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. 

Turning it Around for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is always brighter when reflected upon, or when seen in pictures afterwards. 

 

We entered this same forest last year, but the sun was not shining then like it did now. Last year the forest was a fairie one, full of moss, and little mushrooms and tiny timid snails. The dainty webs of spiders were bejeweled. Little streams stole through the leaves then, creeping through the crannies on the ground, barely heard. We hopped over them last year, trailed them, tapped our booted-toes in them. Last year this forest was undiscovered, unwoven by our trails, every bend a mystery.

 

Not this year. This year, the sun was shining, and the leaves were painted, like I'd always dreamed I could paint them with my messy oil pastels, bronzed and bitten, flushed and florid; as if the trees themselves exhaled a sigh, blissfully remembering how wondrous the summer has been.

 

 

This year the sun warmed the leaves like pie; this year the world seemed illustrated, like a picture book that stretches through the hundred acres. This year we were no strangers to the forest, we knew which trees to pass. There were no streams to hop, but there were roots to tip toe across. This year two kitties waited back home for dessert to begin (instead of just the one); this year, our family was a little bigger.

 

 

But there are some things these pictures cannot capture: Like how that same morning the skies were bleak and grey and I did not feel thankful at all; how we fought first, then thanked. 

But then we got dressed in fall colors, and we drove to my mom's house, and there it smelt like cinnamon, and apples, and cranberries, and warm turkey, and all the other fine delicious things you read about in books about holidays or critters that live in a red wall.

 

 

 

 

 

Fall gives such magic, and this year it gave me an even greater gift than timid snails and bashful streams over which to hop. This year fall gave me time; time to drive home in this golden kingdom after turkey; time to taste the tender goodies only a mother can bake; time to walk with my dad; to snap pictures of my brothers; time to fight with my husband, and fall asleep in his arms that same night.

 

 

Another Year of Bilbo Baggins

It has been a busy few weeks, as the weeks of September never fail to be. But in all the new things that are only just beginning, and all the old things we are returning to, it is important to celebrate the ancient traditions, like the birthday of a likewise ancient Hobbit.

Indeed, of all the reasons to eat good food, drink cheap ale, watch one of our favorite movies, and just have fellowship with one another, in our books, the celebration of Bilbo Baggins birthday is one of the best. 

 

To another year.

Writing in the Rain

Everyone has got their muse. Mine just happens to be the rain. 

 

 

 

I don't know how this really started. I just know that one day I convinced myself that all the best things I'd ever written happened on rainy days. 

Over time, I have come to rely on it for that; that when the rain comes, the scene will get written, the chapter completed, writer's-block beaten. 

 

Occasionally something good will come to me on a sunny day, but it takes a dedicated kind of focus and a calmness of the mind to bring me there. That being said, all my sunny-day-scenes tend to feel more peaceful, sometimes sad. Rarely are they of the same kind of impact or vitality as the things I write when it rains. 

 

Writing in the rain has its upsides and its downsides. It's both erratic, and reliable. 

When it doesn't rain for weeks on end, I feel as desperate for it as the earth around me. I feel parched, dried up in my creativity, like the thirsty plant shrivels. 

And yet, when the clouds come over me, I know that today I may write again. It always rains eventually, and when the drought ends, so does my writer's block. 

 

Over the years, the metaphor has only become more perfect. How sporadic rain can be. Just like inspiration, it sometimes comes when you least expect it, or don't want it at all; when you have prior engagements and you have to chose to either duck-out and feel guilty for missing life, or miss out and feel regret for the words that might have been written. Inspiration waits for no one. And the storms don't plan their schedule around me.

And so, I plan around it, when I can. I look at the weather forecast and make excuses on days when I want to slip away; do nothing but listen to the tap of the rain on my window and the click of my quick fingers typing, nothing but cross empty pages, showering them with curled letters, little dotted words that drizzle and then drench into paragraphs.

Ah, yes: the rain, it comes like a river. 

