Five Years a Writer

A Post a Day in May 7/31 Sun warms. Bare arms shy.  But cat’s limbs stretch long. Secure  luxuriating. Tender green shoots rise    Wet dense earth shifts to open  Season welcomes growth Spring streets burst with life  Danger lurks in gaps and voids  Roll becomes kerplunk Haiku is a fun form to play with; in its strictest most authentic version, “a traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count. Often focusing on images from nature, haiku emphasizes simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression…”  [Source:   https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/haiku-poetic-form ] Earlier posts on this blog that play with the Haiku form: My time in France Springtime  May 2019   Summer holidays ——— Land acknowledgement:  I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation. P...

  A post a day in May 6/31 Fiction that serves up an interesting protagonist involved in a well-paced plot wrapped up in a story that includes some smart social commentary and (or) that intelligently explores human relationships is a recipe for a good read in my books. And, if I can learn something useful that I can apply to my own life, well, that’s an appreciated bonus. A good example on my ( friends ) shelves is the series by Harry Bingham, featuring Fiona Griffiths. On the autism spectrum, Fiona makes her way through the world doing her job while trying not to get too involved with the people around her. Despite her personal challenges, her work as a police officer in Cardiff, Wales is exceptional and her passion for unusual cases is legendary among her peers. The clear-cut process she uses to solve those cases strikes me as not only sensible but transferable to my own life when faced with a puzzling situation — Know the facts Make some assumptions based on those facts Develop ...

A Post a Day in May 5/31 I love books. They’re solid, feel good in my hands, and, between their covers, they hold stories that can teach me something, amuse me, transport me into worlds with characters that fire my imagination. But there are so many books and never enough shelves to hold them all. How to manage this sorry equation? I recently came across a useful tip that might help me reduce their number. It involves characterizing each book as friend, acquaintance or stranger. The method is part Marie Kondo in that you pull all the books off all the shelves. Then sort the books into those three categories and put only those back that are truly worth the shelf space. Obviously, the friends are those that you read over and over again or, if not that, then those that you feel a bond with for what you once experienced when you read them. In my case, these are my favourites from my childhood that I continue to read when I want familiar story-comfort: the Jill pony books and the Sue Barto...

A Post a Day in May 4/31 The stickers were red with white writing. We stuck them anywhere we could think of, including the inside door of the women’s washrooms on campus. It was a primitive, but effective, way to reach women and to share important information about access to abortion. This was 1987 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Supreme Court of Canada had not yet ruled in the Morgentaler Case (that would come the following year), and women needed our efforts to help them get information about how and where to access abortion in the province. Back then, abortion in Canada was covered under Section 251 of the Criminal Code;  to secure the procedure,  women needed the approval of a Therapeutic Abortion Committee, composed of three doctors. Long before the advent of the internet or email, contact between women about abortion services was rudimentary. In Halifax, the local CARAL (Canadian Abortion Rights Action League) chapter set up the AIRS line — the Abortion Information Referral...

A post a day in May 3/31  Six of us were spending the evening online, working on personal vision boards for the upcoming summer. I expressed how much I was looking forward to stopping for ice cream on the way up to the cottage, but also how impossible it felt to think that, in just a few weeks’ time, it could really be a fun spur-of-the-moment activity. The others didn’t disagree and the conversation turned to how normal it has become to do less, stay closer to home, and limit our interaction with others. And this, even though here, in Manitoba, the government has lifted all Covid-related public health measures. While some businesses still request that masks be worn, there has been a general move towards returning to ‘normal’ and getting back to gathering in groups and crowds, at concerts and meetings, and so on — often without social distancing or masks. This leaves those who are more cautious or concerned on our own to make decisions about how to navigate the bigger world — or wh...

A post a day in May 2/31 In our house, things are routinely lost — misplaced, if you will, put somewhere, location forgotten when next needed. It is aggravating and annoying. And entirely self-inflicted, making it embarrassing, too.  Here’s what it can sound like.   “Aaargh! I can’t find my glasses and I can’t see them without them on. Where are they?” “They're right over there, on the table, cleverly camouflaged against the pattern of the tablecloth. Exactly where you left them!” OK, that incident is not so bad, as it’s perfectly reasonable to not be able to see one’s spectacles without them on one’s face.  But how about this one? It starts benignly with, “Have you seen my keys?” and moves to an increasingly frustrated and fruitless search in all the logical places — the front hall table, yesterday’s jeans’ pockets, the backpack, etc. Nothing. Nada. Nix.  Then, the other person suggests looking in less logical places, like, say, the sunroom desk or the shelf in t...

A post a day in May 1/31  This year’s Post a Day in May begins with the fourth and final instalment  (below)   in the flash fiction story I wrote during our recent Spark Your Writing course.  Flash fiction (short pieces, generally under 1,000 words) is an exciting form to work with because the constraint is really tight for the writer. Whether working with just six words or one thousand, the length is the determining factor. Everything the writer wants to say must exist within that word limit. It’s a marriage between idea and craft, wherein the focus is on cutting the extraneous and crafting the essential. For me, that is fun-with-writing.  Equally fun is the challenge I set myself this month: Post something on this blog every day. The constraint here is the daily deadline, so not every piece will be perfect; I know this in advance. But every day, a piece will be posted.  The marriage here is between that daily deadline and my commitment to craft the be...