Broken Hearts and Bravery

My heart broke today. 

Or, it might be more apt to say I allowed my heart to break today.

By definition, heartbreak is when something you care for, love, and treasure ends up disappointing you. Is a façade. An untruth. Even if it’s one you created in your mind – people have their hearts broken on a weekly basis playing the lottery.

Heartbreak happens when something you try to control is beyond your control yet you still try to drive the destiny vehicle. Even if you try to try to avoid it (think of trying not to tell your kids that there is no Santa), circumstances that are fated to occur will happen. When you hold onto these things tightly, or you’re not ready for them to happen, the heart breaks. Shatters. Like an iPhone dropped on concrete.

Once you start to discuss your broken heart, people try to console you, relate to you with platitudes, empty words, niceties. “It’s going to be okay.” “You’ll find someone else.” “Be strong.” “Be Brave.”

Bravery. There’s an interesting concept. Many things that people believe take courage are the same things that lead us to heartbreak. Circumstances beyond our control.

I went away last weekend to New York City on my own. People continually said to me both before and after my trip, “Oh my, that was brave.”

Why?

“I couldn’t do that on my own.”

Why not?

“Oh, big city, crime, need people…”

Living life requires no courage. It requires oxygen, water, sustenance. We do what we have to do to survive. That isn’t courageous. That’s what we have been doing since we took our first breath outside of the womb.

Helping others so that they can continue to exist – that’s courageous. Whether you’re a first-line EMS responder, a soldier sent to battle to protect the innocent, someone who runs into a burning house to rescue a pet, or someone who consoles a crying child who is lost, those are courageous acts. Putting your needs before the needs of others. Taking the fork in your predestined route because you want to help a fellow human being requires a certain type of bravery that not everyone possesses.

Doing things for yourself is far from courageous. It’s just necessary. It’s not always easy. Sometimes it breaks your heart when you have to do something for yourself at the expense of others, like go on vacation to New York City alone because the thought of being around people you know makes you want to jump out of your skin and leave it in a pile at the bottom of the stairs for others to find. But you know if you don’t do it, your ability to be courageous and put the needs of others before those of your own becomes compromised.

And sometimes your heart breaks when you have to be courageous. Like giving someone the right to their happiness at the expense of yours, instead of holding onto something that is no longer there that could or will end up destroying the both of you. I don’t just mean romantic relationships. Any relationship  – friendships, parent/child, familial – can become destructive to the people involved if they try to control the wills of others. Your child will leave you, even if it’s only metaphorically. Your friends will grow apart and find new friends, even if they still talk to you every day. Romantic partners will have their heads turned by others they may find attractive. But it’s not up to you to make any of those people return or stay with you. The decision lies with them and them only. These things do not require your courage to survive nor need your heart to break over their occurrences. They will simply happen. You just need to let them.

We do what we have to do to live. But before you call people who contemplate and/or commit suicide cowards, think about this. Sometimes people don’t call for help because they believe they’re doing what’s best to save their loved ones from going through their suffering. When you are ill, sometimes you have the strength to fight the illness. Sometimes, you have fought long enough for others that you have left no strength for yourself. Sometimes people just need the courage of others for the strength to be brave.

My cousin who is queen of the calligraphic inspirational sayings on her Facebook page posted something today that I would have normally ignored, but my fingers were bleeding from the shards of my heart I’d spent all day picking up off the floor.

“Love is always right. Love is always meant. We are here to Love. So the more we Love, the more we remember our reason for being.”

It takes courage to give your love to someone, because it’s something that can help them to live, whether or not that love is returned. (If you are a parent of teenagers or you have a celebrity boyfriend/girlfriend, you know exactly what I mean.) If we simply live, we can avoid heartbreak through wisdom and understanding, while retaining our courage for love.

 

The Return of the Bad Writer Thanks to The Muse

I'm sorry.

I have been a bad writer. 

I've neglected my blog. This one, anyway. But not for the reasons you might thing.

I have been writing. I’ve been writing a lot. I've been editing, polishing, and learning words for parts of the writing world that I didn't even know had words.  Which means I'm completely out of practice. I don't remember how to just write for the sake of writing - I have been writing for purposes.