But then there was a day this summer when it rained so much, buckets filled and spewed over, saplings drowned, every dirty window for miles was washed clean, and all I could do was sit and look, and watch the rain fall. I don't think I wrote more than a page that day. 

 

 

 

 

I don't know what the lesson here is, other than that maybe there's a balance to everything. Just like words don't always come when it rains; just like how, a few weeks after that rainy day on which nothing was written, I wrote the best scene I'd written all summer on a hot humid day; in the same way that long busy winters always give way to rich and rain-full summers in which so much is written, writing comes with ups and downs. 

Rain and sun, inspiration, depression. Sometimes it rains, and words fall like a waterfall. Sometimes there are other things to do, like to sit and simply watch the rain fall. 

 

When it comes down to it, I'm a writer on rainy days and on sunny ones; I'm a writer in winter, and in summer, whether I'm writing or not. 

For all of these things are part of it, you write, and you live, and then sometimes you write some more. And occasionally, all it takes to be a writer is to sit and listen to the rain fall and let your keyboard be still.

 

 

 

Rainy Days at the Cottage

It rained at least once each day while we were at the cottage. On this particular day, however, it rained for most of the afternoon into the early evening. After a brief swim in the rain, I slipped into some dry clothes and curled up in a chair with a book.

 

 

Eventually I got so sleepy that I snuck upstairs to the loft where we were sleeping. I awoke to the sound of the rain still pattering on my window and the sound of the trees quivering.

 

Nothing gives me such a deep and comfortable peace as rainy days like these.

Take off to Ontario

Last Thursday I didn't know we would be flying to Ontario the next day. 

We booked our flights at 11:30 at night and packed our bags. Then, after 4 hours of sleep, we headed to the airport. 

I've always wanted to pull off a spontaneous trip like this. Of course, we couldn't have done it without all the people who accommodated their plans for us.

It is now more than a week later, and we are back home and safe in quarantine. I'm still not sure how we pulled it all off, but I'm so glad we did it. What a crazy wonderful time we had.
 

Wedding Day

Who thought that getting married could be so simple!

Even when everything could have made it anything but easy: between the pandemic, the postponing, the uncertainty, the struggles, the waiting! But when we finally decided to just go for it, I knew it would be perfect! (Thats a lie, I knew it would be perfect - Nat)

Nathaniel, you make everything easier. Even when its complicated, even when its hard, or chaotic, or awful. You make life simple.

I always thought meeting the man I would marry would be transformational. And it was.

I also believed getting married would be such a big deal. And it is.

But it's also been far simpler than I ever realized.

It's simple because you love the simple things about me. Even though I used to believe that the person I'd marry would love me because they find me extraordinary, I learned from you that its much greater to be loved for the simple things about you. You love me because I'm ordinary in my own way, and that means I have don't have to be extraordinary; it means that you love me even when I'm lame, or irrational, or boring, or stubborn. You love the things about me that I don't think twice about, like how round me face is, or how dorky I am.

How grand it is to be loved for who you are when you're not trying; the things that stay when you are at your worst; the things that are fundamentally, ordinarily you. 

You reason with me when I'm unreasonable. You make everything seem doable. You make my simplicity my strength.

 I love the simple things about you. I love your humor. I love the way you love. I love the fact that my family loved you from the start. I knew you were the one when my Opa and Oma loved you when they met you at the airport; when my grouchy cat came to sit on your lap even though she never liked anybody, least of all strangers. I knew it when saying yes made far more sense than saying no. I love the way you play with my brothers, ever since that spring in Manitoba when it suddenly seemed like they were your brothers too.

I love your spontaneity, the way you run into the bushes, hop over streams, take me out for pancakes. We used to joke that we didn't go on dates, we went on adventures; and if dating you was an adventure, I can only imagine how grand it'll be to be married to you.

Let our life always be simple like this. Because when everything is wrong and life is a mess, the simple things keep us going: like cuddling up to you, laughing with you, grabbing midnight snacks with you, getting tickled by you.

How far we've come already.

