Five Years a Writer

I have pledged to write a new post for this blog every day in May.  Read Battle of Wills version 1 here Bountiful the Beautiful It's time to move. That sunbeam beckons. Slowly, no rush.  Time is mine. I am cat. But then, interloper looms. Swoops Grasps. Tight. The will, but no chance, to fight. And then A wrenching to my head. My dignity! Dashed. Something’s in my mouth, down my throat. Horror! Foreign round object. White. Bitter. No. No way out of this.  Discretion and valour etc. Be still. Be silent. Play them. Then. Release. Blessed relief. Graceful leap. Artful spit. Pleasant sound on the kitchen tile. Move on. Let them try a better trick next time. There’s that sunbeam. Still beckoning. Slowly, no rush. --------------------- Thanks for reading. Writers want to be read; at least, this writer wants to be read, so comments, rebuttals and feedback are all welcome. Subscribe to the blog to recei...

I have pledged to write a new post for this blog every day in May.  I am playing with form today. This is a prose poem I wrote in a creative writing course in 1997. I learned from the instructor, Robert Budde, that narrative poems take story and make them more intimate. See what you think.  ------------------- It’s time to give the cat his next pill. Deftly s coop him up as he streaks by On to other matters. The sunbeam on the kitchen floor.  He is lifted and bundled in an old heavy shirt to confine his escape. His eyes close. His body held, content. He purrs.  Until the hand reaches down to pull back his head. Until the hand pries open his mouth.  Until the pill is placed way back in his throat, his jaw held closed.  He wants to move, to leave, but cannot.  His stillness is stubborn.  His quiet a cover for determination not to swallow, not to submit.  Finally he swallows.  Is praised, released....

  I have pledged to write a new post for this blog every day in May. When Virginia Woolf wrote in 1929 that a woman needs a room of her own in which to write, I don't believe she specified either dimension or location. Indeed, I would like to think that she might, ninety years later, agree that the 'room' could equally well be space in one's mind, presuming a roof over one's head and a living wage in hand. The point, I think, is that room —  literal or psychic  —  is necessary to do one's work.   My partner, our cat and I live in a less-than-1000-square-foot house, and the room of my own is a table, in the basement.  While we share a good-sized office, with two windows — one for each of us, and enough room in it for two desks each (one for handwriting, one for the computer), several years ago I decided that I wanted a dedicated space in which to house my art supplies and do my collaging. I was fed up, always having to pack up everything from...

I have pledged to write a new post for this blog every day in May. The scene: two people passing each other in the hallway — Person One: “Hey, how’s it going?”  Person Two: “Busy. Really busy.” Person One: “Yeah, me too.” Person Two: “Gotta go. So much to do.” Person One: “Right, me too. See ya’.” I hear this exchange in the hallways at work quite often and, I must say, the one-up-manship disguised as banality is breathtaking. Being busy is, apparently, the new status, and I have no ambition for it. I’ll be active, engaged, productive, interested, committed — any of those, I’ll happily be. But busy as a status? No thanks.  I think that people are afraid, these days, to have nothing to do, to have a calendar without appointments, to have time without something filling it. A friend once told me that she was learning to be “ with herself” rather than “ by herself” when in her own company, alone. And I really like that notion: that I can be my own best com...

I have pledged to write a new post for this blog every day in May.   “Life is an experiment in which you may fail or succeed. Explore more, expect least.”  Santosh Kalvar “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has he courage to lose sight of the shore.”  Andre Gide  “It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.”  Ursula K. Le Guin  I regularly read the Jungle Red Writers blog  by a group of mystery writers whose work I enjoy. While I don’t write fiction and don’t aspire to (although, never say never), their daily posts have often pointed me to authors and writers whose work is applicable to my interest in creative non-fiction. It is through a guest post on JRW that I discovered Jane Friedman and her terrific book The Business of Being a Writer , which I began reading last March.  By early April, I had come up with the idea for this Five Years a Writer blog and by mid-Apr...

I have pledged to write a new post for this blog every day in May.     I used to be a news and politics junkie. I loved reading, watching and listening to the news, being in the know, forming opinions, talking about the issues and the people and the strategies.  And then Donald Trump was elected.  At first, I remained that same junkie, reading a variety of international newspapers and magazines to stay current with the news and the analysis and, above all, to try to make sense of what the election of that man meant to the world and to me in that world.  In my daily life what it meant is that I lived in a state of increasing disbelief and anxiety, and yet I felt compelled to keep myself in the loop and in the know.  Then the SNC Lavalin scandal (affair? business? incident?) was uncovered and I fell over the edge. I, quite literally, could not bring myself to listen to the news. Naively, I was shocked that the Justin Trudeau government co...

I have pledged to write a new post for this blog every day in May. One of the things we like best about having a cottage on the shores of Lake Winnipeg is the abundant wildlife in Grindstone Park, where we're located. We love watching the Bald Eagles swoop over the cliff, the deer wandering through the lot, the birds feeding in winter, the occasional otter by the shore...and so on.   Less appealing is when the wildlife moves indoors, however. As we discovered one evening several Octobers ago. This wildlife sighting included a mouse caught in a well-placed trap, but it also included something we’d never seen indoors before...  I was the first to enter the cottage that evening on arrival and, so, was the first to spot the coffee beans spilled on the shelf and over the floor. Hmm, that was odd. Then I investigated the package of coffee and saw the telltale tooth marks; they seemed bigger than a mouse would be able to make and, anyway, what would a mouse want with coffee bean...