Reflections

I Can Make Life was launched a week and a half ago, and in addition to my other current duties - lunch hour co-puddle splasher, pizza maker, hide-and-seek player, and owner of this little project called Sparrow), I've been spending time every day trying to nudge my book "out there". To date:

• Megan Carlson's giveaway on her blog, Infertile Myrtle, gave the book a great boost. 
• Having "Fish-Bird-Kite" published at Exhale the day of the book launch definitely helped send traffic to I Can Make Life at blurb.com (the book is inching up to 500 views to date, and a few sales).
• De-constructing the book, poem by poem, and publishing on hubpages.com has been a fun experiment, and has also brought people to the book
• Talking about the book to local independent bookstores has resulted in my favourite local bookstore, Reflections Books, taking my book on consignment. I have sent a review copy to Black Bond Books, as they support local authors, and am in the process of contacting Odin Books and others.
• Am in the process of connecting with the local public library about acquiring a copy for their collection
• Next strategy: taking over the world.

This is me and Carole from Reflections Books this morning. What a lovely lady.

I want to talk a bit about Reflections Books, because I have had a soft spot in my heart for this bookstore since it opened its doors in 1988. I was 14 at the time and remember excitedly riding my book there weeks after it opened. I'd already been through a pile of library books on astrology and Edgar Cayce, and kept reading references to someone named Carl Jung (I was always drawn to books about dreams, being an active dreamer with an uncanny history of picking up details from the near and distant future while asleep).

All this to say, Reflections was a haunt of mine for five years, until I moved away from home at 19. I'd often go back and browse when I was in town. One time I remember being drawn to an orange book - it was a book in a series, though I don't remember the title - and realized the cover had the image of my tattoo on the cover. This was strange, as I assumed the stylized Star of David with hearts was just something Leonard Cohen's book designer came up with for Book of Mercy - which was where I swiped it from. My well-used set of tarot cards are from Reflections, as are a couple of crystals I purchased when I was 14 - an amethyst, because it was my favourite colour, and an agate, because I needed its general healing properties (everything from love and good fortune to protection and safety).

Today I met with Carole, whom I recognized from previous visits, and she very kindly allowed me to take some pictures with her, as well as my son, whom my book is so much about. We talked about a local author book signing at some point in the future, and perhaps a review of my book on the Reflections Books website. For now, I am just thrilled that if you walk into Reflections, you will find my book on the shelf with the work of so many great thinkers and writers concerned with wellness and spirituality - just as I am, and have been from a young age.

I left the store with a new set of cards - the Path of the Soul Destiny Cards designed by White Rock fractal artist, Cheryl Lee Harnish. On my recent Bowen Island retreat, my wise friend, Karen Watson, provided readings with another deck by the same artist. The deck is truly beautiful and speaks directly to the heart. As an art lover and someone who gets excited about anything that leads back to inner wisdom and consciousness, I fell in love and am excited to work with them.

As for Noam, he was drawn to a beautiful crystal at Reflections, so I let him take his special rock home. But of course.

I Can Make Life

On Monday, April 23, I Can Make Life was finally launched, after many months and a very long journey!

When I chose April 23 as the launch date, I was thinking about reasonable timelines, and the fact that 23 has always been my favourite number (I'm funny that way). I didn't realize that the date also coincided with National Infertility Awareness Week (NIAW); I only realized it when I came across a blog called Infertile Myrtle. The discovery of Ms. Megan Carlson's blog was auspicious for me and my book, as after one quick email, my book was being promoted on her site with a giveaway. Just like that!

On the eve of April 22, Ginger Deverell, the ever-patient, calm, savvy, creative and talented designer worked with me late into the night to make final changes to the acknowledgements. I uploaded the book before leaving her house, and then spent April 23 on a much-deserved retreat to Bowen Island with Ginger - a day to get away, feel calm, aligned, free of responsibility, and open to whatever the day held for us. It was a great day; I felt connected, in tune, and harmonious with everything around me. I am a highly sensitive, open-hearted person, but I haven't felt myself that open, spiritually, in a long time. It felt like everything anyone said was directed straight into my soul. It was moving, beautiful, and positive - in short, it felt like everything in the universe was whispering to me that at this time, I am on the right path.

I hope one part of being on the right path will manifest with the reception of this book. A slow burner, maybe? I don't have specific hopes for it, beyond my hope that it reaches the audience that needs it, one way or another, year after year. I don't have a detailed marketing plan, or the resources of time or money to implement one if I did, but hope that word of mouth will be strong enough to support its journey.

This book was never intended to be a money maker, but I hope it does open some doors as it makes its way through the world. As I wrote in the acknowledgements, my greatest hope is that it provides the women who need it with a sense of peace at the end of the journey I invite the reader to take with me - through the medical appointments, the grave self-doubt, the anger, the intensity of loss, and the deep joy of, at last, a viable pregnancy, and a beautiful, gentle birth.

Of course, only time will tell the path of this book as it wends its way "out there". In the meantime, I am celebrating the fact that one poem from the book, "Fish-Bird-Kite", was selected for publication in the current edition of Exhale online literary magazine (also launched on April 23). As of today, my book has been viewed 180 times at its home on blurb.com, so people are finding it.

I plan to offer a few more giveaways on websites that are promoting NIAW, and I do actually have one ambitious plan after all: to do the unthinkable by writing a deconstruction of each poem as an article, poem by poem, start to finish - thirty articles in all (the first of these is called Bohemian Waxwings, and here is its deconstruction). I don't think most artists like to deconstruct the work behind a work of art, but I think it will be kind of fun to re-trace my steps and make the process public. I've been known to do crazier things in the realm of self-exposure (mostly soul-baring, nothing too racy. Yet.) It's the kind of thing I would be interested in reading if I liked an artist's work, and I suspect that other people enjoy reading about the process of art-making, too.

With my book's launch after so many years in the making, it is strange and a bit sad to let it go. I always feel that way - a slight let down after all the build up and excitement from the inception of a project to the final stage of its completion. I always feel a little...adrift...waiting for the next cycle of creation to begin. At the moment I'm in a bit of a "survival" state whereby I think of my next writing tasks as something I must do to generate income...but there are many, many more projects on my creative "to do" list.  Some of them are wildly different than I Can Make Life - some of them are intended to be literary, as this book was, but some of them are non-fiction works, and some are just for fun.

The project I feel most compelled to do now that a new creative cycle is on the horizon is one that I must do, but is likely a few months down the road to even begin. It's a tribute to my great Uncle Gabriel (for whom my son is, in part, named). He, too, was a poet - the only other one I know of in my family. Tragically, he died at the age of 23 in 1941 in a military training exercise. He had enrolled in the Royal Canadian Air Force and was killed when his plane went down over Scotland. I obtained his military records a few years ago - roughly 100 pages kept in our national Library & Archives, but freely shared when I asked. I would love to write a series of poems based on the stories my aunts and uncles tell, while also referencing my uncle's handwritten application to the RCAF, his death records, and everything else I can call up to re-create a life. The one poem of his my family has was sent back to Gabriel's mother in Canada after his death, and uncannily described his last flight. I hope my approach to a collection of poems can give my Uncle Gab a new life, in poetry, that he didn't get the chance to write himself.

And now that I think of it, that is one of the reasons I love to write so much.

I can make life.

Quotes from the Past

More than ten years ago a friend sent me an email that said, among other things:

"You then and your whirlwind existence, always doing a balancing act between fame and a life leading to fame. A retreat then, into the fog, until you clear that large brain and discover who you are to yourself more than to everyone else.

What nonsense I write in your praise, when you know every bit as much as myself that you are only absorbing for now until the "Big Bang" as it were - your discovery to the rest, the benefit of the others, the general populace!"

Although the friendship faded, as they sometimes do, I taped this email into my journal and never forgot it. The friend who wrote me this note was a frenzied artist himself, and endeared himself to me with his singleminded focus - as well as his own large brain, which was often spinning many revolutions faster than everyone else's. Years later, I often think of his reference to the "Big Bang" and the power of suggestion.

I always believed in my friend, and secretly believed (hoped) he was right about me and what I knew he was referring to: my writing. For one of his birthdays I wrote him a book we both starred in and after he read it, we had an uncharacteristically serious talk. "It will be a huge waste if you don't do something with your gift, you know."

