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.)

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.

To the Character I Had Killed Off

Dear Deceased Character,

 

I don't know why I had you killed off. Perhaps your time was simply over. Perhaps I was simply bored. 

I admit, you bothered me a little. Your practices disturbed me. I think the story will be better off without you, if somewhat less interesting. 

I must also confess that I killed you off on a whim. I guess you bothered me more than I thought you did. If it helps, you were probably going to die sooner or later. I think that much we both knew. You were a frail creature, and I never liked you. 

You were so pesky, such a persistent nuisance to me and to others. I don't think the reader will miss you. In fact, I think they'll feel a lot better now that you're gone. Even if other things continue to go wrong, they'll have that solace.  

 

Even though you're dead, you're vivid to me still. Your face is one I see clearly. Where other's are sometimes blurry, your face shines through. 

Don't worry, I won't give you away. I won't spoil your ending; won't go so far as to describe the features of your face and deem you recognizable. Who knows who might read these words once I post them on the internet. But what can I say, you were fun to write about; you and your vile ways and your vile, vivid face. 

Now you're gone without a trace. Left only in my mind. The images will get old soon enough, now that I won't be writing about you anymore.

As of yet, no one else knows that you're dead. No one but my most trusted advisor who said with a smile that your death scene was one of the best I'd ever written.

What can I say, dear Deceased Character, killed by a the writer's whim: you were fun to write about, that much I've admitted. 

But the truth is, killing you off was more fun still. The second I thought of your demise, I was committed, and the plot permitted it just as well. 

And so, I thought, I might as well do it. As they say, all's well that ends well. 

And you know, I think you ended well, ended in good glorious drama. And because all's well that ends well, you've become better for it; become more sufferable now that you've ended, more manageable, really. 

I like you better now that you're dead.

 

And if I write a flash-back, well, all I can say is that I hope you're not in it; I pray the plot will not permit it.

May we never meet again,

                                             

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.