Category Archives: musings

Creativity in a different form

3 Comments

I consider myself to be extremely fortunate. I am a person who can sit at a keyboard and create a fictional world by typing words onto a screen, giving me the chance to lose myself in a fabricated realm that comes from my imagination. To date, I have written seven novels, and I have enjoyed the exhilaration of allowing my characters to be able to speak through me to tell their stories.

Recently, a group of screenwriters came to our lodge for a writer’s conference. I was invited to sit in on their sessions, and it was an opportunity I will never forget. Currents of magnetic creativity sizzled in the air and slowly fell on me, like the first tentative drops in a rainstorm. Before I could brace myself, I was pummeled by the intensity of the storm of ideas that whirled in my mind. I was drowning in a new world of creativity, and I could only do my best to hold on until the tempest abated and I was able to gather my thoughts while the electric current still raced through my blood.

After listening to four sessions of the conference, and after pushing off the weighted blanked of convoluted emotions that held me fast to my space on the couch, my creative drive took a detour I was not expecting. The idea is daunting. The road ahead is filled with twists and turns I will have to navigate after studying a vastly different road map than I am used to, but I am up for the challenge.

My Google search history is now filled with pages to help me navigate the seas of writing a pilot for a television show. I find myself in unchartered lakes, still buoyant on a body of water with no discernable map, and no captain to dispel the myths of the waters I am about to enter. I am up for the challenge, but I know the water will be choppy. The characters are in my head, and they are whispering snippets of the tales they would like to tell. Their voices are tentative, but I have put my faith in them. They will find me. They will tell me who they are. And they will, in turn, put their faith in me to tell their stories.

Imposter syndrome

7 Comments

I am ashamed of myself, in more ways than one. I have willingly neglected this blog for the past three months, and I have recently allowed myself to, once again, bathe in the toxic water known as Imposter Syndrome.

Having just finished the first draft of my sixth novel, I should be elated. I should be patting myself on the back for creating another unique story that has never been told. Instead, I am doubting my ability to write. I am second guessing my talent as a storyteller, and I am apprehensive about reading the rough draft for fear the words have no depth or emotion and hold nothing of value to the reader.

I am sure every author has hit this wall in their writing journey more than once. The fear of not finding an audience for the stories we construct is paralyzing. The thought that I have toiled to combine over ninety-four thousand words and beat them into submission only to have the story fall flat is agonizing.

But somewhere under the somber veil of the debilitating malady known as imposter syndrome lies a beacon of hope. A tiny speck of light looms in the distance, and that light beckons me to continue. Reading stories by other authors has always been a way for me to draw from their strengths so I can become a better writer. But, tonight, I am hedging my bets and reading one of my own books. Of the five stories I have created, it is the one I am most proud to say I have written.

As I turn the pages on my Kindle, I am reminded of the passion I felt drafting this story. I am reclaiming the confidence I felt in myself, and I am slowly letting the water out of the toxic bath and watching the Imposter Syndrome circle the drain before it disappears.

I can do this. I can write.

See you tomorrow

Leave a comment

A beautiful couple, who had been married for seventy-three years, recently left this earth a mere sixteen hours apart. For any of you who have seen, or read, The Notebook, this story may seem like a fairy tale, but it is real. It is devastatingly sad, but it is the purest form of true love I could ever write about.

Jack and Sylvia were an integral part of my life. In my early twenties, I was in a relationship with one of their sons, and their love for their family was the thing I cherished the most about them. I can still picture the dining room in their home where we would gather for Sunday roast dinners, and Gran would be fussing about the little details to make sure everything made its way to the table before we all sat down to eat. It was sometimes chaotic, but it was always pure bliss.

They were the epitome of the devotion they had for their life partner. In the many photos I have seen, their hands were always intertwined, and they were gazing at each other with true affection, and after seventy-three years, the look in their eyes never changed. Their love was magic.

When Gran left on March 14th, Grandpa was overheard saying, “Goodnight Gran, I’ll see you in the morning”. And true to his word, he followed his lover into the afterlife, not wanting to spend a moment on this earth without her. No romance novel, nor no epic movie, could ever capture the sentiment or the overwhelming emotion he conveyed in that moment after she left him.