We talked again a year or so later after I wrote a second book in which he had a starring role. I remember him sitting cross-legged on the floor of my apartment, reading it start to finish, even though he kept saying he had to go. He only stopped, God bless him, to tell me at the very end that my book was great. He couldn't stop reading because it gave him shivers.

*****

Several years ago my friend asked me one day in the university where we worked, "So when are you going to earn what you deserve?" I knew the answer wasn't in the halls of the university, but I didn't know how to answer the question. Would I ever be paid what I deserved? What did I deserve? I still hadn't figured out what I wanted to do (but knew the answer didn't lie in a job title of "Secretary"). The clue didn't seem to be in my inspiration for a book of poems subtly titled, "Death of a Secretary", either...though maybe it was.

*****

This week I met up with a friend I have known since I was eleven. We actually met through his cousin, although the friendship with her didn't stick. My friend and I talked about business and as always I talked at length about my many ideas. Ideas beget new ideas and then my ideas tend to crowd around each other and obscure the way forward...because there are so many possibilities, all of them good! So many paths I could take, even when I finally focus everything down to this: I want to write. I want to write all day long. I want to play with words and edit other people's writing, too. This would make me happy.

After sharing some of my ideas for a time my friend asked, "Have you done enough research yet?" I laughed. "You love research!" I said. And it's true, he does. I should know because I have been editing his well-researched books for six years. "I do, but research is a form of procrastination!" I know, I know. I've always read a lot more about things than made firm decisions and stuck with them.

But that is changing...and today I take the above quotes from the men who spoke them. Take them with me as I make some firm decisions, and move forward.

There is other news in my writing life. Lots of it. But for today, meditation on friendship, support, belief, encouragement, and alignment with who we are and where we are going. Amen.

Seeing the Future

At the end of every year I shuffle my tarot cards and pull one card for each month of the new year. My card for February was Transition; in the Rider-Waite deck, which many refer to as the traditional deck, Transition is the Death card. Not a card to be feared, so much as heeded: transformation is coming. Change is near.

I write this post a mere week into February and everything has changed drastically since my last post. Unforeseen circumstances have resulted in me taking some time off for the next few months. At first this sudden change felt like disaster, but it was a crisis that, once given a little time to settle in, I began to see as an opportunity. I've been looking for ways to change something in my life for months. I've been, in fact, asking for change. Inviting it. I've been telling friends that I felt like 2012 was going to be the "game changer" year. I felt like everything had to change because the way life was proceeding wasn't sustainable. It was way too out of balance. All told, I am welcoming the shift and hope it will make room for more opportunities - the kind I've been trying to call toward me, like little birds, for the past several months.

*****

On Friday I had the pleasure of attending a local Nisga'a New Year celebration at the PNE Agridome. The costumes and performances were beautiful. The dances reminded me of this place I am from, from familiar calls that sounded like the coyotes in the trails behind my home, to the dance of the wind and the rattle-rain sounds. I was touched by the stories of ancestors, which were told as songs and dances were introduced. When I saw my friend, Ellen, sing and dance with her teenage daughter and young son, I had tears in my eyes. I kept thinking about how First Nations culture has historically been stifled, and kept wondering, "Who would want to destroy this?" My deepest inner urge was to join...to let myself be pulled into the rhythm and the song's melodies, and dance. Who wouldn't want to? Who wouldn't feel the power and want to be a part of it? Of course in all cultures it is exactly its most powerful aspects that are most feared and for this reason, stifled. The injustice of this set deeply into my heart (again). And I tried not to feel melancholy, but to enjoy the beauty, the energy, the hope and to make the most of what I could learn from the experience.

I learned that the symbol of the Hobiyee celebration is the crescent moon with a star hanging over it. Hobiyee takes place on the second new moon of a New Year. Each year Venus shines brightly somewhere near the moon, but once every few years, the star sits atop the crescent. Those years are said to be abundant years, and this year is one of them. Yes, I thought, this is the energy of change I have been feeling. In January I felt excited by the prospect of the change each new year can bring. When I talked about this excitement, that I could feel change being near, my friend reminded me that it is the year of the dragon. Yes, of course. But the Hobiyee crescent moon seemed to encapsulate it all for me, the imagery so akin to everything I've been feeling. I was a guest, an outsider, but inside I was dancing, too.

*****

On the eve of February 1st, I had the pleasure of meeting with the multi-talented Ginger Deverell of Red Pear Creative. Ginger is designing the cover of my poetry collection, I Can Make Life, which I hope will be launched early this spring. I have known Ginger for many years, and am so happy to be working together on the final stages of my book. We first met as work colleagues at Simon Fraser University, and later began to socialize together with a set of friends we also knew through SFU. From early days I knew Ginger to be an inspired and talented painter, and a gentle, kind, like-minded person with similar values (not to mention a shared interest in simple, green living). Our two hour meeting was fruitful and inspiring, and I left knowing that many of my hunches about what is ahead for me are to be trusted. That Ginger and her ilk are the kinds of people I'm supposed to be collaborating with, and working with on a regular basis. Now I am Ginger's not-so-secret admirer for having found a way to do what she loves, running her own business and working with her talents (much preferrred to the alternative of languishing in an artifical work environment that would stifle her).

Our meeting was a process of communicating through visual images and prompts to get to the heart of what I wanted the book cover to look like. Ginger had prepared numerous slides for me to look at with her, to get my impressions on everything from colour and hue, to crispness of image, to symbols and imagery we'd previously discussed incorporating into the design. There was even a black and white photo of Agatha Christie at her typewriter that, coincidentally, looked a lot like my mother in profile, but 15 or 20 years older. This unique method of digging up information and communicating in visual terms what the end product might look like was useful and a lot of fun. Now I feel like we have a solid plan to go forward, and I'm confident that the book cover is in the right hands.

Rounding out the week, I also received my ISBN number (which I'd applied for in order to self-publish the book, as well as any other books I'd like to self-publish in future). Once more I am grateful to be Canadian, as this process is free and as simple as filling out an online form. Within a week someone from Library and Archives Canada responds to your request and just like that, you are a self-publisher. After some thought, I decided to name my company Tristan August Press. The name was certainly inspired by Deanna Roy's Casey Shay Press. And if you know me well, you know why those names are important to me.

Now that the book is becoming a reality and the path forward is clear, I'm hoping the book will be available in the early spring. The first incarnation will be a free download on my website, with an eBook available on Amazon, Smashwords and other eBook retailers shortly thereafter. My goal is to raise between $500 and $1000 via indiegogo.com by mid-year to finance a small print run. Fall readings, book reviews, interviews and other promotion to follow...

Hello Again, 2012

For the past several weeks I have been gaining my bearings, trying to get a grip on everything I need to learn and do to influence the trajectory for my writing. I am still finalizing my official list of writing goals for the year. Unlike last year, it has taken some time to figure out my priorities, while being realistic about what is actually possible for someone to do with big dreams, high hopes and the realities of time and financial constraints.

My first priority with regard to my creative writing is to publish my poetry collection, I Can Make Life. I am still in the process of researching how to best pull this off. When I thought of quickly converting it into an e-book on amazon.com, I realized that I was feeling reluctant to use this, my baby, as the guinea pig for figuring out how e-publishing worked. Then it dawned on me that I already had a really good test subject for learning how to epublish: the blog I wrote in 2006 about our adventures as we stumbled toward parenthood. The blog was about a year in the making (culminating in the birth of our daughter) - and I believe is an interesting read! I'm currently re-working the text to make it more suitable to a book format and hope to have it "out there" in the next month or so.

As for the poetry book itself, I finally decided on a plan today: to make it available as an eBook on my website, on amazon, smashwords, etc., and sell a limited number of print copies. I am looking into fundraising for the print publishing, potentially with kickstarter.com, and I am still researching self-publishing companies. I meet with Ginger at the end of the month and once the cover is ready to go, the book will be available in the not so distant future on my website and then the online distributors. While it won't necessarily be a goal to make a profit on the eBooks, I'd like to try to make back the costs on my print run...though I'd also like to have a number of copies available to donate to people in the health professions who can make these copies available to the women that could use them: midwives, counsellors, even local libraries.