I will try to be better with the free-flow you’ve come to know at this blog. I really will. Honest.

Although…I do have stuff I really want to show you. But I can’t. Even though it’s some of my best and most beautiful stuff I have ever written, I can’t.

Because I have a muse.

And you know, those muses are curious creatures. They come out of nowhere, and you don’t even realise they are inspirational until stuff starts coming out of your mind and onto your creative palate and you realise what inspired you.

If you have a muse, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Not necessarily your spouse, though it’s nice when they combine like that. That’s a lot less explaining to do.

If you don’t have one, that’s okay. A muse is not necessary to be a creative person. And if you’re not a particularly creative person (we all are but that’s a topic for another blog) you might not understand it at all except to think that the artist hangs around with the muse just to get laid.

Except that the muse-artist relationship transcends even that.

This is not back in the day when the muse would lie around the artist’s abode, eating grapes out of a wooden bowl and look bored while the artist, all doe-eyed and full of Dionysian lust, would create in a mad fury, to the exclusion of bathing, eating, sleeping, just to appease the muse so they would finally put down the grapes and say the most benign compliment imaginable, “Oh that’s nice.” sending the artist into either an enraged spiral of madness because they hadn’t achieved the outpouring of idolization and support they had expected, or a slump of shame that made them want to cast away the artwork they had slaved over for days just to create something even more impressive for the muse. The muse continued to eat grapes, and maybe have a glass of water.

The part about the lust being channeled into the works rather than into the muse is the definition of the term. No matter what French movies may make you believe, that, right there, is the essence of being inspired by the muse.

My muse has a high level of intellect. Do I look like I would choose someone stupid to be my muse? It’s difficult to be inspired by someone when you have to explain to them what a syllable is. Though I’m sure given the opportunity to take a mini vacation, the muse would be more than happy to sit around and eat bowlfuls of grapes and be unintentionally soul-crushingly critical.

My muse has no idea they are my muse but they could easily figure it out. Especially because of the intellect. And maybe even the grapes.

I have tried to rewrite some of these new pieces in some type of disguise, but it’s like veiling something in saran wrap.

 So those pieces stay hidden.

But at least I’m writing. And if you happen to be a muse, or think you might be a muse, or even THE muse, enjoy your role. Know you’ve awakened someone’s creative soul, keeping them up late at night with caffeine jitters just to get the most benign compliment imaginable.

Being a "Writer"

On Tuesday, Jules picked up where we left off on the Blog Tour (see my previous post), and gave us some insight into her blog writing process. I am always fascinated to hear about other people’s creative processes, especially other writers, since I don’t follow a particular method myself, other than to get words on a page and hope they make sense to someone else.

What made me sad (and I told her this so it’s not like I’m telling tales behind her back) is that she kept referring to herself as “not a real writer”. It’s a phrase I hear too often. In fact, up until last year, I called myself the same thing.

We tend to romanticize artists in first-world society. We picture painters, musicians, writers, singers, dancers, all as undernourished, sallow, pale, chainsmoking alcoholics with some God-gifted talent that tortures them until they feel no other choice but to bestow the fruits of their gifts upon society. We marvel at how someone, who appears to be as human as we are, has the ability to craft some type of magical work that captures emotions and spirits that seem to pinpoint to something inside of us better than we know ourselves. And only a chosen few of these creative visionaries are considered to be genuine. Those people who have an exhibit in a gallery are artists. Those who have a recorded song on the radio/iTunes are musicians. Those who have published a book are writers.

Bullshit.

As humans, we have an innate need to create. It is in fact the reason we exist. You don’t think so? Then why are we all so obsessed with sex? Sex is the ultimate expression of creation. All forms of art are expressions of that instinct of creation. So maybe you don’t play an instrument, but you sing in the shower. Does it make you happy to do it? Then that makes you a singer, even if it’s only for those five minutes that you sing Livin’ On A Prayer in the shower.

You write a blog to bitch about your school, your office, your parents, your life? You tweet more than five tweets a day? Your Facebook statuses and text messages are longer than “OK”? You do these things every day? Guess what. You’re a writer. You write down words to express your feelings about a situation. That’s all we do. It’s that simple. There’s no correct way to do this, other than maybe to put more than five words together at a time.