As I write this blog post, I know they are holding hands in a realm we can only dream of. They will soon be passing out cards for their next game of bridge, and arguing about their bids and hoping they will take the maximum number of tricks.

I can simply say, I was blessed to have had them in my life. They touched so many lives, and I am thankful my life was one of those lives. I am sad they will no longer be in our world, but I am forever grateful they will be a part of my past, and a big part of my future as I move forward holding onto the lessons they taught me. May we find each other again in the afterlife, and may our dining room table be as filled with as much life when we see each other again as it was when we were blessed to spend time together in this physical realm.

While life goes on around us

Leave a comment

February 8th, 2023, is the day a dear friend of mine took his own life, and it is a day I will never forget. Those in his intimate circle knew about his struggles, but the rest of us were utterly shocked and gutted by the news. I have been spending the last two days selfishly wondering why I was so oblivious to his pain.

My heart aches for his wife, his immediate family and friends, and the rest of the people in his life who were fortunate enough to have been touched by his charismatic personality. He was the essence of joy. He infected the world with his wit and charm, as well as his brutal honesty. His generosity knew no boundaries, and he was always the guy who would be the first person to give you the shirt off his back if you needed it.

Robbie O was the friend we always wanted, and in our hearts, we knew we always needed. He was effervescent. He was quirky. He was one of a kind. The number of pictures taken of him flipping the bird make me want to do that in every future picture that will be taken of me.

In my attempt to distract myself from the emotions I am trying to deal with, I have been mindlessly scrolling through my social media pages to read tributes from other friends and see pictures of him I had not ever seen. Although I still cannot wrap my head around what happened, I am comforted by the abundance of thoughtful messages being shared in his memory, and the feeling that we are all trying to collectively figure out how to process this great loss.

While the generic buzz of social media is filled with pictures of food and Tik Tok videos, and life goes on around us, I see the innocuous posts about everyday life and I want to shout into the void. I want to scream into those obscured realities. I want to reach through computer screens and make the world aware of what is actually happening, and what the world will be missing in the absence of our dear friend.

I want people to realize what a great detriment we are all suffering through while we are still trying to accept our loss. We should all stand taller knowing he was in our corner. We should all puff our chests being able to say we knew him. And we should all hold every memory of Robbie O tight to our hearts while life goes on around us.

The writing bug is back

3 Comments

I hope you are all well and staying safe. I have not posted here as often as I would like, but for good reason. I am finally continuing the adventure of writing my second book.

My creativity from March to July was dismal, at best. I could not put together a string of words that gave me any sort of joy. My work in progress collected dust and my characters had self-isolated to the extent I feared they had taken reclusiveness to an award-winning level and would never return. I was devoid of ideas and was deeply saddened by the reality my prolific brain had atrophied.

But a series of chance discussions in August sparked my imagination and charged new life into the decaying cells in my brain. One by one, the neurons began to fire, and the ideas began to flow. The novel that had sat in solemn darkness with only 18,000 words is currently over 31,000 words in a span of two weeks, and the characters are now tripping over themselves to add their stories to the chapters of the adventure I am writing. This is a writer’s dream.

The inspirational voice that sounded was unexpected, but quickly presented ideas that got me excited. The stagnant pool in my head is now churning with ideas. I find myself at my laptop, writing for hours at a time and then having to physically readjust to the life I am living outside of the life I am creating in my story.

This is my bliss. This is the elusive happiness I struggled to find for four months before the muse came back. This is what being a writer is all about and I cannot tell you how excited I am to finish book number two and continue to write the following three in the series.

 

 

The elevator and the stress of knowing exactly what to say

1 Comment

As a writer, I craft strings of words into sentences. Those sentences become paragraphs that eventually blend into chapters to create a novel. To say that process is easy is ridiculous. When I wrote “the end” after finishing my first book, I felt like I had nurtured the story from conception, and I had carried those words until I had given birth to a full manuscript. After I typed those two words, I wept.