*****

Much time these past few weeks have been spent getting a handle on my duties as Food and Health editor for Thrifty and Green. This has been challenging in some respects – there is much to do, and I want to do it all, and be amazing at everything I do, without having to spend time learning! The first two weeks of January I spent some time figuring out how editors work together to create a magazine (for the upcoming February digital edition). Many aspects of it I’d never really thought about before. There were fun parts to the learning process: my kitchen became a test kitchen, for instance. I also became a (dubious specimen of a) food photographer. Popcorn was everywhere (the kids loved it!) I wrote a book review of one of my favourite cookbooks. I busily tracked down potential contributors, quickly formed some new friendships and realized how much I love liaising with other writers, and working as a team to meet a common goal. Those moments when things unexpectedly came together, in part because I was there to help make them happen, were fabulous.

*****

I think overall I've scaled back what I expect I can do in the year ahead. I'm committed to my freelance work, which is taking between 10 and 20 hours a week on top of my 40 hour a week day job. I have creative projects I hoped to launch in the early part of the year that are going to take longer - and that's OK. My biggest wish for 2012, in fact, is for subtle shifts that amount to dramatic changes for me and my family. That all of the pressures don’t disappear, but that some ease off, even just a little. 

I do deeply want to make the books that are waiting to be made, but require more “me” time and attention to do so than I currently have. I want time to promote the ones that are almost there, ready for the world. Most of all, if it is at all possible I want to shift away from my downtown day job, doing much more of the writing and editing work I enjoy and am good at from home. I want to focus on the stuff that makes me feel aligned with purpose, appropriately challenged and at the end of the day, feeling satisfied that I met or exceeded my potential.

Maybe I want a lot. But if you don’t dream, how does anyone find themselves where they want to be? It really all does start in our imaginations.

So hello again, 2012. I hope you are with me on that.

Hello Birdie! I have some tookies for you! And a banana!

The title of this post is a direct quote borrowed from my almost-2 year old son. He shouted it through the sliding door this afternoon upon spotting a bird as we were taking down Christmas window stickers. As my brain grasped what he was saying and feeling, I felt thrilled that he was enjoying the birdlife that hovers around our woodsy yard year round. The fact that he wanted to lure a bird closer to enjoy its company - and thought he could accomplish this with a "tookie" and a banana - was so amazing; his speech so clear, his desire so sweet that I ran to grab my video camera to capture what he'd say next.

Moments before I was thinking of my blog and the year ahead. I always feel excited at the end of a year. It is the feeling of being able to wrap something up with a sense of accomplishment, and then start fresh. I feel the same kind of excitement in September - a sense of wonderful beginnings that has stayed with me even though I haven't begun a new year of school in many years. The idea that you can start again with nothing but possibility before you has always filled me with a sense of hope and adventure; that I have a chance to do it all better this time. And maybe even enjoy it more.

My son's call to the birdie - to lure it close with whatever he can - is exactly what I hope to do in the year ahead. I want to spot the bird, find a way to talk to it and bring it close. To experience the magic of what may be far off or elusive, but maybe, just maybe, can be captured and made mine. And if the thing itself can't be captured -- and I do remember many failed attempts to catch birds with a salt shaker as a child -- I want to at least enjoy calling it close with my willingness to share some of my best stuff in the process. My son has a tookie and a banana. I hope to share what I have, too, with offerings more philosophical, but hopefully just as precious.

*****

My writing year wound down in the same flurry of busy-ness as every other part of my life. I am very pleased that a few pleasant surprises and interesting prospects emerged in the last few weeks of the year to carry me forward into the new year.

I am thrilled to be working with Jessica Oman on some of her writing and editing projects (Jessica has even added me to her "Who We Are" page on her Write Ahead Business Consulting and Writing website). It has been a lot of fun for me to apply my proofreading, editing and copywriting skills to the assignments she's shared with me, and I'm hoping to work a lot more with Jessica in the new year. As a result of the varied projects I've assisted with to date, I realize that this is the type of work I want to be doing every day, in balance with my own writing projects. This type of work is not only fun and rewarding, it can be done anywhere. This is not a revelation so much as a hope that in the coming years I will find my way to work from home full time (my goal is to do this by the time my son is in kindergarten, but hopefully sooner!) So in the new year doing more of this type of work is one of the "birdies" I'll be trying to call close.

Through Jessica, I connected with Chris McGrath and his website and digital magazine, Thrifty and Green. Since my last post, I somehow turned a few contributions into a contracted gig as the new Thrifty and Green Food and Health editor. I'm excited about this denouement, which has me writing and publishing articles on a weekly basis, connecting with cool and interesting people, learning about digital publishing, green issues, the technical aspects of building a profitable website, and as an added bonus, supplementing my income. So far my experience has been rewarding and fun at T&G, and I'm looking forward to getting to know the other editors in the coming months. I never thought I'd actually find work of any sort on a magazine, let alone one as impressive as Thrifty and Green, but accepting this opportunity has been one of those things I just knew I had to do. I believe in saying yes to the unexpected, because you never know where any path can lead. Although I didn't seek out this opportunity, I'm very excited to be involved and to bring what I can to Chris' vision of sharing information, ideas and building community around sustainability, eco-living, and green values.

*****

On the creative writing side of things, last week I learned the outcome of the Mary Ballard poetry competition, and want to congratulate Darlene Franklin Campbell on her winning collection of poems entitled Uncommon Clay. Darlene's submission was chosen as the winning manuscript by poet and contest judge, Jay Parini, who called the three finalists - myself, Darlene and Mary Stone Dockery - "all real poets, deeply gifted". I will take that compliment to heart, and say again how much I enjoyed being a part of this competition. If it hadn't been for the opportunity, I wouldn't have put this book together in four short months. Probably it would have languished in my mind, and maybe not seen the light of day for years, if ever - so I'm very grateful for the motivation to have started and finished it quickly.


While I had been silently cheering for my submission in the hopes it would be chosen, what I felt upon receiving the news was the relief of knowing. Once I knew the outcome, I felt the freedom to move forward with Plan B for the book. Immediately I called my friend, Ginger Deverell of Red Pear Creative, to see if she would be interested in assisting with designing the book cover. My hope is to launch a limited number of print copies and an e-Book sometime in the spring. In the meantime, I will be learning as much as I can about indie publishing and marketing so that I can bring this collection of poems out into the world. I may try to arrange some readings in the spring and summer months - something new and a bit scary, but had I won the poetry competition, my intention was to fly to Austin to read to anyone who was interested. So why not somewhere receptive in my own town?

*****


My other creative projects (and there are a few lined up, at least in my mind...) will benefit from the research I do to turn I Can Make Life into a real book. There is one book I'd like to write in honour of my kids by spring/summer, and another secret project under a pen name that will also hopefully find its way out into the world this year via the indie publishing route. I'm very excited about all of these ideas and plans, and am ready to make a start. Just as soon as I have one more chocolate bell-shaped candy.


Hello 2012, and hello birdies!
xo

On Being a (Real) Writer

This week I learned that my poetry chapbook, I Can Make Life, was selected as one of three finalists for the Mary Ballard poetry competition. This week also marks a change in my self-perception: I truly felt like a real writer for the first time, and not just an imposter.

The announcement was made on the Casey Shay Press blog on November 1st. I didn't sleep well that night, partly wondering, as I had been the past week, if my book would make the cut - one of many competing thoughts swirling in my mind this past stressful week. I decided to stop fighting sleep, to give up and get up, and see if at 4:00 am PST the results were posted. They were! I prepared for disappointment, scrolled down the post and assumed that the three finalists were listed alphabetically. I saw Mary Stone Dockery's name. Nope, I didn't make it. Scrolled down further and with bleary eyes saw my name - the finalists were listed alphabetically by book title! On the heels of a week of anxiety about failure and success (in almost equal measure), followed by the thrill of being one step closer to a book deal meant I surely wouldn't sleep now. So I worked at my computer until it was time to wake my kids and get them ready for daycare and school.

I learned something about myself as a writer this past week. That the success I've had so far with this little book only adds more feelings of pressure. The phenomenon that applies to bullies can also be applied to artists: the bigger they are, the harder they fall. It was an almost unbearable feeling this past week - certainty that my book wouldn't make the next cut, interspersed with moments of hope, then cut down by knowing that while there was a plan B for the book, it would take much more effort to get it out into the world - and additional energy and time are at an all time short supply these days and the many forseeable days ahead.

I had to ask myself...am I cut out for the life of a writer with all this roller coaster activity in my psyche? I suppose I've never dealt with this type of angst because although I've been writing poems and various types of creative non-fiction for twenty years, until this year I hadn't really shown it to anyone who may accept or reject it. It's a new experience to put something you care so much for out in the world and then let it go, come what may. Even on a relatively small (but no less important) scale.

