I'm back

Sorry I have been absent from my blog for so long. There really are no good excuses, but here are some: I joined the evil time sink that is facebook. I obsessively had to watch a lot of the FIFA World Cup Soccer matches (mostly late at night, from web archives). I have expanded my veggie garden this year and it has taken quite a lot of time to look after it, and now I am picking, freezing, and canning...). And I have been hiking, fly fishing, biking, canoeing, seeing friends, and seeing family.

But truly, the one really big reason that I have not been writing on my blog much is that work has been sucking my bone marrow out and leaving me with little energy or inclination to write, or even to think. The kind of work that I do is demanding and time consuming in every season. Most years, things slow down a little in the summer, but not this year. It has been an endless year. It's been a good year, but intense, with no breaks.

Work can wear a person down. Lately, I have been too tired at night to even want to read novels. That is rare for me; I am always reading something (except when I am in the flow of a big writing project myself. Then sometimes I purposely avoid reading other writers' novels so that my own writing is not unduly influenced by their work.). I have been too tired at night to even want to watch movies -- usually the activity I turn to when I am tired.

I have been trying for years to get the work-life balance thing figured out. But always the solution seems to be either to work less (something that I have not been able to do -- call me "type A"), or to try to cram more into my day. It seems that I have so much that I want to do, and no time to fit it all in.

My out-of-work time has very little down time; I am not at all good at being lazy. Here is an example of a day off for me: Sleep in until 9:30. Grab some coffee. Feed the cats. Work in the garden for 2 hours. Come in and eat. Sort the laundry and put in the first of five loads. Make a list of all the tasks I and other family members need to accomplish today (before leaving on a holiday tomorrow). Do some emails and phone calls relating to an important work issue that cannot wait until I am back from my holiday, and send a couple of emails related to planning a family event in August (2 1/2 hr). Have shower. Go down town and do some errands. Cook a big supper. Sit down for 30 minutes and have tea with partner. Watch son try out new long board. Work in garden for another hour until the mosquitoes get too voracious. Clean and package the veggies I have picked. Pit cherries. Make sour cherry jam. Freeze cherries. Sit down at computer and check facebook. Write on my blog. Oops, it's after midnight -- time for bed. This was my day today.

Now we are heading off on a two-week camping trip. Most of the time, I will be in places where I will not have internet or cell phone access. I will have some down time. I'm running away from the frenzy that is my life. I hope that when I come back, I will be ready to think and write again.

Gardener as Leader

Okay, I admit it. 'Tis the season to be obsessed with gardening. I'm out there every second that can spare, digging, planting, weeding, and watering. And then when it's dark, I come indoors to my computer, and instead of working on revising my novel, I connect to gardening websites and read avidly about the mysteries of growing potatoes, or how to mulch properly. Most recently, I have discovered a gardening social network called Folia that allows one to keep a gardening journal online and much, much more.

Lately, I was involved in some leadership workshops. In keeping with my current obsession, I began reflecting on what you can tell about a person's leadership style from the kind of gardener he or she is. Here are a few examples:

• plants vegetables, not flowers -- pragmatic leader
  
• plants intensively -- concerned with productivity, and careful husbanding of resources
• seeds too thickly -- lacks confidence; failure averse
• turns all the garden into lawn -- not a nurturing type
• digs and turns over the soil by hand; handpicks weed roots and bugs -- engaged in the day-to-day functioning of the organization; possibly a micro-manager
  
• Uses a motorized tiller -- efficient; seeks power
• uses organic gardening methods -- concerned about healthy relationships and team building
• uses fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides -- efficient, possibly ruthless, needs to be in control; any means to an end
• Doesn't keep up with the weeding -- dislikes the dirty work; disorganized
• Doesn't keep up with the watering -- lacks focus and disorganized; possibly incompetent
• Plantings are not suited to climatic zone or recommended planting dates -- lacks appropriate knowledge; doesn't do background research; poor planner
• Plants the same thing every year according to schedule -- solid and dependable, but lacks creativity and vision

And so on. Do you have any to add here?

Little Weed Patch

Here's dirt under the finger nails; planting is the best part of all! You can catch a little glimpse of the composting area and the greenhouse in behind.

The Imperfect Garden

I recently joined a sustainable living meet-up group. The more popular discussion topics on the group's website all have to do with gardening. I have noticed an interesting thing about the way people talk about their gardens and gardening practices in a public forum like this. . . nervously, defensively, sometimes didactically, and just about always with heavy ego involvement.

Hmm, not unlike writers talking about their writing.

On the above-mentioned site, when I first joined, I was trying to craft a self introduction. I began to write, "I am not a very experienced gardener. . ." Wait a minute, should that be "very amateur"? Or did I really mean "not very good"?