I thought the most difficult part of writing a novel would be the writing itself. I was wrong. I have recently become much more aggressive in my plight to share my words. After chatting with a friend, and then a friend of that friend, I was gifted some great advice and given the task of coming up with an “elevator pitch” for my book. For those unfamiliar with an elevator pitch, it is basically condensing the eighty-three thousand words of my novel into a twenty-word pitch that could be quickly shared on an elevator and outline of the backbone of my book. It was an arduous task but one that made me strip back all the things that take place in the story to the reveal the true essence of what the book is about.

I was forced to forget about the characters and all the great plot twists I had woven into the fabric of the story. I was tasked with creating a succinct delivery of two lines that could pique the interest of someone who could potentially propel my first child into the private school that had a three-year wait list. It was hard. It was intimidating. But it was achievable.

After many drafts that were close to the mark, but not close enough, I managed to put together twenty-three words that truly convey the heart of my first book. I also created a similar pitch for the book I am currently writing as well as a pitch for the third book waiting to be written. The elevator may skip my floor a few times while I am waiting for the right door to open, but now I am confident I will know exactly what to say if given the opportunity.

 

 

 

Even my exhaustion was exhausted

2 Comments

Frayed nerves aside, this summer was one for the books. From not knowing if I would even have a job this year to spending countless hours researching all the Covid protocols for opening a family resort, this summer presented a profusion of challenges. Thankfully, we rose to meet them all and we had an extremely successful and safe season.

When you work in a fast-paced job, there are few moments you can stop and realize how exhausted you have become. It is natural to wake up in the morning, jump into the deep end of the day and swim with all your might until your feet finally touch bottom in the shallow end, allowing you to tiptoe up the stairs to escape the water. This was the summer of 2020.

Our respite, this year, came much earlier than it has in past seasons and my body responded very quickly to the welcome down-time. And when I say responded very quickly, I mean I crashed. I went from going to bed long after midnight and waking at 5:00 am with a brain loaded with scenarios for the day, to sleeping for a solid twelve hours because I could not keep my eyes open much later than 7:30 pm.

But with the exhaustion came the overwhelming pride in knowing that we had not only survived the Covid summer of 2020, we had succeeded in providing a safe and enjoyable environment for our guests. Though they were aware of all of the protocols we had in place, they were still able to relax, enjoy the change of scenery from the concrete jungle to cottage country and forget the turmoil that still existed in the world outside of our resort bubble. In the end, it was a win-win.

My exhaustion has since been remedied. A few nights of sleeping like a teenager has brought me back to life. The Covid demon that stole my ability to write has been vanquished and my creative life is back on track, largely due to a great mentor I had the honor of sharing ideas with during the summer and who continues to fuel my desire to write.

What I have learned from this summer is that exhaustion cannot steal the best parts of you. It may have the power to suppress your joy, your tenacity and your creativity, but it does not have the power to fully take those things from you. You must weather the storm until the sky clears and have faith the best parts of you will eventually be restored.

 

 

 

How one book has potentially turned into a four-part series

3 Comments

Writing is an interesting pastime. Some days my fingers cannot keep up with the speed at which ideas come, and other days I stare at the screen for countless hours and nothing happens. For five months, especially during the initial Covid-19 isolation period, my characters self-isolated as well. The voices I am proud to admit I listen to were so muted, I began to think I had never heard their voices in the first place, and I was unable to write anything. But divine inspiration is a wonderful thing and it comes from sources that are never anticipated, but truly cherished.

Last week, I had the extreme good fortune of having a guest at the lodge who had read my first, unpublished novel in July take a keen interest in the story. He had arrived back at the lodge for a second stay in August, and during each day of his vacation, he dedicated a portion of his precious family time every afternoon to meet with me and discuss his ideas of how he saw the concepts of my future novels morphing into a series. My creativity exploded with the force of a Supernova and an abundance of lights reappeared in the dark recesses of my brain. By gently weaving the characters from the first novel into the fabric of books two, three and four, the “Relative” Series was given life. To say his input was invaluable is an egregious understatement.