In a situation where your creative work, filled with your heart and soul, has some potential to bring you some return (and ultimately I believe creative work should be accessible to all but also bring return to the artist - a complicated dilemma fit for a book of its own)...and in times where all resources at hand feel like they are shrinking around you: mental space, time, energy, money - much is at stake.

I am at a point in my life where I have to make really judicious decisions about where and how to spend my time and energy. More poems? A swept floor that, for the love of my family, doesn't look like the floor of a barn? Less satisfying efforts to raise much needed funds to cover daycare and living costs in the most expensive city in the country for the next four years? I feel like a person who has newly discovered herself, her own potential, and found within the flame that wants to keep burning towards that potential - but frustratingly can't to a satisfactory degree for a number of competing and equally compelling factors. There is momentum, but crazy-making obstacles. As always, the timekeeper is there hovering, saying now or never, time is short, this is what you are here for. But my inner accountant, and my responsibility as a parent in particular, keeps asking, "but how, but how, but how the rest?"

So now I truly do know what it is to be a writer of any stripe. I'm glad I'm here along with the rest; I truly feel privileged to garner any attention at all with the words I commit to paper and feel compelled to revisit and rework until they become something more than the sum of their parts. It is an honour, and it is wonderful to finally see myself as one of the pack. A gift I am humbled to accept.

Every day I am finding my way on this path. I had the pleasure of meeting up with an acquaintance I only knew in passing in high school, but reconnected with recently at my twenty year reunion; she is in the word game, too, as an article writer and editor, and knows all too well the balance of trying to make ends meet while pursuing a passion for words. This week I also received my first email via my new website, from the International Women's Writing Guild - an invitation into the fold. The IWWG found me on the list of finalists for the Mary Ballard poetry prize, then my website, and sent me my first official "you are a real writer" email...The world opens up with these new and inspiring connections.

Upon discussing writing and publishing with my highschool friend, a new/old realization this week: that I really do need to pursue my interest in creative non-fiction. There are many opportunities in this emerging genre - a genre which really appeals to me as someone with what the brilliant Margaret Laurence once called "a fiction writer's memory". I have many details to access in my memorybank, many ideas, many stories, and the will to make them become what they want to become. I have written so many poems in the past few years because with time being so short, I can start and finish quickly. Now, though, it may be time to expand, in tiny baby steps, start to finish. So for now, to start, no matter how small a start I can make, and to brave further ahead. Come what may.

Launched

Today I finally launched what I call my "writer website" at nicolebreit.com.

I think of my site more as a a landing pad than a launching pad: the place where people who may already be interested in my writing can go to find out a bit more about the person who holds the pen.

Putting the site together was both easy and difficult. The easy part was coming up with a concept and finding a photographer and make up artist to make me convey something specific in the photos, which were to be an essential element of the site. The imagery was conceived to serve as a kind of portal, to lead the viewer to each page - the photos creating a feeling or mood or scene that described as much or more about the writer and the writing than the non-visual content. Creating the photos was fun, and again I would like to thank Alexis Desaulniers-Lea for working with me on each and every idea and whim that came to my mind, and bringing amazing ideas and inspirations of her own. The profile photo on this blog is testament to her talent. Tiffany Morton also needs to be acknowledged for making me look good - and also for being game for anything I wanted to do to create the image of who I am when I write.

The difficult part was curiously enough the part I am supposed to be good at: writing. Writing about yourself is hard, but writing about yourself as though you are a special kind of person, an artist, is much harder. In the end I decided to abandon the general formula followed by other writers, in part because the formula was not working for me. I am short on credentials and recognition and rich with photos, which is the opposite of what writers with websites seem to have.

Of course, there are credentials, and there are credentials. What *are* the credentials for being a writer? Writing has been something I have done and have kept doing for a very long time. It might be the thing I do best of all. But only recently have I decided to pursue traditional paths of "sharing" vis-a-vis established avenues of publication. So what do I say to convince anyone who lands on my site that I actually am a writer, let alone one worth caring about? Does it matter that I have a degree in English Literature, or that I graduated with distinction? Some of the writers or their publishers think so, and list much about a writer's educational background on their websites. I think the fact that I studied such a variety of courses in my undergraduate days says more about me as a writer than either of my bachelor degrees; that someone with an interest in other languages, visual art, art history and other cultures must possess a general inquisitiveness about the world - a good quality in the kind of person who wants you to believe she might have something interesting to say, or that her scribbles contain an original thought or two.

I decided that it made more sense to create a site that conveys the idea that you can be a writer no matter how much or little you've "accomplished" in the eyes of any established writer-making body. I've sometimes read with wonder and confusion certain pieces that are selected as not just publishable, but more publishable than others. I have come to the conclusion that there are schools and tastes and mandates and biases and budgets at work in every decision made in favour or against a work of art. That this has been the case in every period of history, and likely will be the case going forward until the end of time. How frequently an artist's work is "chosen" or "selected" isn't a measure of the quality of an artist's work, and doesn't decide for the rest of us whether a person is an artist or not; we all know that many artists are simply not recognized in their own time. Listing all the honours I may or may not hold doesn't say much about who I am as a writer or artist, or why you should care about my work.

And so the approach I've taken is to try to reveal something about what I believe about myself as a writer. I tried to make the site an art project and a functional address for a writer's online "home" that is personal, approachable, and also visually expressive and interesting. I wanted to describe myself as someone with a deep passion, experience and maybe a little bit of talent or skill; someone with some recent creative progress on this late blooming path I've begun to walk. In other words, a picture of the literal and spiritual truth of this writer called Nicole Breit.

In the end I hope my site conveys something of the person who made the poems, articles and one day, books that I would like to share. I hope I have succeed in moving somewhere beyond bios written by the first person in the third person, or too much emphasis on who has decided what I write is good or bad or great. That with this site I have moved closer to how or why the writing happens, to something about what goes on inside the heart or soul of the writer. A tall order perhaps, and now that I've written this post I really do hope my own little site meets in some small way my own hopes for what would make any artist's website interesting and noteworthy. If you have feedback on nicolebreit.com, or know of a website that really conveys or demonstrates something truly authentic about another artist or writer, please send it my way.

It Isn't Nearly as Impossible to Believe...

It isn't nearly as impossible to believe I haven't updated my blog in two months as I would like it to be. The past two months have seen me working constantly on my writing, pushing ahead with projects based on passion/interest and deadlines. I am managing the balance between work, parenting and my writing life, but there is very little time for much more than that. However, I am truly happy and optimistic. I feel that I am where I am supposed to be at this time in my life, and believe that everything is leading to something.

For much of the spring and most of the summer, I was busy working on my poetry manuscript, which was due August 31st. I worked on it many early mornings and late afternoons while commuting on the West Coast Express, and often late into the evening. Several friends volunteered to read the manuscript in its entirety and provide feedback, for which I am deeply grateful; my poems definitely benefited. In the end I submitted 33 poems, and of those 30 were new, written expressly for the submission (although it is also true that I wrote the poems expressly for me as I had intended to write this very book, with the same title in mind, for quite a while).

Never would I have thought I could have pulled together a chapbook in four months, but the contest was a true motivator...and it turned out everything I needed to write the poems was in there, just waiting for its moment or opportunity. I learned a week or so ago that I was chosen as a quarter-finalist for the poetry prize, and it was announced yesterday on the Casey Shay Press website that my manuscript has moved forward to the semi-finalist stage. Of these 15 manuscripts chosen from the 100 submitted, only three will be chosen for the final round. The three finalists will be announced on November 1, and the winner named sometime in January. I am honoured, excited, and both calm and nerve-wracked about the outcome.

When I was dealing with the grief of reproductive crisis, and in particular, my miscarriage, I searched desperately for a book like the one I have written and submitted to this contest. For some reason, artistic expressions of this experience and its unique and particular grief are not easy to find. I wrote an article about the books, poems, paintings I *was* able to find here, and did my own personal creative project which I've shared here. My hope is that my book will one way or another find its way into the hands of women who need it. In other words, if my book of poems isn't chosen as the winner in January, I am determined to find a way to publish I Can Make Life one way or another in the new year...