We've followed each other across three different provinces. We've had adventures in new places, and faced countless changes. We've said goodbye way too many times, and counted too many days apart. We've built a new life out of pieces of our old ones and made it uniquely our own.

But in all the challenges we've encountered, you've always been there, at the end of the day, the wonderfully, extraordinarily, most fundamentally simple thing about my life.

And no matter where we go, and no matter what happens, let it always stay this way.

Oh, what a wonderful wedding day.

~ P.S. ~

Thank you to every one who tuned in to watch us get married from afar and supported us even though you couldn't be there! You filled our hearts with joy!

Thank you to those of you celebrated with us, and those who are patiently waiting for the day we can finally celebrate together! We await that day with such excitement!

Thank you to my brothers for making the day possible, for helping to run our wedding day and filling it with treasures!

Thank you to my new siblings, for your advice and support!

Thank you mom and dad for making our wedding perfect, even though it wasn't the way any of us ever thought it would be! (We got married in your backyard, even though it wasn't the one we intended and imagined all these years).

And finally, for the future, thank you to my new mom and dad for your support from afar as we eagerly await our wedding to come, in your backyard this time ;)

We hope to see you all soon...

Tolkien, Trees, and other Thoughts

I got distracted by the light dancing across my book as I was reading The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien this afternoon.

I love the tree outside my bedroom window, almost as much as I love reading in the afternoon. I love sleeping with the window open so I can listen to the hush of the leaves in the night. I greatly enjoy all the little critters that visit me outside my window, from the birds that come to sing in the morning, to the family of squirrels that sometimes come to gawk at my cat. It is also my favorite place to take a nap, there in the tree filtered afternoon-sun.

Tolkien was himself a great lover of trees. Thus, it is no small wonder that The Lord of the Rings pays such special attention to them. Indeed, the trees are the personality of most every landscape in Middle Earth, be they of the hostile or illustrious variety. They are the constant dwellers, watching over passersby and temporary inhabitants that come and go throughout the years, such a short while in the long life of a tree.

Tolkien himself had a tree outside his window once which he claimed helped inspire his story Leaf by Niggle, an odd and wonderful tale that feels altogether dreamlike. He wrote about this tree in the books original introductory note, saying

"One of (the tale's) sources was a great-limbed popular tree that I could see even lying in bed. It was suddenly lopped and mutilated by its owner. I do not know why. It is cut down now, a less barbarous punishment for any crimes it may have been accused of, such as being large or alive. I do not think that it had any friends, or any mourners, except myself and a pair of owls."

Altogether, leafing through these letters written by a mentor that I will never get to meet has been wonderful, even more so than I expected.

Reading through his rambles –regarding such themes as the struggles of procrastination in the face of productivity, his constant anguish at the regrettable busyness of his schedule, and the woe brought on by a book that doesn't want to get done, have all made me realize that maybe I know what I'm doing after all. Self-doubt is no stranger to even the greats.

I sometimes feel small in comparison, so un-heightened by time, so stuck in the scope of the present with a book that is only as old as the files containing it on my computer; a book that is still so unlived in. But knowing that someone I so admire has struggled with the same things as I am toiling with now brings me an unexpected sort of comfort. All this is mostly normal, after all; as normal as the life of anyone who takes up writing can ever be.

Tolkien barely dared dream that so many would share in his delight for his Middle Earth.

Books are wrought only with great pain and frustration, for the imagination rarely complies well with the limits of our vocabulary and the hampered frame of the page.

But once the wrestling is through, and the writer sits back and cries in wonder and fear at what they have created, the book becomes severed from them. As Tolkien wrote:

"(The) goal was reached at last. It is finished... (but) now I look at it, the magnitude of my disaster is apparent to me. My work has escaped my control, and I have produced a monster."

Sometimes the book fades away after that, collecting dust on a back shelf, thought about from time to time only by they that sired it, sometimes with fondness, sometimes with regret. But every so often, if chance allows, a book will fly away to other horizons, where it finds other shelves, from that of a publisher, to possibly that of a reader.

