less skill that killing characters, and satisfying readers is difficult when you feel like a clumsy killer. 

 

The truth is, I've had spontaneous deaths turn out better than this one. 

But those characters were practically asking for a good death scene, and admittedly, this one didn't deserve any of this. 

Sometimes the only way to get it right is to write all the wrong ways first. Somewhere in that bloody mess the writer comes across a good phrase or a detail that makes it all work in a very simple and straightforward way. 

 

What can I say. Writing is not always an art; sometimes it's a slaying. And all I can do when a night spent editing poorly is through is wash my hands of it and go to bed.

The Boot Runs Ahead

I left Part One for the last time this week. There will not be another dwelling like such.  

Yet, I found that when I came to its final chapters, I did not want to go just yet. I saw around me a thousand fears and short comings that bid me to stay. 

 

I felt stuck, ironically, very much like a boot in the mud. 

It was then, as if by some chance, that I came across the mark in a chapter very near the end, where, at the beginning, a boot had been carelessly left behind; only there was no boot now, just a footprint deep in the dirt.

The lost boot, it seemed, had gone ahead into pages unread and unedited. Evidently, the thing was up to some mischief, or otherwise late for some plot point I had till now neglected.   

 

 

I couldn't help myself after that, for it seemed the boot was more eager than I, and immediately a million places where the boot could be came to mind. Whether it had been filched or kindled to life, I could only imagine. I know only that it excited me to think of the pranks a single boot might contrive if it were revived and roused to action; or, if it were not such a frisky boot as that, whose mismatched foot I might find it on later.  

And so, I ran off in search of this lost shoe, forgetting altogether to glance back at where I had so long lingered. Like Alice to Wonderland, I jumped down the hole, following the boot out of the familiar pages and into Part Two by the shadow of its laces.

 

As I heard its stomps and romps running ahead of me, I laughed: Now, now the fun begins, I said to myself; all because of some well-placed-disappeared boot; vivified by witchery or a well-timed tidbit left by a thief; just enough to pull the writer through. 

For when boots vanish and run into Part Two without you, anything could come of it. 

 

(Note: Special thanks to Marc who always makes lots of jokes while holding a camera.)

An Empty Room in a Half-Constructed Castle

:Stashing the Discovery Writer into Constricted Chapters and What Happens After

 

There is little advice out there on how to edit a book when you are a discovery writer. Unwritten chapters are always unruly and unpredictable, and we discovery writers thrive in that kind of play field. 

Already written chapters, though, these are much too ordered and familiar, and thus, can feel like a bore, especially when at the end of a series of unedited chapters, empty and unexplored ones await. The discovery writer hopes to make quick business of them, editing them in rapid succession. 

Few things are worse than coming across a chapter and finding that something unnamed is missing. A chapter that feels incomplete can drive the discovery writer to madness. 

For you see, we cannot simply craft good chapters. We unravel them, unearth them from some unknown place. Thus, at times, no amount of skill or experience can capture a thing that does not want to be found out so easily. 

After all, the discovery writer rarely discovers the same way twice, and thus, knew methods of discovery need constantly be found. 

The constricted playing field of an incomplete chapter soon starts to feel like a prison when there is so little room for new things to be stirred. 

 

 

Another writer once said that the first draft of a book is like shoveling sand into a box so that you can build sand castles later.

But being a discovery writer means getting carried away sometimes, and, most of the time, the first draft looks more like a box of sand with half constructed castles left abandoned.

We are much too playful a lot to be expected merely to shovel, and when an exciting idea comes to us, we do not like to wait before the fun can begin, and so, we build fractional castles in the pits we find. If we get bored we simply tell ourselves we will be back later to complete them, and so, we leave them behind, at least, for a time.  

 

So, the discovery writer will inevitably continue on with the brief thought that the castle was almost done anyway and that it shouldn't take too much work later to complete it. 

We can all imagine what happens next: time passes, the writer has many adventures and eventually returns, finding to their dismay that the castle does not look nearly as complete as they remember. 

 

 

 

There are so many things to consider when writing a book. It is easily to forget to note them all. Naturally, there are some things that you do not discover until the second time you pass through. Some things aren't noticed until one has spent a great deal of time speculating and possibly obsessing over a chapter, feeling a bit like a half baked detective who knows in their bones that some detail is being missed but can't quite make out what it is. 