*****

Yesterday was the official launch of "The Sound of Silence: Journeys Through Miscarriage" - the Australian anthology described by its publisher, Mostly for Mothers, as "intimate, true, sad, uplifting stories of miscarriage". I received my copy of the book last week in the mail, and will be purchasing some additional copies to sell on my website. I was able to read the book in its entirety months before it was published, and found it both moving and beautifully written - in short, a work I am proud to have been chosen to be a part of. I have been receiving lovely invitations to book launches and promotional events in Australia, which I so wish I could attend! For those interested in learning more about the book, the trailer can be viewed here.


*****


In mid-July, a fellow traveller on the West Coast Express stepped onto the tracks at my station, twenty minutes before I was to arrive to take the next train, and was killed. Several people I know were on that train and felt the impact, saw the reactions of people on the platform, were ushered off the train and in a daze found another way to work. A friend who lives in my neighbourhood takes the train before I catch mine every morning and witnessed the incident first hand. And I, just about to cross the street that morning to the station, was told by a woman in the Coquitlam Centre parking lot that the trains weren't running that morning. Thanks to her, I had just enough time to jump back into the car with my family and get a ride to the Skytrain near my partner's workplace. We heard on the radio that there had been an incident at Coquitlam station and both felt the first feeling of dread. I immediately thought there may have been a shooting, as this is unfortunately commonplace in our area these days. It wasn't until I got to work and one of my colleagues was crying at her desk that I learned that someone had been killed that morning on the tracks at my station.

Witnesses described on various news sites how the man "calmly" put his briefcase down and stood on the tracks seconds before the train entered the station. There was no time for anyone to do anything to prevent his demise. I was deeply affected by this story, in part because I stand on that platform every day, paces from where this man decided to end his life; because it so deeply affected the people I know who were there; and because I felt for the man who, for whatever reasons, made a decision that day that is to most of us so very against our instincts, and would have such a devastating impact on his loved ones.

For me, whether we choose to end our lives or we pass away "naturally", there is something sacred about those final moments, no matter how public they are. I found the reactions of other people to this man's final moments at times curious, judgmental, even appalling. My feelings for days and weeks afterward were intense and complex - and could not be dealt with satisfactorily in conversations. So I wrote a poem, "Three Ways of Looking at the Man who Stepped Down onto the Tracks" over many weeks and finally finished it in time to submit it to the September 15 deadline of Pandora's Collective's Summer Dreams poetry contest. Following the October 15 announcement of winners, I will post the poem on my new website.

*****

In early September I learned that my poem, "The God of Fire", was a finalist in the Burnaby Writer's Society annual contest. In May, writers were provided the theme and this year it was fire. I decided to write about fire as inspiration, in the form of a god whose feet leave burned footprints in the grass, and whose earthly consort- a metalworker who creates amber jewelry "in a shop in the Baltic" - represents for me that Jungian idea of the animus: the one who inspires, and who we unconsciously seek in our gender opposite. For me, that metalworker would be a musician who makes beautiful "amber jewelry" in sound. In the coming year I'd like to put together an assortment of poems, letters, and other writings around the theme of inspiration, music, and the opposite/inspiring other. This particular poem I have sent to those on my mail list, and will post it on my website once it is up and running.

*****

Lastly, but certainly not least I spent a wonderful Saturday afternoon yesterday with two amazing ladies, Ms. Alexis Desaulniers-Lea and Ms. Tiffany Morton. These two are a talented dream team who pair up on weekends to do photography shoots. Tiffany is a Blanche MacDonald graduate who succeeded in making me look ten years younger...or was it five years younger, with Alexis' amazing skill as a photographer taking off the other five?  The photo shoot was really an art project, with the elements of each pose planned in advance to convey some aspect of my life as a writer, and/or a feeling of what my work is like. The photos are rich with symbolism - from the images of stars and swallows on my hands, to the heart tattoo on my chest, to the exposure of being photographed in slips, to the coat I'm wearing, that sometimes reveals and sometimes conceals my exposed heart. Tiffany and Alexis' interpretation of my vision for the series were completely in sync with what I wanted to do, and the results are some truly stunning pictures. You can see a selection of the photos when nicolebreit.com is launched in the coming weeks...

There's No Script for a Manuscript

These past few weeks my most intense focus has been on writing and re-writing poems that will comprise my first rough draft manuscript, which I hope to complete this week. The manuscript will become a chapbook called I Can Make Life, and will be published sometime next spring.

I have been enjoying my work on the book and watching it transform so dramatically from its inception several years ago, when I started to record some of my experiences as I struggled with fertility issues. I Can Make Life was what I called that collection of small poems on my A Spark in the Universe. At the time, I wasn't sure I was capable of making life at all and the title was self-mocking, though also secretly hopeful. I didn't think at the time I started writing poems like "Bohemian Waxwings" or "Hysterosalpingogram" that these few poems would evolve into a collection of more than thirty. While I hoped my experiences would evolve over time into a larger project and ultimately speak to other women struggling with similar issues, I didn't know when or how that would happen, or dare to imagine what a complete book would look like. Now that I'm almost through the first draft, I'm feeling unburdened, relieved, excited and happy.

One of the most interesting parts of writing on a topic that is so vast and multi-layered is the unexpectedness of the poems which have spontaneously appeared. I started the chapbook with a goal of 23 poems, which expanded into a new goal of 30, and now has exceeded that number (although I haven't decided if all of the poems in progress will be included in the final submission). I began with a loose structure: some titles that were meant as a guide, to ensure I covered all of the aspects of a three year journey I thought were important to include. As time went on, titles got scrapped, loose ideas that I thought would become separate poems were incorporated into pieces that already existed, and entirely new memories and writings emerged.

The current table of contents is incredibly different from the one I started with. As my work on the manuscript has become more frequent, focused and intense, new ideas and inspirations seem to appear daily. I feel like I could continue to incorporate new memories that surface and want to forge themselves into poems well past the deadline of August 31st. But I have to stop somewhere, and that somewhere will be at some point in the next two weeks. My first complete draft will be circulated this week or next week at the latest for feedback from a lovely group of volunteers who have agreed to read my collection and provide feedback - a process I am looking forward to as the input of my readers can only make this effort better and stronger.

The second major project I have been putting much of my time and effort into has been developing the concept and content of a website, which will be launched in early October. I am excited about my ideas and have been planning, scheming, organizing and even sewing in preparation for the photoshoot. I have enlisted the help of some fearsome and awesome talents for my website project, and can't wait to announce the launch of the site when it is ready to see the light of day. I see some clinking glasses in the near future, in celebration of the milestones of this writing year; not least of all a website that is, in my opinion, a major accomplishment for a girl who has known for quite some time that she needs one, but wasn't eager to embrace the work to make it everything she wanted it to be. Unsurprisingly, the girl in question would much rather write for her life than spend time on the equally important work of supporting it...once again explaining the state of this sadly undernurtured blog...

At the end of June I learned that one of my poems, written ten years ago but recently submitted to a contest, received an honourable mention. The list of winners is on the Pandora's Collective website. My submission was a poem called "Me, Again", and is a memory of the magical time when I used to hang out in my parents' basement alone, choreographing dances to Montavani records in my navy blue gymnastics bodysuit. I am currently working on another poem to submit to the Pandora's Collective annual Summer Dreams contest, with a mid-September deadline. This poem is called "Three Ways of Looking at the Man who Stepped Off the Platform onto the Tracks", and is about the man who was killed a week ago when he calmly stepped in front of a train pulling into the station - the very platform where I stand waiting for my train to take me downtown each weekday morning. While I realize there is no way of understanding what happened or why, my poem is an attempt to embrace the act with compassion and to see the man who died though the lens of information we have - the details of the moment before he stepped in front of the train, the reactions of the people who were there, and the larger collective response to human tragedy, which is often deeply empathetic, but unfortunately sometimes much uglier than the scene of this man's tragic demise.

Passion

Inspiration is something that tends to sneak up on me suddenly. It arrives most often when I am already writing, and tries to get me to steer the car in a completely different direction. There's a bit of a zig zag as I try to go in the direction I was heading, but Inspiration threatens to disappear if I don't pay attention to it NOW. Then a rush of ideas and phrases fill up my brain; the risk, of course, to lose it all if I don't write everything down. I surrender, and am happy - but then am left with the burdensome feeling of having yet another project to nurture, that I can only hope will be finished in this lifetime.

