notes from a Friday
Today I am hardly doing anything right.
I left the library a few minutes later than I wanted to, the drive home is at least 15 minutes, plus I stopped to get gas (that was a good idea). I walked Rose when I got home. I took us further than usual, all the way to the Seagram buildings because I had a hankering to walk through the swooping park with the grassy hillocks. It is very windy and quite sunny and the wind felt terrific on my face and in my hair. I changed into exercise clothes so I’m ready for my weights class at 5:30. I threw in a load of laundry as soon as we got home, and I toasted a bagel and then spilled pepper everywhere when I tried to grind pepper on a sliced tomato, so I had to pull out the vacuum and clean that up (or it felt like I had to).
By then it was well after 2PM,
I’ve been pretty faithful about starting the writing at 2:30, even when I’ve taken a little nap, like yesterday (so tired, up almost an hour earlier than usual, and that just did me in, but I came directly home, and napped immediately, waking at 2:30). Anyway, it is now 2:48 and I am not writing fiction. I might still need a nap, I’m not sure. I wanted to hang the laundry in the breeze because it will dry quickly, but will I have time?
I had my first class into the library this afternoon. It was nice to be reminded of why I do this job. There’s nothing quite like it. It’s a little kindergarten class, and they definitely have some impulsive talkers in the group, but on the whole, it was a really great story time and one of the children returned a book she’d lost during the last school year, and she brought me a card she’d made, with hearts and butterflies and two stick figure people—that’s me and that’s you, she said. I hung it on the wall over my book repair area.
I’m not sure how I feel about the job generally this year. I don’t feel as confident. I feel like I lost my sense of competence over the summer, like it’s weirdly and thoroughly disappeared, and I’ve been avoiding people, especially in groups. I just want to do my tasks at the library and hide away to write fiction and go to the gym and make supper for my family. Nothing extra.
I have loved the fiction writing I’ve been doing, it’s surprised me and delighted me, even when I didn’t think I was in the mood to write, I’ve just kept at it and continued, and the words seem to arrive. Yesterday I let my mind wander as I drifted off to sleep (for my 14-minute nap) and the images that arrived became the starting place for a new scene.
Today, I’m distracted and very very tired. I hate this predictive text — in very faint letters, if I’m not typing at max speed or if the word is long, some AI program embedded in this app will add in the letters that it believes should finish my word or thought. And mostly it’s wrong! Even when it’s right, I perversely (personally, it just wrote!!!) want to write something different, original. I need to turn this feature off. It is not serving me or my imagination. All this effort—delightful effort—to become a confident skilled writer and there’s something offensive about being “predicted”. Predicable.
Don’t become predictable, a mentor told me, when I was 18 or so. I heard it as a terrible warning, a rebuke—You are in danger of becoming boring, Carrie. You will lose your edge, your creativity. But I’m not sure that’s still applicable. Was I writing to prove myself interesting? Probably, when I was 18, that was true to some degree; now my youngest child is nearly 18, and proving myself interesting seems the least of my concerns. I wonder how many writers (and other artists) do their work for therapeutic reasons they may not acknowledge or recognize? I think that is most likely why I took to writing, and why I continue to write. I feel better when I write, much of the time. I also feel better sitting down to write something like this, nothing special, just pouring out what’s on my mind, a mental tidying, maybe.
And I don’t want AI attempting to do the tidying for me. Didn’t ask for it, gotta figure out how to opt out. Predictive text spells a life of tedium, where every thought is finished for me. No thank you.
I wonder why I started this by writing “Today I am hardly doing anything right”?