You like cooking? You bake? You sew? Whatever it is – you’re creative. Just because you don’t get paid to do something, or have a wall full of accomplishments, or aren’t mobbed when you try to go to the grocery for a can of tuna doesn’t make your work any less valid than those people who get paid six and seven-figures of annual income to do basically the same thing.

In fact, if it weren’t for “non-writers” like Jules, there would be nothing heartfelt or interesting to read on the internet. We would be subjected to dry news stories of current events. Two word tweets. Facebook statuses devoid of emotion. Snapchat. Like the saying goes, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. No two people have the same point of view about a situation. Yes, the internet is the place where everyone has an opinion, and even the ones we don’t like, we need to give them voice to say it. Create their bizarre art, illogical and out-of-sync and tune music. Someone out there will like what you do, even if it’s only you. I mean, that’s why I started writing blogs. For me, a blog is writer’s masturbation. It’s me writing about what I think in my voice. It makes me feel good to get it out there. And hey, if you like to watch, well that’s cool beans (as long as that’s the only thing you’re watching about me!).

So go ahead. Be a non-painter, non-singer, non-dancer, non-musician, or a non-writer. No creative work is every truly successful until after the death of its creator. Start crafting your legacy now, and without fear.

Blog Tour 2014 - The Restart Stops Here

Well I'm back. 

I never left, really. I have two other blogs that I work on habitually, but in my quest to write for others, I rarely take a moment to write for myself. This is what this blog was supposed to be for. So now I'm back here to steal back time from everyone else and give it to me.

What inspired this was Mel Cober's out-of-the-blue invite for the Blog Tour challenge. I mean, I do blog. But just not here. I blog as my alter ego for a food blog and for a music blog. Since this is supposed to be my time for me (notice how I keep repeating that, hoping it will be true), then I might as well use my real name. 

So check out Mel's blog from last week, and next week, check out Jules Timms blog here. If you're interested in participating, there are two (2) more spots left. Message me and let me know. As Stevie Nicks sang, "Chains keep us together."

The Questions about my writing process:

Q1: What am I working on?
I am scrambling to polish my manuscript for my upcoming elevator pitch session at the Ontario Writers' Conference on May 3, 2014. The manuscript, currently titled 21, is an erotica piece of fiction written in memoir-style of our protagonist recollecting what she has learned from the 21 lovers she has had over the past 25 years. Since it's my first pitch session, and basically first time sitting in a room with a book publisher (having worked for both a music publisher and a newspaper publisher, you would think this would be a cinch for me, but it's not), I want it to be perfect. It won't be, but I want to try to get it there. 

I am also continuing to workshop my vampire novel, Human Blood, in my writers critique group to see if the market can handle yet one more vampire novel series, albeit in New Adult format. I am hoping to self-publish this novel once it's gone through the revisions.

Once a month, on the 7th of each month, I contribute on my food blog to the Great Canadian Food Challenge. I have also just signed up to be a contributing writer to Eatins Canada, an online magazine devoted to Canadian holistic food and food culture.

And whenever I go to a concert, or hear something that's perked up my attention, I write something for the music blog. 

I am planning on entering the WCDR 2014 Slam Contest. I did so last year with the encouragement from executive members of the Writers Community of Durham Region, and ended up as a finalist. I'm going to try again this year, though I still have to decide on the piece to craft. 

Q2: Why do I write what I do?
You mean why do I write about music, food, and sex? 

I write what I feel. I know that's kind of a weird thing to say, almost a cliche. But there are ideas, characters, scenarios, all sorts, running around my head in a constant stream-of-consciousness chatter. To get them under control, I write them down. 

Why erotica? It's not because I'm a woman of a certain age, or because I want to be trendy. I don't want the experience of my characters to be hidden or cut off from me as a writer or my readers. Sometimes you need to feel a little bit more of the sensual than just the closing of the door and the fade to black.

Why do I write about food and music? Because those are the two things dearest to my life after my son, and my quest is to impress my profound love and passion for food and music upon him. So far, he's more into the music than the food, but then again, his palate is still developing. 