I believe others have written about inspiration, describing it as a bolt of lightning. It is like that: a sudden explosion of electricity in the brain. I've stopped trying to reason with it. Stopped trying to say: But I'm in the middle of something here! I'm supposed to be finishing this one! Come back in five months. No. It's riskier to ignore and lose something that you can probably never re-collect, never phrase in a better way. But what it means for my dining room table, the floor by my bed, my huge catch-all purse...is massive disorder...but also the chance to read something later and think, "Wow. This is worth finishing." Because odds are that bolt from the place where the best art comes from is far superior to anything I could have laboured over...

And so this week, while working on a number of half finished projects, I've allowed myself to be sidelined again. The proposition, though, has its appeal. It means revisiting an interesting relationship with a quirky hook: re-reading letters that are 20 years old and responding to them, now, as the 38 year old version of me. Now that I'm 8 years older than the sender was at the time, I feel I can finally address questions I was too young to be able to answer well the summer and fall after I graduated high school.

The piece I'd like to write is also an exploration of a correspondence that truly swept me off my young feet. I remember receiving letter after letter and being filled with amazement and longing. The words of this man - a musician I'd written to after wanting to know more about the music he was making, 3000 km away and 12 years my senior - were a delicious secret, and a salve for a girl who was unformed, and due to the events of the previous year, a bit broken.

Ultimately this romantic friendship in letters, of course, ended. I believe it is true that you can't know the meaning of a person or event until you can stand back and look at it from a great distance; for this reason, the 20 year mark seems like the right place to reflect and appreciate the lasting virtues of a dialogue that centered on the sensual and the spiritual, the mystery of life and death - and also spent a lot of time bantering about art, film, literature and music. This written conversation in ten parts entertained me for months, but also moved me to greater expectations of myself and what I could do with my potential. It also gave me a surer sense of what I wanted, and should/could expect, from a relationship that would be physically present, and yes, carnal.

Thank you, A, for all of that.

Fire and Stars

The weeks keep flying by. I have been very busy at my day job, and my day and night gig as a parent, but have managed to keep moving forward with writing as well - always in tiny steps, tiny moments, tiny observations. I write for a half hour each way on the train every day, and usually an hour or two at night after my kids go to bed.

This week I submitted a poem I wasn't sure was finished to the Burnaby Writer's Society for their annual contest. I've sent the poem to my writer/reader mail list and have had more feedback than usual on it. Maybe it felt unfinished because I let it go without morphing it into something...expected? typical? familiar? It felt like a risk to set it free before it felt entirely done...but maybe it *is* done and I didn't overwork it because the deadline forced me to let it go. Another benefit of being squeezed by time, all the time.

While recently I've been focusing on paid writing gigs, this week demands on my time have prompted me toward the escapism of poetry writing. I am currently lounging in my pink Start a band shirt and green snowflake jammies, ready to work on the chapbook with a deadline of mid-August. Working on it tonight feels like a break; it means using a different part of the brain that will not be forced into corners. It's much more of a side step kind of dance. Surprising movements and moments. Surrender.

This morning I re-read the ten poems I have ready for the chapbook on the train, after setting it aside for a few weeks. I like them. Some of them are strong. They all stand alone, are very different, but are tied together by the theme. I have hope that in the end, when I have my twenty-to-twenty-three-ish poems ready to submit, they will come together into a package that amounts to more than the sum of their parts. I also hope they fill a niche that hasn't been filled, and never can be. The book is called I Can Make Life - a line swiped from an Ani Difranco song in which this phrase is not at all sung with irony. It asks to be read that way in my collection, though, which is about my personal struggle with a variety of reproductive crises over the course of several years.

This week I will be sending my mail list readers a new poem called Other Worlds, which was inspired by (and is basically a found poem lifted from) a book of that name by Paul Davies. The subject of the book is quantum theory. The subject of my poem is a string of biochemical pregnancies. I've always thought of the little ones, so near, so far, as "Star Babies", and was pleased with and surprised by how some of the phrases from Davies' book hit me in the gut...metaphysical, with a sense of longing and care one may not normally associate with scientific books. However, both the subject of my poem and this book deal with searching, striving for understanding, for reality - what is the real world? Certainly Mr. Davies didn't anticipate a woman many years later finding a poem in his words. Unless, of course, he found his way through space-time to June 2011.


If you'd like to read the poem, and any others that come along, please send me a message with your email address and I'll happily add you to the list.

If you're already with me, and you'd like to be on an informal committee to review my chapbook before the submission deadline in August, I'd be honoured to hear from you as well. I'm looking for three to five readers who would like to comment on the book overall, and provide more feedback on a handful of poems.

xoxo

New Exposure

I started writing for Demand Media Studios last month, which has been beneficial for me in several ways. I've learned how to improve my article writing, for one thing - by paring down, being more succinct and to the point. I've also lined my pockets a little bit. Being rewarded for doing something you love is truly one of the most satisfying things in life (especially when you've lived much of your life thinking this kind of reward for your efforts is impossible).

My articles have been fun to write, and have mainly been on subjects like fashion, home decorating, sewing and crafting.

Here are links to the first three articles I have written for eHow.com, which were recently published:
Ideas to Make 1950s Dresses
How to Customize Your Own Bedsheets
How to Make Your Own Side Skirts

In addition to article writing, I have been spending a lot of writing time on a chapbook I hope to have finished by August, and on submissions to contests and such.

As I always say: No rest for the wicked.

Fumbling

A long, great silence after my last post in March.

I try not to be too hard on myself for letting myself get so behind. There was my return to work the day before my last post, when I was optimistic my blog would be unaffected by this enormous change in my work and family life. Several weeks post-return-to-work, my son was sick - sick enough to require surgery at Children's Hospital. Over two miserable weekends, he was all I could focus on or think about.

In the meantime, while I haven't been regularly updating my blog, I have been writing. Writing constantly, with sharp focus and ambitious variety. Writing for hours without realizing how much time has passed. Writing up until bedtime and then getting up in the morning and writing on the train. Writing until I can't keep my eyes open. I love it. This, I finally know, is what I'm here for. I prefer this feeling of being aligned with a purpose, if frequently squeezed for time, to that wandering, aimless feeling of my 20s, where I couldn't stand up or commit to it. I wrote, but I also did anything but write (oh, mis-spent youth!). In the past few months I may have seemed silent, but have also been loud - in my writing, in my work, in my process...I am, in truth, sometimes too busy writing paid assignments, sketching out a new idea, or revising old words to submit somewhere, to consistently write about all the writing I'm doing.


While there is much more I could report on, I will say that my proudest achievement this year has been selling my story "For Tristan: A Meditation on Grief, Healing and Loss" to Wombat Book's upcoming anthology. I have now been through a few rounds of gentle edits, which has both made the story better and allowed me my first experience of working with an editor. I was lucky to have an amazing one, which made the process so much easier; naturally, both faith and trust are needed to hand over a work that is so personal to someone else, but Ms. Irma Gold made it easy. I am pleased to have learned recently that the anthology, The Sound of Silence: Journeys through Miscarriage, will be available October 1st at fine Australian bookstores, and launched on October 15th to coincide with International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. Once my website is up and running, I'll have copies available.

On another note, since my last blog post I have created a writer/reader mail list for anyone interested in my writing. This week I sent a poem called "Me, Again" about a moment from my childhood. The poem was also submitted to Vancouver's Pandora's Collective "Kisses and Popsicles" Spring Poetry Contest (winners announced June 15).

If you'd like to join the mail list, I'd love to hear from you.

A New Chapter

This past week I returned to my office day job and survived. Somehow my family has also seemed to adjust with me. My fears of not being able to make it to the train on time because of radical measures at home (i.e. civil disobedience protests by my kids) were amped up higher than necessary. We all made it to the train and daycare and work on time. (This still seems a minor miracle to me). Hopefully long term the royal subjects don’t decide to revolt. It is hard to explain what a kitchen or bathroom riot at the hands of small children looks like if you’ve never seen one, and always seems a bad excuse for lateness in the professional world.

The fate of my writing life feels tenuous at the moment. Ideally I will acquire some kind of simple machinery (i.e. a small but functional mini laptop) for the hour I spend on the train every day soon to keep up the momentum. There is so much pleasure and satisfaction in writing for me at this time of life, and I am motivated to keep working against my own tiredness. I already feel my writing life and progress has been sadly delayed by the events of the past few years, and I want to keep moving forward as quickly as I can.