I can see, having written this down, that’s not accurate. Today, I did not meet every single one of the goals that I set for myself. That is accurate. I’m so tired, my eyes are closing. I will have to nap. I will nap too long, and be fuzzy-headed and unable to write very much upon waking, and I won’t like what I wrote yesterday, even though it thrilled me in the moment, and I’ll remind myself that first drafts are ugly and unwieldy, and rolling with the ideas that come is important to the process. I’ll go to the gym and lift heavy weights and my endorphins will take over and I’ll feel good again, and I’ll go out for dinner with my youngest child, just the two of us, and we’ll end up talking about big subjects and watching tennis and baseball on the big screens, and I’ll know that today, I showed up, again and again, even when it felt hard, or I felt uncertain, or anxious, or like I was hardly doing anything right.
Today I am showing up, consistently (which is sort of like being predictable, isn’t it?).
xo, Carrie
PS I turned off the predictive text. It was the doing of my web browser, and I had to figure out how to turn off “inline predictive text.” Now I can write without feeling like my screen is shouting answers at me. (And telling me that my gut instinct is wrong? That’s how I keep interpreting it … and I definitely don’t need any reinforcement of that self-defeating little voice in my head.)
Summer, where to begin?
Back yard, new “room,” eldest used this a lot to hang out with friends. Eldest is moving to Montreal in less than a week to start an MA at Concordia (in English Lit!).
We made the annual trip to the farm, a bit later than usual, because a) I got sick as soon as school ended and b) the youngest had a soccer tournament. So this marks mid-July. No homework was burned, but we had a lot of fun playing Dutch Blitz around the kitchen table. We filled the bedrooms and a tent. It was ridiculously hot.
Our first week at the cottage. I’d gotten a reasonable amount of writing / editing done during the week between farm and cottage, so I didn’t put pressure on myself to do a lot of “work.”
We hosted guests — family — and we squeezed a lot of people into what amounts to 3 bedrooms and a bunkie. Still very hot. Ideal for kayaking and swimming. I got some good thinking done while out on the lake. Returned home inspired and with a map for finishing the final third of Begin.
Immediately upon returning home from the cottage, I did a mountain of laundry and didn’t unpack my bag. Took off solo to stay at a friend’s cottage for a few nights. She made me dinner, and I spent an entire day (and evening) writing. Made enormous progress. Ate really good vegan meals. Soaked in Lake Huron. Forgot to take photos. I woke early on the final morning and sat in bed reading Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres till it was time to sort myself and head home. Lots of reading this summer. Reading upon waking is such a summer luxury … could be a Saturday luxury too, now that I think of it. What translates from summer to fall?
This will seem like a minor accomplishment, but I am very proud of the fact that I cleaned the front porch. It was a boiling hot day and I scrubbed green mold till it was (mostly) gone. In the proud-of-it category, I also helped my mom with her move home after months at a rehab hospital, and took my dad to a bunch of medical appointments, and got my youngest up to camp for a counsellor-in-training program, and went to the dentist. I did not get a new job (despite some efforts in that direction; as I approach a return to the library this Monday, I’m feeling like all has turned out as it should).
Got my youngest back to camp for a week of practicum. Saw a lot of rural Ontario from inside an air-conditioned vehicle this summer.
My second youngest celebrated a big birthday, several times over. There was the ice cream sandwich celebration. There was also the family dinner out celebration and the made-her-own-birthday cake celebration, and probably a few more I’ve forgotten. She will be living at home this fall, going into her third year of university. We’ll have a small cohort of the two youngest kids and the middle-aged dog, and hopefully a lot of their friends will drop in and hang out and stay for supper (my favourite favourite thing about being a parent is feeding a bunch of young people a spontaneous meal; literally nothing can make me happier).
Eldest moved a bunch of stuff to Montreal with his girlfriend. Luckily she has a vehicle. He will be taking his bike to Montreal, but won’t have a car of his own.
Second eldest will have a vehicle – our little “chub-chub.” They’ve just moved (in the opposite direction and across a national border) to start a PhD in Medieval Studies at Notre Dame. South Bend, Indiana does not have the same public transit infrastructure as Montreal.
