Time and Light Switches

This is going to be the strangest birthday I’ve ever had. It’s tomorrow, by the time this post goes up, and I have a lot of reasons to think it’s going to be strange. I’ve had weird birthdays in the past, where both my parents were out of the country, and years where the oddest of an assortment of people were present (people tend to travel on and around my birthday). I thought it was going to be strange because I would be in America for my birthday for the first time since I was eight. Now it’s weird because I’ll be in Canada. But the truly strange part, the part that makes it hard to breath, is that my grandfather died on Sunday.   Half of the goodbye events are on Friday and the rest on Sunday. It’s so weird. I’m flying back to Canada to say goodbye to my grandfather. It’s really weird, and uncomfortable, and I’ll not make sense of it for a long time to come.  My grandfather was one of the best people of all time, he’ll ever remain one of my all time favourites even now....

Sometimes life throws you things you weren’t expecting, things you’d much like to leave by the wayside and never return for. And sometimes the only thing left to do is hold on and let the storm ride itself out. I’m not quite ready to talk about it, not till it’s really happening, so allow me to ramble about my writing while I hide from my feelings for a moment.   ~ Drafting is such a slow process this time around. I’m working on a second book now, just in case you missed it. And this time around it’s a much slower go. I’m working from an outline this time, which is entirely different from my first novel. My first novel I started writing the first draft completely from scratch and figured the whole thing out while I was writing it. This time not so much. I’d say I’ve improved since I wrote said outline, I finished writing the outline over a year ago now, February of 2023 I believe. And since then I’ve written and edited an entire other book. So you could say I’ve had some prac...

I feel a responsibility, a weight, a mantle, to do my family proud. And not the ones I’ve known, no the grandmothers and ancestors who had not the tact, resources, and freedom to be creators and artists. It would be a disservice and shame to the gift of my life to not pursue what they could not.   And I do not think me big, important, or even particularly skilled, simply stubborn. Simply unwilling to settle for less than what I am capable of, and better yet to rocket past what ought to be my ceiling. Because why dream of lightbulbs when stars wink from heavens above?  It would be a waste, a damed waste, to give up now, to have given up years ago. Because I was given a gift and I intend to make good work of the life I was given.  So I will write my book, no matter how silly it may be. I will write as many sequels as I can barter from my soul, and I will paint the stupid paintings that scare me shitless. Apologies, but I truly am sick of being scared of the very thing...

  The largest difficulty I've encountered in writing this second novel is the need to have my thoughts in chronological order. See normal my thoughts come in order of interest and importance, not time. It’s probably why I lose track of time often. My mind wasn’t wired with time in mind, ironically.     In order for a story to be well written, readable, engaging, and just plain understandable, the story has to follow some rule of time. Things have to go in sequential order, they can’t bounce around from past to present to past and back to present. Particularly all in the same sentence or paragraph.  It’s rather frustrating. Because I understand what is going on without explaining absolutely everything, but I as author am expected to. A reader won’t know all that I do about the setting and characters motivations. So there are entire sections of paragraphs and chapters that I want to race past because they are less exciting, and in the heat of it, feel less importan...