Q3: How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I have been told that my writing voice is very distinct. I wrote a very involved piece of fanfic a couple of years ago, and the first thing my beta reader/editor commented on was my strong voice. If people comment on it, then they would know more than I would, since I don't really think about my writing voice when I'm putting words on the page. I just shoot from the hip as it were.

Q4: How does my writing process work?
I just dump and write. Mel called it being a "pantser". I have a basic idea in my head, whether it started from a dream/daydream, a "what if..." idea, or is based on something that happened in the non-fiction world. I start a story, and then I go on the journey with my characters. They let me know when it's finished, whether it be a short slam piece or a long, involved novel. 

I also follow the Hemingway school of writing - "write drunk, edit sober". Not that I'm Joycean about my drinking/writing habits. If I could write like Joyce when I was drunk, I'd move into the liquor store! But when I am editing - which is about as much fun as pulling out your toenails with pliers - I do it stone cold sober. I usually have a printed version of the draft, and I've made notes to go in and fix things. When I get to the part that needs fixing, I rewrite the damn thing until it feels right. Then I go on. 

This is my first year being in a critique group, and I'm grateful for it. My fellow writers pick up on things that I have missed after three drafts, and working on their pieces helps me to watch for similar things in my own craft.

The Tour Continues...

Next week, on April 21st (or April 22nd given that it's Easter Monday), Julie Timms will continue the tour at her Just Jules blog, and let us in on her writing process.

Jules is, first and foremost, a writer and a mother. Her blog started as a way to chronicle her children's lives, and evolved into a place where she shares her laughter, tears, ups, downs, and ups again of the bonds of family.

Thanks, everyone. Watch this space for more rantings, ravings, laughter, and tears about my writing (and non-writing) life. 

A Concert For Your Story

This weekend I decided to embrace my midlife crisis completely and went to VELD Fest, Canada’s largest EDM festival (or so they claim). Having listened to “EDM” (Electronic Dance Music for those in the know – noise, disco, whatthefuckisthis for those who aren’t) for the past 25 years, it’s just nice to see that the rest of the world has finally caught on, even if most of it these days is formulaic, watered-down, and repetitive. Such is the genre known as dance music. If it has a repetitive beat that hooks you, you’re in.

Back in the days when disco was dying and electronic music was moving away from Tangerine Dream and melding with the remnants of disco to become Kraftwerk, my one friend and I would sneak downtown and go hang at gigantic gay dance parties. From there, I moved on to gay clubs, where US House beats were mixed and melded with synth pop and Prince. When deejays used vinyl and turntables to mix. I even deejayed myself for a spell. Mixing in those days was not easy, but at least I got to use that high-school math for good instead of evil. We had to count and feel the beats – we didn’t have a computer to tell us the timing of .mp3s. And if I may continue along the curmudgeon line, the greatest invention before I left my days of deejaying behind was this brand-new $3000 CD player that allowed you to manipulate the speed of the laser so you could slow down and speed up tracks just like you could do with turntables. (And $3000 in 1992 money is about $25,000 in today’s).

I left the days of spinning tunes (yet another regret) and just went to the dancefloor, going out every Friday with the girls, doing our thing, only wanting to dance.

And then I had a kid.

Maybe I wasn’t dancing so much, but when you’re driving along with a kid in the car, you tend to search out tunes that don’t have offensive or suggestive lyrics. Many parents use one of those insipid kids music CDs, which are a different kind of formulaic and repetitive. I swore from the moment I found out I was pregnant that I would never play that craptacular music for my kid. Sure, we’d sing nursery rhymes and the like, but never listen to any of those Disney churned-out-pacifiers-for-the-car CDs. Ever. Check my house. I don’t own one.

When I was pregnant, my son listened to a gamut of music in Utero, from Elgar and Stravinsky to Miles Davis, Billie Holliday, Brubeck, Coltraine, Bowie (lots of Bowie)…we went to Nine Inch Nails concerts and saw the Sisters of Mercy live. So in the car, I tried to listen to as much of the same as I could.

