Writing With Abandon

 

One of the best things about keeping a journal is being able to look back at it from time to time. Now, as Growing Up Ivy moves down the production line at the publisher's, from copy edit to design, I read an entry that I made two years ago in my journal.

I had just started some early scribbles toward a new book, and I was working from the angle of the child I'd heard about who spent her summers with her peddler father, living in a horse-drawn caravan. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this was where the inspiration for  Growing Up Ivy came from. Here is that journal entry: 

I want this next book to be brave and daring. I want to write with abandon, to tell a fantastic story without letting my inner editor loose too early. I have a picture in my head of a girl and her mother escaping out the window of their room as the landlord hammers on the door. The mother is footloose, irresponsible, dreaming of being on the stage. The child thinks that everyone lives this way -- fleeing angry landlords, eating in diners, moving from one rooming house to the next, and attending school when it suits her.


Whether or not this will be part of what I'm calling the "caravan story" remains to be seen. But this new creation is taking me along on it's own course. I don't know where or when it will end.

I remember telling the others in our writing group that the book, in its early stages, was writing itself. I stood back and let it go.

In the end, the two parts of the story did come together. Ivy's mother, Frannie, is the would-be actress who abandons the child, and her rescuer is her father, Alva, who takes Ivy with him in the caravan for the summer.

Journal Writing

I started keeping a journal in 1976. It was one of the suggestions made by the instructor of the writing course I was taking. The idea was that it got one into a habit of regular writing.

Over 34 years, you can imagine how many journals I've filled. I don't profess to write in the journal every day. Sometimes whole weeks go by, especially when my creative writing is zipping along. But if something significant happens in my life, both private and professional, I write it down.

Over the years I've found journal writing helps to focus me. Too often my brain seems to run in every direction -- things to do, deadlines to meet, talks to prepare, commitments to home and family. But taking a few minutes to write about what I'm feeling, how I'm coping (or not) slows me down. I close my journal, promising myself to do one thing at a time, and to do it mindfully.

I enjoy looking back at my journal to see what was happening last year on this date. Or 20 years ago. It has even served to settle the odd argument!

Just for fun, here's what I wrote on this day in 2005. (I was still working at that time.)

Monday. The one day in the week when I get to stay home. Ideally, it would be the day I spend 8 hours, writing. In fact, I write between laundry loads and trips from room to room with the vacuum cleaner.

There's a winter storm watch in effect. We could get more than 15 cms. of snow tonight and tomorrow. Sometimes these watches are overblown. With temperatures just below freezing, it may not be too bad. I only hope none of this happens two weeks from now -- when we are en route to Myrtle Beach. That trip this time of year has always frightened me.

We enjoyed having Z. (our 5-year-old granddaughter) with us overnight Saturday. Yesterday, we drove to Barcovan Beach to see the swans. There were dozens of them, and we were all thrilled when they swam right up to see us.

Z. had a full agenda of what she wanted to do when she was here: play a game with Grandpa, make a craft with Grandma, help with the cooking, watch her movie, have a bedtime story, and go to church( a special joy for me). She's such a happy little girl, well-behaved and polite, but not in the least timid. It's wonderful how much confidence she has.

Write on!

Keeping a Travel Diary

I've been away for three weeks, on a road trip to Jasper, Alberta. Although I didn't take my novel-in-progress with me, nor the one I'm currently revising, it was not a holiday from writing.

I kept my notebook handy in the car, jotting down the new sights and impressions all along the way. Each morning, while I sipped coffee in our hotel room, I wrote a longer entry in my journal. By then, the events of the previous day had had a chance to seep into my writer's soul. I could reflect on what I'd seen, and I took the time to choose the best descriptive words I could.

I wrote about the brave swimmers bobbing up and down in the choppy waters of Lake Nipissing, how the wind blew our umbrellas inside out in Thunder Bay, how the land approaching Winnipeg flattens out. I'd forgotten that. The trees along the streets in my old neighbourhood in Winnipeg have grown so big that it is like driving through a leafy, green tunnel.

I wrote about the wide skies in Saskatchewan, the fields of happy yellow sunflowers, how you see the cloud of dust coming down one of the many sideroads towards the highway, long before you see the vehicle that is causing it.

As we drive into the Badlands, there are no trees, only sagebrush and huge eroded formations called hoodoos as far as the eye can see. A lunar landscape.

The grandeur of Rocky Mountains takes my breath away. They appear like a mirage on the horizon before we leave Calgary. At Canmore, they come out to meet us, wrapping around our shoulders until we are completely surrounded by them. We drive all day, and still they are on all four sides. A day in Jasper and then, at Hinton, Alberta, we have to stop for one last look at the Rockies fading into the distance behind us.

Happy trails!

Baby Steps

I'm ready to take my first baby steps into the world of blogging. This is a whole new experience for me. Exciting, but a little scary.

I tell myself it could be something like keeping a journal, which I've done for over 30 thirty years. Journal writing was one of the habits I developed during a course I was taking in creative writing. I do not write in my journal every day. But it is where I return when I need to make sense of what's happening around me, in my personal life. It's where I record strange weather occurences and family events (these too can be pretty strange).

I see the blog being a place to record what's happening in my writing life.

For the past few weeks I've been polishing the new novel. I had thought it was finished, ready to be sent forth into the world. But each time I pick it up I begin tweaking again.

I have just read a great book, filled with useful tips on editing. It made me take another very critical look at the manuscript. The book is Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King (Harper Collins, 1993). I highly recommend it.

I took copious notes while reading the book and have returned to my notes many times.

A few of the suggestions I read there were for converting some of the longer passages of narrative into scenes, eliminating speaker attributions--particularly in interior monologue, breaking up paragraphs, even looking at the white space on each page.

Some of the tips I've been using for years, such as reading the story aloud. I've always found this especially helpful when working with dialogue (my favourite part). Hearing the dialogue helps determine how realistic it is.

Naturally, I hope all this careful self-editing will make the manuscript more attractive to a publisher. Especially now that the time and the money to do extensive editing in-house is disappearing.

So, I keep tightening and polishing. But one of these days I have to step back and say, "Okay. That's all I can do. Now, fly!"

It's always hard to let go. Like driving away from the college residence in September, leaving your firstborn on the curb.

Write on.
Till next time,

Peggy