My method for staying on track, which I set up earlier in the year, has been to keep a schedule of submission and contest deadlines for poetry, creative non-fiction and postcard fiction. (I wish I’d done this much earlier, at a less busy stage of life). There are three deadlines coming up before May 1^st that I hope to meet. My latest strategy in lieu of my return to work has been to write often, no matter what, and to try to write well without thinking too hard about every word. That is to say, there will be careful editing later, but not so much agonizing. I just don’t have time for it.

I was sick last week (the last of the family to catch the dreaded plague that held everyone back for day upon sad, sick day) and that has already put me behind with a few projects. I am late with an interview I have been trying to set up with the amazing Deanna Roy of Casey Shay Press. Deanna is an accomplished writer and photographer who also happens to have created one of the most useful and complete websites about pregnancy loss out there. My favourite creation of Deanna’s, though, is a beautiful and thoughtfully created memorial book for families who have lost a child. I can’t wait to learn more about her work, her book and her publishing company.

Last week I was able to complete a three part interview with an equally amazing woman, Kristi Sagrillo, who designs memorial jewelry which she sells in her etsy shop. This interview will be published on April 1^st, and entered in another contest that begins on that very date on hubpages.

Speaking of contests, the big news since my last post has been my winning the writing contest I was nominated for last week. While my nomination may have been the result of my writing, my win represents the support of many friends who voted for my article Day Trips from Vancouver, Canada every day until the contest closed. Thank you very much to all of you for your support! I have already seen a rise in traffic to my online articles and as a result of the increased traffic have gained some new followers and fan mail as well.

Late Breaking News: I learned about an hour ago that my submission to the Mostly for Mothers miscarriage anthology was accepted! My piece, entitled For Tristan: A Meditation on Loss, Grief and Healing will be published in their upcoming book entitled The Sound of Silence: Journeys Through Miscarriage. Now there are edits to discuss and approve and a contract to sign. The publisher's plan is to release a print and e-book in the coming year...

Opportunities

Yesterday I learned that one of my articles written for hubpages.com was nominated to compete against articles by five other writers for a weekly contest. Winners will be determined by vote, and will have their article included in a weekly newsletter with a readership of 60,000. The result would be many more readers seeing the body of work I've created in the last seven weeks. Some avid hub readers might become followers - an automatic audience for articles I've written and have yet to write - and I may see an increase in earning some additional money for my work.

If you'd like to vote (and I hope you will - you can vote once a day!) please click here and scroll down the page until you see the "Travel and Places" category. My article is called "Day Trips from Vancouver, Canada". You will see the article listed by title among the other five nominees. You can vote for the article a little further below. And, if you like, you can do the same each day until the contest closes on Wednesday, March 23.

What is funny about this article being nominated is that it's one of the first ones I've written. I don't think it's the best one I've written - nor is it about a topic I'm the most passionate about or put my heart and soul into writing. When I wrote it, I was trying to get a feel for writing articles; I was doing for myself what I saw other successful writers doing. But as it turns out, this humble little article about the place I'm from may be a gateway piece of writing to (very) modest fame and fortune. Accolades are accolades, and I truly do appreciate the honour.

Another reminder to keep writing, keep writing, keep writing...

PS If you have been following my hubs and would like to sign up at hubpages.com for the love or the money, click here.

Compelled and Compressed

Since I last posted an entry here, I have been studiously working on articles for hubpages. While I am a bit behind if I am to meet my goal of 30 hubs in 60 days, I am in that zone of high competition with myself right now; I'm going to try to do it until the clock runs out.

At the same time, I can't ignore that I am about to transition through some big life changes: returning to work, resulting in shorter blocks of family and free time, new chaos with new routines, and a familiar kind of "worklife" exhaustion I've replaced with other forms of exhaustion for the past year. I don't want to slow down, and am hell bent on adjusting quickly. I cannot stand the feeling of being disappointed in myself for not meeting my own goals. At the same time, I am all too aware that I am human (and will forgive myself for slipping - but only if necessary)...

I am very proud of my most recently published articles: a three part interview with the brilliant Devan McGuinness of Unspoken Grief (a website dedicated to offering understanding and support for those experiencing perinatal grief), and an article that I hadn't planned to write, but evolved naturally out of the essay I wrote for Mostly for Mothers as well as the research and writing I've been doing on the subject of pregnancy loss.

My article entitled Miscarriage Art: Self Portraits is not so much an article as it is an artist's statement about a project that wasn't necessarily intended to be made public. Days after I lost my much wanted baby, I was at home recovering physically and emotionally. I decided to record my experience through photographs of my face and body. As I put the photographs in an order that made sense to me several days ago (nearly two years after they were taken), I realized how much I missed using the visual part of my brain that gathers, sorts, organizes and tries to make something visually interesting or meaningful.

While my work on the above mentioned art project is similar to my researching and writing process, I was reminded about how satisfying it is to make visual art in a different way than it is to write. Visual art is more immediate to its audience, and for this reason can be more powerful. On another note, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I could use hubpages to make art out of something I didn't consider "art" beyond an artistic exercise for my own healing process. Publishing the hub also allowed me to see possibilities for reviving other art projects that otherwise lay in stacks in my basement, or hang on my walls unseen by anyone but my family. There are many opportunities for exposure to an unlimited, international audience through hubpages at a much lower cost financially (and time-wise) than finding new locations to hang my art in a gallery...or even to set about creating my own website.

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This week I've been thinking about my current tendency to write in a cluster around one subject, and how that can result in oversaturation for those who read this blog, my facebook status updates and twitter feeds. Regardless, I feel compelled to keep writing about pregnancy loss. My goal is to create a presence on the web - to offer some solace, personal understanding and sharing by tackling aspects of the experience from angles or perspectives that are not frequently written about. I hesitate to present myself as any kind of expert, but I am learning as I read, learning as I write, and sharing as I learn. Without a doubt there is an audience for non-medical information about miscarriage (I would have devoured any information on the subject that didn't once more remind me of the all too familiar signs of miscarriage). My search was for information on healing, words and ideas that revealed what I could expect to feel or do to heal emotionally and spiritually.

This need to keep thinking, keep learning and keep writing is a compulsion I've already yielded to. I feel I have to keep going, if only to get to the other side. I think the other side is an unforseeable time when I no longer feel motivated to keep adding content to the information already available on this topic. I don't know when that will be - maybe after my goal of 30 articles is reached, but quite possibly not. Maybe this will prove to be my thing, my contribution, my life's work, or a large part of it. I'm open to whatever path my writing takes, so long as I stay committed to my own passion.

My next project is an interview with another amazing woman - the owner of an etsy store specializing in handmade and customized miscarriage, stillbirth and infant loss jewelry. I also have one more interview lined up after this one, with the creator of several excellent websites about pregnancy loss. Most notably, she has created a beautiful memorial book, In the Company of Angels, available through what appears to be her very own publishing company. I am deeply touched by the unique contributions of each of these women I have met through the internet, and am honoured that I can in some small way shine a light on their greatness.

As much of my efforts this past week have been focused on arranging interviews, generating questions and formatting material into publishable articles, I have taken a bit of a break from thinking too hard about what comes next. I return to my office life late next week, and then my next big deadline follows: the Event creative non-fiction contest. Last post I was debating which of three ideas would win the race for the Event submission, and a firm criteria now has made itself known. In order to meet the deadline I have to continue my momentum, to write about what is current in my mind and closest to my heart right now. This essay will not be about international development (even though I am excited to get to Cambodia, particularly as I've received some positive feedback and support for the idea), nor will it be autobiographical, about the zany life of a bisexual mom of two. I will follow my original idea, using the material I drafted but couldn't use when I wrote my piece for Mostly for Mothers. There are elements of that time that take on almost a magical realist quality in some of what I've already written, and I'd like to explore that.

With time constraints, that mildly uncomfortable feeling of compression, I will write where the fire is until, or unless, it burns itself out.

Teeth

I remain a woman of my word. I have spent all my writing time since submitting my essay last week working on an article entitled Miscarriage Resources on the Web. I was happy to spend every second on it, and am excited to have put it out there. I hoped to produce one or two additional articles, but this one ended up being more time consuming than I expected. I didn't want to simply list a number of links. I wanted to do each website I referred to justice by describing it well; my goal is to drive traffic to the sites other women have worked so hard on as a labour of love. The goal of everyone doing this work is to help other women, and I want to do that as well as I can.