One day when I was driving home from work to go pick him up, a song came on the radio that blew my freaking mind. “I’m Not Alone” by Calvin Harris. I nearly crashed the car. I wondered who this bloke was that was dropping this incredible track. It HAD to be a hit (and it was nearly five years later on this side of the pond).  And then I heard that pretty song “I Remember” by Kaskade and deadmau5. I checked out all of these artists, and found that their songs were sophisticated and yet very child-friendly. And my son went nuts for it. I think my son could recognize deadmau5 before he could recognize Ronald McDonald. 

So what does this have to do with writing, you ask? I mean, sure it’s interesting this trip down memory lane and editorial about why EDM is good for kids (instrumentals mostly, so mostly no offensive lyrics, good beat, kids like to run around and dance to it), but this is a blog about writing.

You may recall that I got brave enough to post the at-least-it’s-not-as-bad-as-50-Shades piece of fanfic here. And I’m working on two other pieces at the moment. I also posted a short story to LitReactor here. What these pieces have in common is deadmau5. I worked on all of these first drafts while listening to his music. And not just the albums. Much of the later pieces I wrote while listening to his Soundcloud demos. It’s as if he were my muse in a way. Something about the rawness of the unpolished demo, but still the tracks sounding pretty well finished. Something new. Tracks that brought out words from the recesses of my mind.

So back to this past Saturday night. Deadmau5 was the headliner. It was raining, there was thunder and lightning, and most promoters or performers would have told him to stay off the stage. But deadmau5 risked his life for us, and opened the show with a piece that he had started to work on months prior, a piece that helped me find the meat and potatoes for the second piece I’m working on. Fuelling me as it did in the middle of the night in front of my glowing laptop, I ran to a spot in the rainy field and raged for the next eleven minutes and thirty seconds.

(Funny enough, I’ve been having a bit of difficulty tightening up and rounding out that piece. After raging in the field, my mind woke up and I’ve been able to push forward. So thanks again, Joel.)

The show continued, and he played several songs from the Soundcloud demos that had inspired and pushed me to finish my written words. It was possibly one of the best nights of my life. And even though his equipment failed in the rain, and it seemed as if everything else just got worse for him, including the crowd turning on him, I felt like deadmau5 played a show just for me, choosing the songs that motivated me as a way of saying “here you go. Be inspired. And don’t be afraid to fail.”

See – you can have your midlife crisis and put it to practical use at the same time.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a story to tighten up. Might as well since I can’t move my legs at the moment…

When being a Grammar Nazi just isn’t good enough

I am a stickler for grammar.

I hate text abbreviations. I don’t like using numbers for words or in words (unless of course you’re referring to Deadmau5), and I try at all costs to avoid the dangling participle. I yell at people when they use incorrect grammar. I’m probably the first person to Tweet or Facebook you after you’ve made a spelling or other heinous crime against the English language in your status bar.

I have a degree in Grammar. Well, it’s in Linguistics. The study of language as a living entity. Grammar is almost the opposite. Grammar is finite. It is the alpha and omega. Linguistics challenges where the alpha begins and where the omega ends.  Back in second year university, my grammar professor had us purchase that most infamous of grammar bibles The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. It is an excellent book, and if you choose to pursue any form of writing in English, creative or functional, it is the handiest tool for you.

I also read Stephen King’s marvelous On Writing. It’s a kick-you-in-the-ass book. And it gives you a wake up call about all of those lolly lolly lolly words that we tend to use in oral storytelling. In the written word, your text should be able to convey to your reader the momentousness of a situation without resorting to all of the lolly words.

I was pretty smug about my command of the English language. Sure, I can’t put a coherent story together without going off in various directions. However, I can make sure my incoherent story has the most impeccable grammar imaginable.

Or at least I thought I did.

Last night (figuratively speaking – as of the day of writing, I read this essay three nights ago and have read nothing else since) I came across this essay.

To quote Stuart Neville, one of my favourite current writers, Ah, copy edits, the stage of the writing process that reminds me I'm a moron.

There are elements of style in correct grammar, and elements of grammar in correct style. I think my overuse of the word “as” stems from my love of British culture and British style. As just sounds more refined, more direct, more like you know what you’re talking about. It’s fancier than ‘while’ or ‘so’ or ‘and’. That still doesn't make it any more correct or coherent...