In the short span of seven days, my creativity came back with a vengeance. Spending thirty to sixty minutes a day sharing ideas about my characters and my story lines relit a fire within me that had long been extinguished. My neurons recharged, the bubbling cauldron of ideas overflowed and one book turned into a series of four stories, now all connected, taking the word ‘relative’ to a new level.

White board at the ready, I will be spending my day off tomorrow journaling ideas for the new books and documenting the connections between stories. Book number two is still in its infancy, but it is pulling itself up to the table and is ready to take a few more tentative steps before it hits the ground running. Zoom meetings have been scheduled with my friend every Monday beginning September fourteenth and I am ready to be accountable for getting this series written. 2020 has just take a giant turn for the better!

 

 

 

 

The summer it rained caterpillars

Leave a comment

I had a fortunate childhood. I was born in the city and each summer we would pack our station wagon as full as it could get and we would drive North to our cottage in Muskoka to spend two glorious months at the lake. I was a water baby and could not get into my bathing suit fast enough in the morning so I could run, bare-footed, down to the dock to jump in the water. I would spend hours in that lake, eventually swimming to the point of land between our family cottages where our extended family members would come from their cottages for cookouts to fry the fish we had caught that morning.

In the afternoon, I was back in the water with my diving mask looking for undiscovered treasures or coming up for air in the open space under the dock to marvel at the number, and size, of the dock spiders inhabiting the space they begrudgingly allowed me to share. The recollections I have of being a child at that cottage continue to resurface and I hold each of those memories close to my heart.

Although I am blessed with a good memory, I could never forget one summer if I tried. I was still in single digits and the summer began as a normal summer. I was on my way to the dock when I noticed the tent webs starting to form in the V-branches of many of the trees surrounding our cottage. As the mornings progressed, the webs became bigger, they took over more of the branches and they began to assume ownership of the trees.  The larvae that had been birthed in those webs had grown and soon the foliage around our cottage was infested with Forest Tent Caterpillars. I can only describe the days that followed as something you would see in an Alfred Hitchcock film.

(the branch I removed from one of my trees this summer)

When the caterpillars reached maturity, they began to drop from their nests. The days of me running to the dock in bare feet was a thing of the past as I donned my running shoes and held an opened umbrella to avoid caterpillars landing on me as I slowly made my way along the tree-lined path to the open sky over the dock. I can still recall the sound of the caterpillars bouncing from the woven fabric of the umbrella and it gives me chills. The infestation was so brutal that cars slid into ditches because the roads were so slick after being covered by these furry little creatures and car tires could get no traction on the pavement.

The webs are back in the trees again this year, but their presence is nothing like it was that summer. Like the smell of spearmint gum in my mom’s purse, the sound of caterpillars pinging off my umbrella will live with me for the rest of my life.

 

 

 

The Day Off I Absolutely Needed

2 Comments

When you only get one day off a week, you must pack as much activity as you can into an exceedingly small window of time. Yesterday, I did the opposite. I changed my regular day off from Monday to Sunday to spend a quiet day at home and watch the stream of an online concert that was both mentally and emotionally soothing. (apart from the tears because the music was SO lovely)

I have mentioned in previous blog posts that I have become slightly obsessed (in a good way) with a musical theatre boy band called Collabro, a group who won Britain’s Got Talent in 2014. These boys have gone above and beyond during the mess that is 2020 and have constantly kept in contact with their fans through social media as well as other platforms. For the first time since March 15th, these boys put together a live, socially distanced, online concert for their fans and it was brilliant.

This year can only be described as an emotional roller coaster. I feel like I have been a prisoner in the first car, slowly chugging up the track and not being able to prevent the eventual crest over the hill, the rocketing descent into utter chaos and the visceral sensation of true fear. But each day I remind myself to remember the plateaus during the ride, the moments when I can catch my breath after the turbulence and the moments of serenity before the track pulls the car up the hill for another round of torture.

Despite the state of the world right now, I seized the day yesterday and fought my way off that roller coaster for a short time. I was able to spend the day at home and not talk about, or think about, Covid-19. I did not have to wear a mask or maintain a social distance from anything. For one day, my life felt somewhat normal and it was bliss. It was the day off I absolutely needed for me to get back to me.