Certainly "not very experienced" is not an accurate description. For I have been dabbling in gardens for more than 40 years, from the time that I first planted my own little flower bed in a corner of my parents' garden (and this is not counting the earlier years of my childhood, standing out in the garden every summer helping my Mom pick raspberries or peas, or crawling along the rows of vegetables learning how to weed). From my initial experiences with marigolds and bachelor buttons, I went on to develop a passion for growing my own vegetables, and, except for a few years in university residences or apartment buildings, I have planted some version of a vegetable garden in every place that I have lived since my early twenties.

Over all of those years, I have managed to grow enough veggies, fruits and berries to put home grown garden salads and other vegetables on the table every summer. I have have made many pies, as well as jars of apple sauce, pickles, salsa, jams, and jellies.

So why is the first self descriptor that comes to mind "not very experienced"? And why do I instantly want to amend it to "not very good"?

Well, there is a lot to learn about gardening. I would have to know much more than I currently do to think of myself as an expert. With my full time work schedule, many activities, and summer travel, I hardly have time to look after my little garden, much less to develop significant expertise.

Mainly though, I think it's because my little weed patch looks quite. . . well, weedy, compared to the beautiful photos of other people's gardens that I see in magazines and gardening books. Rather than long rows of fat, healthy vegetables, in my garden there are dandelions, crabgrass, and the evil invasive comfrey plant trying to take over and crowd out the poor little vegetable seedlings. The raspberries are trying to spread into the herb bed. There are wire worms, slugs, carrot flies, and cabbage worms doing their dirty deeds.

It is an imperfect little garden. But I sure do like it.

Face Art

Too cool! This image is from Robot Nine.

Reversals, Narratives, and Red Queens

I found this image, Walking on a Dream, at a bilingual poetry website, Poesia torta|Crooked poetry. This blog by Kenia Crissantos from Brazil features poetry (in both English and Portugese) and some great photos. Check it out!

I have been thinking about representation, and especially reflections, doubles, and reversals, since watching the recently released 3D film Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton. The film combines elements from both of Lewis Carroll's original Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass, but adds a narrative line not in the books.

As a child, I read and re-read those two books. In Looking Glass, I found the idea of reversals very interesting; images were reversed, time ran backwards, and social actions often were opposite to convention. Also in that book, Carroll took objects with inherent mathematical patterns, like playing cards and chess pieces, and animated them. It has been a very long time since I last read the book. I should go and dig it out of my bookshelf and read it again.

Burton has produced an interesting mashup that reinterprets and extends the two Carroll books. Many of the central events and characters from the books are present in Burton's film, and faithful to the spirit of the original: the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the caterpillar smoking a hookah, the Mad Hatter's tea party.

But there are significant differences as well. His Alice is a young woman returning to Wonderland thirteen years after her first visit (which is presented briefly in a flashback). As well, Burton's Mad Hatter and caterpillar are much more sympathetic characters than Carroll's, and Burton's White Queen is a different creature altogether than Carroll's. But perhaps the most significant departure is the addition of a narrative line that brings the bizarre tale into conformity with typical North American narrative structure. In Burton's version, Alice becomes the (reluctant) hero who slays the dragon... er... Jaberwocky in a climactic battle, thus rescuing the enslaved populace from the evil Red Queen, and everyone lives happily ever after. It's familiar, and it works.

Burton's Red Queen, played by Helena Bonham-Carter, is fabulous. Many other parts as well are exactly perfect. I loved the movie, especially the 3D version. But maybe it ended just a little too neatly. And there is much more room to have explored the idea of reversals.

Free the Writer's Mind

I was reading one of my favourite blogs, The Longstockings, and came across this piece of writing advice from Lisa Greenwald: "think, think, think about your book!" Her point is that the work of writing doesn't occur just during the time that a writer is sitting at the keyboard or in front of a blank page. Rather, much of the work of writing takes place in the writer's mind during the in-between times -- commuting, walking, showering, gardening.

Perhaps this bit of wisdom about writing tends to be placed in the background in many books on writing just because of the truism that until the words are on the page, the story hasn't been written. Many a wonderful idea for a story never makes it to the page. For many writers, the anxiety about putting words down prevents them from even starting. So there is a lot of advice focused on coaching writers to sit down and write -- to just get the words down, and defer any editing and much thinking until a second revision stage.

But, in fact, the daydreaming and thinking time periods are also essential. The story doesn't spring to life only at the keyboard. The story is churning away, under the surface, whenever we let our minds have the freedom to do so. For me, it is so important to have times in my day that are not filled with other fully engaging cognitive tasks. When I use up my thinking on work tasks, or reading, or social interaction, or any activity that is filled with words, my mind does not have the unstructured space it needs to drift to the story at hand. If I let it have the time, my unfettered mind does a lot of the writing for me, in between each session at the keyboard.