Who can ever know for certain how many shelves a book can make a home in, nestled in comfortably, as if it's already forgotten they that toiled for it before it could stand up on its own. But, the writer won't know: not where it goes, nor how shelves it comes home to; much less how many readers might find a semblance of home in reading it.

Indeed, no one can ever truly guess what might happen when you release a wild book onto the vast world.

For now though, it is much nicer to simply read under the shadow of a tree, and dream of the day when my own book will forget about me and find a home on the shelf of another.

Writing When You're in a Hurry

How to Write When You're a Whirlwind

A Whirlwind: A chaotic rush, fast approaching, swiftly passing, never lasting.

How can you write in the midst of a drought when writing for you feels like a whirlwind? How can you write when you climb your hill in expectation, let lose your hair, but find no breeze to lift you?

And still the wind is on your mind. You're too aware of your own breath when its calm; too aware of the limitations of your own existence.

Writing is like a turbulence of words that overcomes you; but you, with your butterfly net, you who puts out buckets and basins to collect it when it falls, catch so little of it. You find that the wind cannot be caught in nets; find that still water is too tranquil, too unlike rain, far too tamed by your small vessel to offer much inspiration.

  

You may wander the fields afterwards, once the storm has spent itself. You look for lost treasures in the tillage, things you missed that the earth didn't already take from you. But if there are seeds in the earth, maybe the storm will make way for things to grow.

They grow in the calm, even when you're not looking, even less when you do (you cannot watch a sapling sprout in your slow-human-seconds). But did you plant the right seeds?

Let us dig and find out if your seeds have what it takes.

You planted white things; planted paper; planted sleeplessness; planted an alphabet by the keys of an old typewriter. You planted the books you once read, now decomposed and rotted in half-remembered, dirt-stained passages. You planted half formed visions, hoping that they'd grow. You planted feelings, also half-forgotten because you never wrote them down. You planted patience, such small simple seeds, the whirlwind could take them, and you'd decide you do not need them (you'd rather watch for storms). You planted watering cans with rusted spouts with which to do the watering (how counterproductive writers are). You planted faulty scales with which to measure the greatness of your rain-water because you wondered once how much rain it takes to make a pond, a lake, an ocean. (How many words it takes to write a book, I've always wondered. But who has ever counted?)

You may regret ever taking up gardening as you sit there, with dirt on your knees and in your finger nails, with leaves in your hair still damp from the last rain.

But then you find one pretty seed in the earth, already sprouting roots, and you know: this one craves, this one desires, this one hopes. Seeds turn into trees sometimes, and you can feel it by the determination of its little roots that this one wants to grow; wants to know what it will be when it grows.

Trees take a long time to grow, so much longer than flowers. Trees turn into books sometimes; not just one, but hundreds, even thousands. How many words can trees hold on their pages, I wonder? More leaves than they've ever sprouted, surely.

You forget sometimes how much time it takes for trees to grow, that what you plant today won't grow until a great many tomorrows.

But how counterproductive writers can be when they doubt themselves; when they plant seeds just to dig them up again, forgetting that it takes so much more for things to grow than a planter, a gardener, a caretaker. Leave it in the dirt next time.

Next time, let the storm do the watering, but get up in the morning and water it some more. Seeds grow slower when you watch them, but people say that they like to be talked to.

You, you who writes in whirlwinds, you will talk to it sometimes, late at night when you can't stop thinking; when you put words to your own mind instead of paper, writing imaginary books in the space between waking and dreaming, because writing is so much harder when you're distracted by your wakefulness.

Books get written sometimes; out of paper, words, and things-once-read. Books get written, with patience, with doubt, and an untraceable craving, deeper than the pen can delve. The desire for books to exist, to write, to pass on stories, is as ancient as the once young sapling's wish to grow up to be a tree.

Books get written sometimes. But only if you give it time to grow.

So next time when you plant your garden, plant a little time.