I know I’m an as addict, in the very very bad way pointed out in that essay. Not in the comparative way in which as was meant to be used. Such as (!) ‘this pate is as rich as Oprah’. 

So I have received another wake-up call to remind me that, no matter what I accomplish, I am still a moron at some level.

Since then, I have been making a very concerted and often quite difficult effort to avoid using the a-word. (I wouldn’t even write ‘as much as possible’ there for fear that I have already overused ‘as’ in this blog of mine.) I find it binding and restrictive.

As I see it (!!) there are two approaches I can take:

1.      I can stick an iron rod into my brain to forget everything I know about grammar and style and churn out mom porn a la EL James, and hope nobody notices how poor my writing skills are; or

2.   I can allow myself (meaning I can stop judging myself for five minutes) to write very poor first drafts in order to get my story on the page, and from there, red pen like I’ve never red penned before, or even better, give it to someone who doesn’t even know what the word ‘as’ means, and have them circle the word every time I use it. And then rewrite that entire paragraph where the offending word has been discovered, thus eliminating my overuse of the word while still being comfortable enough to express my thoughts.

Being a bad writer comes easily to me…if it's easy, it isn't worth having, is it? Even if it sells 10 million copies...

Exercising The Mind

When most people want a change in their lives, the first place we usually head for is the gym. Something about exercising muscles that we hardly use makes us feel rejuvenated. And if we really want to make the most of our gym memberships, we usually join a workout class of like-minded people in order to move as one organism in a fitness bonding ritual.

Sometimes we try to design our own workouts at home, or follow some exercise DVDs or internet videos. But it never feels the same as working out with a bunch of people, where we are all together motivated towards a common goal. After all, if we didn’t have this need to gain confidence through the pursuit of common interests with like-minded people, Gold’s Gym and Curves would never have become successful businesses, never mind Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig.

With that in mind, in this quest of mine to become a better writer, or, at least to not be the worst writer on the planet, I designed my own ‘writer workouts’. The often-referenced fanfic. This blog. Other pieces sitting in draft form on my hard drives. Making sure I could put words together to make sense. The problem with home workouts is, after a while, you wonder if you’re doing it right, or if the methods you’ve been using have developed bad habits and shortcuts, and as a result, you are no longer improving the fitness of your muscles, but causing them strain and fatigue. And that’s where I felt I was.

It was time for me to join a writer’s gym if you will. Now I don’t have the kind of cash that would get me a locker suite or a personal trainer (i.e. the Creative Writing Honours BA at Humber College. I’m nowhere near ready, mentally or financially, to go through school again.). So I went looking for the cheapest (i.e. free or better) workout place that would give me the most value for my lack of dollars.  

There are many writing forums and writer workshops that offer free advice, and many of them are even credible. After hunting around, and after receiving a recommendation from my ever-supportive and always-neglected partner, I decided to sign up with a writer workshop site that is half-free, half pay. That is, there are many resources and exercises available that are free, but for the intense help (with editors and the like), you have to pay. That`s only fair. Someone is taking time out of their writing life to tell you how to make yours better, and most times, it’s not the easiest thing to do, that is, to leave your writing life to support someone with theirs.

And, like you do before you commit yourself to a locker at the new gym, I did a trial class for free, to see if it was the place for me, and to see if my writing muscles were conducive to the workout techniques offered at this forum. Although I’m not sure of the end result of the exercise in the eyes of the literary evaluators (my exercise is posted but won’t be reviewed or judged for another month), it just felt really good to flex some muscles of the mind that haven’t been twisted around for quite a while. In fact, it felt so good, that I’m working on a short story in a realm that I know nothing about as my next literary fitness exercise. Much like a fitness newbie (or a re-newbie, if you will), I don’t want to overstretch any muscles that may be atrophied from lack of use. But I figure after writing the über-long fanfic, the mental muscles have been warmed up enough. They need a new routine and direction. And I still get to eat cake without guilt!

**Just a post script here – the reason why I’m not giving the name of the site is that, again, I don’t know if I’m ready for people to know that I’m posting there yet. Even though I’m sure if you Google me, you’ll find the page. If something prolific comes out of it, I’ll be sure to share it with you directly.