Somehow, despite birthday dinners and moving and appointments, I got myself back to the farm with my friend Tasneem for a few days to finish the novel revision. Mission accomplished, and in good company. We even went to Lake Huron for an evening swim. It was very hot.
Last week before work, back at the cottage with a slightly different configuration. A bit of hosting, multiple hot dog meals, my dad tagged along for the whole week. In my favourite chair in the back bedroom, I finished-finished Begin, going through every word with a fine-toothed comb, and when that was done, I sent it to my editor. Good job, sailor Carrie.
Oh summer. I’ve soaked in the lake every day that I possibly can. I’ve journaled, and done art therapy, and eaten some fantastic peaches and tomato sandwiches. I’ve done yoga on the dock, spin classes, weight classes, pilates, and walked with friends. I haven’t water coloured as much as I’d hoped, but perhaps that will start again this fall, when I have a small and captive but appreciative audience of kindergarteners, and a bulletin board to decorate.
My library hours this fall will give me an extra two hours each afternoon to write, and I aim to do so. It’s been delightful this summer to find strategies for writing and surviving the writing (it’s physical, my body gets incredibly restless sitting for hours, and my mind writhes with discomfort to be in-between and in-the-unknown; what I relearned this summer is that it’s all okay, so long as I release that energy in positive ways, and trust the process.)
My favourite interchange this summer came when I was helping my mom up our front steps. She said, “You are so strong!” and my second eldest exclaimed, “Yes, isn’t she?” I felt seen and honoured, as I am this very moment in time; and that will change, but for now, I am filled with gratitude for the strength, physical, mental, spiritual, that helps me steady myself, and even sometimes, because I’m so very very fortunate, those around me. What privilege. What a luxury.
The sun does its work, even in the hallway of a school. This was the bulletin board outside the library when I’d taken everything off from the past school year. What will replace it this coming school year? It’s just one of the little things I’m excited to discover, and looking forward to this fall. Let the brainstorming begin.
xo, Carrie
Trust the process: X Page Workshop, season 6
Last Friday, I sat down and tried to write about the season’s X Page workshop. Our 6th season.
It is hard to pin down the value of this project, this PROCESS. You almost have to live it. It’s the truth of collaboration. It is not a solo journey. We are stronger together. Cliches!!! And yet — have I ever been hugged so fiercely? Have I ever shared such wordless pride? Leaning into Maha as we watched this season’s performers join hands and bow at the end, some faces beaming, others streaming with tears. I was weeping, almost sobbing, like a witness to a holy act.
I know. It sounds like an extreme response. But let me not back away from the ecstasy. Let me not minimize it when it reveals itself.
In that discrete moment, I could see — or glimpse — at last, what I’d hoped to make, something much deeper than I could ever have imagined. It didn’t feel like I’d burdened anyone with a madwoman’s vision (which at times I’ve wondered about!); instead I understood the project’s POTENTIAL for profound meaningfulness in the lives of those who take the leap of faith and join the adventure.
The X Page Storytelling Workshop is a true ART project, truly multidisciplinary, truly ambitious, truly visionary, truly risky, demanding and hard. And. It has a pull, a light. It magnetizes its participants. And we are all participants — that’s the truth of it, and the magic.
What we experience, as participants, is COLLABORATION—messy, risky, inefficient, complicated by conflict, conflicting ideas, competing visions, different ideas about what this all means or what it’s meant to represent and be. And yet somehow collaboration, through the vehicle of this project, also proves itself to have coherence, to be cohesive, durable, bound together by a shared goal and deadline—the performance!
Don’t get me wrong. The PERFORMANCE is not the whole of the project, but it is necessary. It gives purpose to our trials; energizes our efforts; lifts what we’ve tried to achieve into the light. Art wants this. It craves an outlet. It longs to be seen.
As a vision, the X Page workshop has a wholeness to it, a logic that is forceful. Yet its component parts are flexible.