A Stormy Night with Charles Dickens

It was a dark and stormy night in which I read Charles Dickens.

I read till late, till Book the Second made way to Book the Third, fittingly entitled "The Track of a Storm".

I stopped then and listened to the thunder shake my little house, and wondered at how awful and awe-inspiring it must be to see the sea rise in a storm like this one.

"But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this (little) space and time. And it was now... that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising." ~A Tale of Two Cities

Love for Well-Worn Paperbacks

I detest the mistreating of books, as I hate the mistreating of trees. I find it despicable when people misuse something that may very well outlive them. For indeed, the average lifespan of a book, much like a tree, is very likely to outlast the lifespan of a person. And although these things appear on the surface to be inanimate, there is so much beauty and possibility for wonder and growth in these things that their unnecessary destruction angers me.

There is, however, a difference between a mistreated book and well worn book.

The most worn out book I own is a paperback addition of Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

The spine is cracked, pierced by white like so many paper-veins showing through its otherwise black spine. The cover is bent in a few places, like an old photograph, or a letter that has been unfolded too many times. What's more, my handwriting is woven in with Dickens' own words, my messy script playing around with the printed paragraphs; drawing lines and arrows, underlining the words I want to read again, the sections I spent the most time in marked by pencil. Sometimes there are scribbles too, words jotted down; thoughts and references tugged out of my mind by the on-goings of the page.

I love this worn out book, not just because Bleak House is one of my favorites, but because I love how lived in this particular addition feels.

My copy of Bleak House is worn because I read it well. The cover is bent in places from all the time I spent carrying it around with me on the inside of my bag.

I have a love for worn out books, paperbacks specifically.

There are some readers who morn the wearing out of a book. I, on the other hand, have come to be greatly fond of this process. I believe it to be my right as a reader.

There is something comforting about a well worn paperback. You can tell when it has been opened, and even to what extent it has been read. If a reader quit part way through, the cracks will stop and the further pages will not open as naturally.

But a book that has been well-read and well-opened will open easily. It will want to be opened, for it has gotten used to be handled by readers, being visited by fingers and skimmed by eyes.

Breaking in the spine of a paperback book is like wearing in a pair of walking shoes; it is the wearing through, the cracking, that shows that there has even been a journey. These shoes have been walked in. They have gone places, a well worn pair of shoes seems to say. Or, in the case of the well worn paperback: this book has been read.

“Books do not age as you and I do. They will speak still when you and I are gone, to generations we will never see. Yes, the books must survive.” ~The Hiding Place

A New Life

It's been so long that I don't even know where to start. But I have to start somewhere, I suppose.

Thinking back to the last few times I wrote on this blog, it's strange to think how much has changed. How many things have become settled, and how many things are still changing. I am saddened by how little I wrote for myself during this time of change, for those words will always be lost to be now. There will only ever be a before and an after; for the life I had before and the life I have now bares so little resemblance to one another.

I started my young adult life like most other young adults, by searching for what I wanted, for the life that I would one day have. And though I always thought I knew what I wanted, I had no idea what that would look like.

How far I have come since then.

Enough with the ambiguity. The last time I wrote on this blog I was starting my first semester of university. Since then I have moved across the country. Made a home for myself. Landed my dream job, and met the love of my life.

  

But this is only just the beginning. Life will forever continue to change.

It's been a wonderfully challenging year with many new and exciting struggles.

Every stage of my life proves to be abundantly busier than I ever thought I could be, and this year I did not stop for months. This year, I moved five times, from one city to another, and through three different provinces. This year, I finally chose a minor to accompany the major I chose for myself when I was in the fourth grade. This year I got engaged. I wrote more chapters than I ever have before.

But, this is only the beginning. My young life was just the prologue, the upbringing before I set out on the adventure of a lifetime.

This new stage of my old life will be busier and more challenging than anything before. But it will also be incredibly wonderful.

P.S. Thank you to my Opa for still asking about the blog I never write on. It was just the push I needed ;)