We know still that we have been here. We have vague memories of the fun we had. We do not, however, know what has changed. Is it our perception or the creation that has been altered and left unsatisfied? 

More often than not, once the thing which has so long evaded you is discovered it will be so jarringly obvious you will not be able to think of anything else. Sometimes it is a quick fix of the narrative, a thread with a unintentional loop straightened out or line with a small rift that needs mending. But, sometimes, and that is to say this particular time to which I am referring, one finds oneself inside a small void. 

 

I myself recently came across one. 

I must say, I thought it suspicious when, pausing inside a chapter near the end of Part One, I found that I had carelessly left a whole room utterly devoid. Not a line of description was in it. 

I knew that there was something missing. But how, I wondered, could one misplace an entire room, especially when that room is at the top of a tower? 

 

Now, this would be little to fret over under normal circumstances. The details of a setting are something I do not tend to until I've come through at least twice. But I have been here in this chapter (and thus, in this chamber) at least four times now, and never had I noted the gaping hole that was this rather large, rather baffling space. It utterly escaped my attention, and so, it immediately peaked my interest.

 

The size of it was one thing to consider, for I knew it be a colossal space. I had discussed the view from its windows and drawn the reader's attention to its rising form on more than one occasion. But the inside, I realized, was otherwise a mystery. 

 

I admit, the discovery put an abrupt halt in my progress, and even now, weeks later, I am still here, lost in this empty room, trying to decipher what it means.

 

It is a different kind of discovery I am experiencing now, for in my book I have found a narrative gap in the form of a large room, which, beyond its vastness of size, is much too mysterious and strange to not also have some secret vastness within the plot. 

What ever I fill it with, I know it cannot alter the plot too consequentially; cannot even stray into the chapters surrounding which were completed long ago; it cannot do much but be, and add; cast shadows into the narrative and give flickers of the story.

What else could be stashed away into secret chambers where characters don't so much as utter a line? What else but secrets of the plot?

So, as I shift through its contents and study its walls, I see shadows and secrets unfold. 

I know I have seen these shadows before, in my musings and vague designs; I have plotted these schemes; I wrote these secrets into private notebooks once, and so, it is not their existence that surprises me.

I did not, however, expect to find them here. For the life of me, I cannot remember stashing them all away up in this tower, in this room which, day by day, becomes less empty, but no less puzzling.

That is, perhaps the most perplexing part of it all: for, if I didn't stuff them in this chamber, who did?

 

 

Spending Time in My Printed Book

I have spent the last few months inside the first few chapters of my book.

Part One, which I wrote so long ago, in another province, in a house now far gone, in a time and a life so unlike this one, is a thing of my past. 

I have spent these last few weeks revisiting it, sifting through its words, righting its tilted paragraphs, rummaging through its pages like sheets of music that need organizing. 

First, they were untouchable, black on a white glowing page, easy to erase and alter, to mend and mistakenly correct. All I had to do was press the keys. 

Then, a few weeks ago, they became concrete. 

With the help of my family, Part One, written one summer when high school was done but my new life had not yet begun, was printed now for the second time. But with it came something new; something more hefty and more full of change; something written by a writer so unlike the one who spent more time deleting than she did writing; a writer who somehow learned to write so effortlessly, she almost believed she was doing something wrong. 

 

Thus, Part Two was printed for the first time. The book in both parts was bound by twine and many helpers, as we sliced and organized and punched holes. It had to be bound in three parts, due to its length. 

Furthermore, something both small and great happened: the book was printed with a name. For the first time since I first started writing it, this book that was mine had a title wholly apart from its former one ("my book", a unfitting title altogether, since it will not always be mine.) I always knew it would need a name in order to go out into the world. But I never thought it would come so easily.  

 

But this copy in its incompleteness, in its messiness, with its notes and scribbles and its curled edges, will always be mine. So, as I toil with it, as I get frustrated with it, as I hop across its shortcuts and try to find new ways to write about things that to me are by now old and familiar, I learn that what I love most about this printed being is to hold it, to feel how much it weighs, and remember what it was like to fill out these pages when they were digital and blank. I knew it as the printer coughed it out, and I picked up the pages, and all I could say was "I wrote all of this!"

But, not only did I write it all, I worked for it all; I fought with it all; I got fed up with it; I hurt for it; I lost sleep for it. I wrote every word.