The research I did for this article has given me some ideas for future hubpages. Particularly, there are several women I would love to interview for upcoming articles. After writing this blog, I plan to contact at least three ladies whose stories, work and websites are particularly impressive and inspiring. I believe articles honouring these women will more or less write themselves.

In terms of process, I found this week that my mind turned to future essays that are asking to be written. They started making themselves known as I did boring activities, like wash dishes. While I was originally planning to submit another miscarriage-related essay to the Event creative non-fiction contest, a completely different essay from my days in international development work began to nudge me.

I used to work in an office with the mandate of administering international development projects. I travelled to three Southeast Asian countries for work on one of these projects, funded by the Canadian government, in 2005. The essay that wants to get written the most this week has let me know over a particularly demanding dirty plate that it should take the form of collage-like impressions, through the image of one symbolic body part.

I had been thinking for a long time - for the last several years following my trip to Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos - about a recurring image of the people and places in Cambodia. I even attempted to write a (bad) poem about that image that I haven't yet rescued, years after my return. But now this image is turning around in my mind again with new possibility, asking for a chance to appear in essay form. It is interesting the way the mind works, and leads you, gently and patiently, in different directions when you are an artist in the midst of a gathering period.

Now there are three essays competing for my attention, asking to be submitted to contests: the miscarriage essay, the international development essay and an essay about life on the ground as a bisexual mom of two young kids in a strange Canadian suburb. I'm not sure yet which one will win the race. They all, I hope, will make it to the finish line eventually. Likely, it will come down to pre-writing all three, and seeing which one wants to cross over first. Discovering, through sitting down at the blank page (or screen), which one has the most fire.

Speaking of fire, I received an email from the Burnaby Writer's Society last week with word on their topic for this year's writing contest. Fire is going to be challenging. It has been used so often, I believe all my effort will go to trying to write away from cliché, as much as writing towards something great. I will submit an entry regardless by the deadline of May 31. My options are a short poem, prose poem  or story, with a one page maximum length.

Again, this week, I feel satisfied that my writing life is moving at the swiftest possible pace. Everything, I believe, is leading to something...

A Mission Accomplished, A Fait Accompli

On Friday I accomplished an important first in my writing life: I submitted the personal essay I've been working on to a publishing company. It was a great relief to send it along. While the body of the piece came fairly quickly, I struggled to the last minute with the title and the ending. Luckily I was able to call upon my writing group (which hasn't been active in a few years!) for helpful feedback. Thanks to these three ladies, my piece became what it was meant to be. In its final form the essay is much stronger thanks to Jeans, Pam and Nadine. Thank you, Skylarks!

I imagine it will be several months before I hear back from the publisher on whether they will accept my essay, entitled For Tristan: A Meditation on Grief, Loss and Healing. Without wanting to get too ahead of myself, I can't help but think of its fate if it's accepted. If it is, I will find myself enjoying another first: negotiating a contract for the terms of sale. I am hopeful but also know if this anthology doesn't pick it up, I will find another home for it somewhere.

I now plan to return to some other writing projects that have been set aside. I will return to writing articles for hubpages. I also would like to start another essay for an anthology the publisher I've just submitted to has put a call out for. The subject of their anthology is birth stories, and I do believe I have a great one. Finally, I want to start honing the essay that is due mid-April for the Event creative non-fiction contest.

One thing I'm learning as I write daily is that the form my writing takes doesn't seem to matter. As long as I continue to be productive, it comes much easier than if I hadn't been writing at all. I'm enjoying the variety of working on a little of this, a little of that, and managing to keep to a self-imposed schedule. I've never been able to work so consistently before, and am proud of my progress since starting this blog. To others, I might actually appear to be a "real" writer. I am starting to feel like one myself.

By my next blog post I hope to have five new articles published on hubpages.com. If I don't start producing them in quick succession, I won't make my goal of 30 hubs in 60 days. Now off to research and write!

The Vein of Gold

My experiment to act like a writer (even when I don't particularly feel like one) has kept me busy again this week. As I promised myself (see last post), I've been spending my writing time working on two essays simultaneously. I only stopped working on the essays for a half hour to post a newly revised poem I started months ago. I felt compelled to do this when I realized I was getting traffic to my poetry blog, but nothing new had gone up in a while.

The thing with putting anything out there is that eventually you're bound to feel like whatever you've shared is no longer you, or as good as you could do if you started over right now. I try to get past this self-consciousness by putting new stuff out there that may or may not be better...but at least is new enough for me to feel excited about versus that dreadful feeling that I've posted something that has now expired in my psyche, or is just subpar. I have many unfinished poems sitting on my hard drive, and was lucky that the one I chose to work on and finally called finished allowed me to let it go so (relatively) quickly.

The two simultaneous essays have been interesting and satisfying to work on. While my focus is on the piece that will go to the Australian publisher next Friday, there are bits and pieces arriving as I continue to write that are more suitable for Event. Only by writing have I been able to recognize which paragraphs belong in which essay. My subconscious seemed to know what it was doing, but it took the rest of me a bit longer to realize that the first essay is narrative and the second more impressionistic. It's been an interesting process to write this way, with the security of knowing that little of my effort is being wasted, and that most everything belongs somewhere. I have always enjoyed the process of collage, and there is something fun about cutting and pasting sentences and paragraphs, moving them around in each piece, and back and forth between the two files.

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Always happy when an allegory rises to the surface, I have been thinking about my experience of writing as a conversation that takes place between the two halves of my brain - or better still, a partnered card game. One player puts down a leading card hoping her partner will put down an even better card to take the trick. Both partners, or halves, are doing their best with what they have to win the game. But each player can only play the cards in her hand. Sometimes my left brain is insisting it's spades but my right brain only has high hearts. Eventually, hopefully by the last round (or looming deadline), the team have made enough tricks to win the game. If not, and morale is high enough to keep trying, they start a new game until they get the results they want.

As I've been writing this week, I've always had an idea about what I want the end results to look like. I print out a draft, re-work it in pen and tell myself, OK, this time we're going to do it this way to get where we want to go. Right brain appreciates what left brain is doing but has the trump card - the special something that makes this particular piece unique, if only left brain could sit back and let her play. When I go back to the computer, my left brain can't help but take a look at what's already there and starts to focus on the minutiae, correcting typos that bug her and re-writing sentences the right brain has already thrown out or moved around. I get through the next draft and think, OK, THIS time the right brain takes all the tricks. In all this back and forth, I do feel like I am moving forward and getting closer with each re-write. I stand back and tolerate what is happening, knowing that it is something I can manage but probably not put a halt to entirely. So long as there are words to work with, everyone is happy and all is well.

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Another development this week has been an offer from a friend to consider working with her on an artistic collaboration. She is an illustrator and needs help with some wordsmithing. It would be fun to work together again, as we've worked together on projects before, and she is very talented, wise and a lot of fun. This opportunity could turn out to yield a new stream of income for me as well. Julia Cameron (author of The Artist's Way) would no doubt interpret this opportunity as evidence to support her theory that the universe is supportive of artists, and if you spend the time just doing your stuff, a thousand unseen helping hands will arrive to help you.

Speaking of Julia Cameron, I have been thinking about her book, The Vein of Gold this week. While I was never able to complete the book, I did pick up the gist of it when I first bought it many years ago. For some reason, now is the time for me to finally come to realize and accept my own vein of gold. The vein of gold refers to an artist's area of particular interest or resonance that yields the greatest artistic results. She uses the example of an actor who has played many different types of characters from the comedic to the dramatic; if his vein of gold is the dramatic, while he can be amusing to watch in a comedy film, he will always feel more at home in the serious role he has a natural talent for playing.

I think while I have tried many different kinds of writing, that my true vein of gold is in the genres of personal memoir and creative non-fiction. While I love poetry, and will probably always find it is the best vehicle for expressing a certain type of thought or feeling, I've decided to spend more of my energy now in producing personal essays. There are many projects that are asking me to be written as essays (and a few books of poems, too, that I think will arrive later). Each idea or piece captured my imagination and heart the moment they were conceived, and have been waiting patiently - some for years - to be written. It feels like this backlog of projects exist, complete, in an imaginary slush pile on the desk of an editor, and are starting to feel quite annoyed that I haven't done my part to pull them down onto the paper they want so badly to live on.