It’s like seeing my self, my freed artist self, embodied in a process or EXPERIENCE that is translatable, intended for others to enter into. It’s not remote, or special, or precious; it’s invitational. Witnessing its phases and stages, its preparatory and planning periods, its hesitance, its fundraising efforts, its nervous energy, its excitement, its delight at welcoming each new cohort, its surprises, its endurance, its changes, its learning … it feels as though it’s given my life coherence. Or that its collective nature expresses a coherence that I can only glimpse with my solo work.
We have to go to extremes to do this thing together—that is the truth of making art. Art-making has its disciplined middle ground where much of the work gets accomplished, but that balanced “healthy” working state is fed by highs and lows (in moderation; too much of either poisons the ground). The middle wouldn’t be tolerable without a dose of both extremities to modulate the flow, and help us to change course as needed, to keep us present to the present moment, the context of the larger environment in which this is all happening. To wake us from being lulled, attune us to the needs of those around us: our collaborators, our witnesses, our fellow artists, our co-creators, our questioners, our allies.
The middle ground is where the work gets done, and the extremes are where we change and grow. Cliches!!! Again, I know!
Upon reflection, I don’t want to live a completely balanced life. I want the challenge of SURPRISE, I want to be off-balance on occasion, so I can strengthen those muscles that keep me grounded; and I want also to feel so much joy and gratitude that I overflow in tears; to feel is a great gift.
Summer holidays are here. I’m sick (again). I’m worn out. In need of replenishment. This summer, I want to dabble with a schedule that invites all the sensations and states, including rest. Focused reflection. Creation. I want the whole of my self, all my parts, integrated, as witnessed through the X Page. I want my life to make sense way down deep, the way that the X Page made sense on Wednesday night—Playfulness. DELIGHT. The power of mingling together grief and joy, friendship and frailty, generosity and autonomy, need and giving.
There are layers of deep structural muscle built and maintained over time that create a framework of strength, patient knowledge, and experience from which to build relationships of abiding trust.
That word! TRUST! Trust the process, we repeated, and in the end, we believed it because it was true.
How can I trust the ground under my feet if on some deep level I do not trust myself?
In abiding trust is love. Judgement falls away. AMBITION becomes collective—ambition for mutual thriving, ambition for forums in which one’s strengths can be used, one’s gifts may shine. Ambition that is not for the self but for the healing of communal wounds, ambition that trusts in the power of story to repair. And story needs its tellers, story needs its voice; and it needs its listeners, its audience; story needs attention and care.
A STORY exists in words. But also in the body, way down deep, and that’s where we’re going when we step into the X Page—underneath, to pause and sense the hum that is crying for attention, and quite possibly inflecting our interactions / lives / relationships with hurt and grief and pain. To repair is to relieve ourselves of suffering by aligning story with its container. Stories can be used for profit, to manipulate and harm, I know, I know; but so can every sacred thing be exploited and abused. So this workshop is a risky undertaking. I know, I know. It can’t be exactly all that I’ve claimed here, not all the time, nor to all.
Like all spiritual undertakings it eludes description. It could go sideways in so many different directions; when I lose trust, others step in because this is not a lonely undertaking.
Trust the process.
I believe. Story heals like nothing else on planet earth. Handled with attention and care, story is holy. I believe that.
xo, Carrie
How to begin again?
When and how to begin with BEGIN?
BEGIN is the title of my next novel. I can’t even write that sentence without attempting to delete or amend it. BEGIN is the title of the novel I’m writing. But even that sentence requires amendment. It is the title of the novel I was writing (last touched in March), and will be writing again—though I haven’t dared open the manuscript for months. I can’t let myself visit the pleasure of it in the tiny jags of time available, just right now.
I will begin writing BEGIN again this summer. Soon.
My library job ends in two weeks.
As does my time-limited stint as “producer” (hapless producer, one feels at times) of the X Page Storytelling Workshop, season 6. Season 6???! Tickets for the performance are available here—it’s called “The truth is …” and it’s playing one night only at the Registry theatre in downtown Kitchener, Wed, June 25th, 7PM. Please come for stories, for the stories are life-giving.