 

Now I get to think about it; I get to fix every fragment and cut up every run on. I get to ponder each word and select some new ones. I get to cut and paste and alter. 

 

So, as I edit Part One for what I hope will be the last time in a while, I resist the urge to rush to the end, to the new stuff yet unread, wholly unedited, but full of tension, and mystery, and murder, and so much more. I resist the urge to call it good enough, and I ponder with my pencil these now printed words. I cross things out. I jot things down. I think about unfinished paragraphs when my mind can wander during long work days.

I tell myself that I do not know when I will be returning here next, to these chapters written before the beginning had yet begun. 

I do know this though: when I return, I will be a better writer than I am now; when I return, I will have written chapters I still know nothing about; I will be one step closer to the last one, what ever numeric title it may bare. I know that it is out there, somewhere on the paper white horizon. 

I know also that the next time I read these chapters I will look up from this book, this book that is mine only for a time, and the life around me will be different too. 

It is strange how thoughts like these affect me: making me both eager to get to the end, and desire to linger here a little while longer.

Stuck Editing in an Imaginary Fishbowl

I was reminded of the scene in Big Fish in which Edward Bloom is engulfed by a rain storm. Within seconds of the storms beginning, his entire car is immersed as a lake gushes from the sky, equipped also with fishes and the ethereal woman who we've learned is also a fish. What follows is a scene of tranquility. In the ghostly underwater world, Edward sits in his car like in a fishbowl and watches the strange fish blow bubbles around him. 

I, however, was not in my car, and it took at least the whole night for my house to be engulfed to the brim. The rain had been driven onto my window all night. Eventually though, it sounded less like raindrops and more like a waterfall. I could hear the tree crashing against the side of the house as the tempest thrashed away with it.

I spent most of that night editing, usually forgetting the gloriously nasty weather outside. I had a candle by the window, and from time to time, I pressed my face to the glass. I could see almost nothing outside. It was dark, and my reflection peered at me in the black. I did not see any fishes.

Believe what you will, but moments after this picture was taken, a trickle of water leaked through the frame of the window and put the candle out. 

 

I admit, I am never quite sure where the time goes when I'm writing, and after a night spent imagining things, it is always strange to come back to the real world. By the time I return to my surroundings, it is usually pitch black outside, and there being no street lights where I live, there is nothing out there to see by. 

 

All I had was the sound of the outside world to spur my imagination. I could hear the rainstorm pounding on the rooftop; I could hear it running down my windows; I could hear the waterfall outside our door gushing wildly; water; water; water. It didn't seem to stop nor lessen. 

 

As I tried to fall asleep, I listened to the trickle leaking through the top of the window, and I imagined what might be going on outside. Then sleep came, and with it silence. And still the water trickled. 

I slept there, in that tranquil lake.

 

 

I was saddened when there was no lake around my house in the morning, and so, I had no choice but to go in to work. The ditches and dykes I passed on my way were flooded, but beyond that, I had no proof of my strange night. 

 

I suppose fiction can only be incorporated into one's life to some extent. I'd imagine myself into Edward Bloom's fishbowl any day, if I had the choice. There is less to do there, and so much more time to write.

The Night Before Halloween

Writing Horror on Halloween

 

It was the night before Halloween on which I sat up late, editing a scene which I'd written many moons ago. 

It seemed to get dark earlier that night, and the only thing that was to be seen in the windows was the reflections of the candles I had burning within. 

 

 

Ironically, I wrote about the darkness too. In the scene in which I dwelt that night, there was no light to see by. But, if there is not sight to write about, the writer's pen takes up other senses. The touchless dark has no surfaces or scents. But sounds it has aplenty; sounds to make the imagination go wild, conceiving apparitions, fabricating frightful fancies. I forced them all onto the poor soul who had wandered into the pitch darkness of my scene. 

 

I paused. 

It's dangerous to live this way, I thought, to be so immersed in the page before you that you do not see what goes on around. Anything could happen when the writer is so engrossed in the fictional; anything at all. 

People might be peering into their windows; a cat might creep by through the flickering shadows; a raven may call on the tree just outside. 

Would the writer notice?

Probably not. 

 

Its dangerous to live this way, to take up one's laptop and sit in a chapter all night, neither seeing nor hearing what goes on behind you, or underneath your chair. 

Better not look, that's what I say. It'll only distract you. It'll only give you a fright. 

 

And what goes on in the night is better left up to the imagination.