Look for me when school’s out in two weeks. I’ll be running out the doors with the kids, slipping off my sandals, standing in the grass, and maybe then, maybe then, my writing of BEGIN will begin again.
How will I parcel out my time? What do I need to write this book?
I have a publisher—Simon & Schuster Canada. (Yes, it’s official.)
More importantly, I have an editor—the brilliant poet and novelist, Katherena Vermette.
I have a pub date—fall 2027 (though those are always tentative).
I need a few intangibles, if I’m honest.
Health, sleep, sweat, rest. Dedicated time. Ear plugs?
Relaxation, intensity, hunger, delight.
Belief. Trust. Confidence—that too, especially that. You know this, don’t you, fellow writing friends? Maybe to that, I need, too, companionship that’s quiet and reassuring, and that would like to join in collective writing and drawing exercises after breakfast, before the work of the day begins …
I imagine for myself a near-hermit’s devotion to the hours, immersion in the subject, the playful giddiness that takes over when I’m making something that feels new or powerful or unexpected, that surprises me with some unearthed truth.
I can’t wait to begin.
Because I hope, I hope to finish what I’ve started. I hope to make good on what I find in the digging.
xo, Carrie
PS If you know of places to rent/borrow/sneak into that would make for good writing intensive spaces, please let me know!
PPS The image at the top was spotted in Chicago, which I visited a few weeks ago with one of my kids, who was presenting at their first academic conference.
Circle training
A few months ago, I took a four-day “circle training” workshop. Rather than writing about it immediately, I let the experience just be. I wondered whether it would change me, and how. What happens when you sit quietly and listen, as a talking stick makes its way around a circle of strangers? What happens when it’s your turn to speak?
Time slows down.
Attention shifts.
The stories that came out of my mouth seemed to rise from some quiet place that was longing to be told: this is precious material too.
I miss writing here as often as I once did.
I miss the instant reflection on the happenings in my life.
And to be truthful, I’m less at ease sharing these fractured, fragmented, intangible impressions publicly. It’s not exactly about being right or wrong; but the impression given of a moment in time, a moment of experiential data, is by its nature unstable. It will change. Change is our constant.
It’s interesting to observe what changes, from week to week, month to month, year to year; but probably also impossible to pin down. There’s a tendency to assume change is for the better; and to compare with past versions of self in ways that inflate the present version. Yet, so much of who I am, especially in those tendencies that limit my potential or cause harm (to self and others), seem to have changed far less than one might hope.
For example … (confession time)
I have a tendency to …
… fill every minute with doing, even better if it’s hard task, or menial, or can be framed as helping someone else or improving upon myself
A story from the circle. One of the participants shared about being the friend who their friends could call in a crisis. Needing to be that friend. And not knowing how to stop, or even pause, to catch a breath, or listen to their own inner voice and emotions.
I felt as if a mirror were being held up to my own need to do, do, do. Act, act, act. Carry, carry, carry. Make, make, make. Hold, hold, hold.
I can’t seem to let myself write down what I understood in that moment…. I saw that being needed gives me worth. No. More than that. Gives me permission to feel worthy, permission to believe that my life is worthwhile. And without that, without the dependency created by being needed, I feared, no, I fear, abandonment.
Who would want the un-needed, the unnecessary version of me?
Who would want to spend time with the version of me that I can’t even articulate into being, the version that is … that is shimmering forth, I feel it, like a butterfly, like a tree, like a calm shady summer afternoon … the version that does nothing and is fully present, achieves nothing and is fully present, raises nothing and is fully present.
The mirror in which another person, anyone, stranger or friend, can see themself in full flourishing. And then the world will be too beautiful to hold, or even to grasp. And I will be able to let go, and let go, and let go of needing to do, act, carry, make, hold, hold, hold.
xo, Carrie