Oma's Advice
Mood:  bright
Now Playing: Anthony Hamilton - Float
Monday 24Apr06 10pm

I always believed I would marry. My dream was to have three children - two boys because I really like boys and a daughter as a middle child because every woman should have a daughter. I wanted her as the middle child so she wouldn't really suffer from middle child syndrome sandwiched between two boys. The older boy would be special because he was the first boy and the youngest boy would be special because he was the baby. I had it all figured out.

Now at 42 years old and no biological clock to speak of, I believe I may eventually live with someone and children are not in the cards unless I adopt. I still wish I made enough money to adopt Justin ( a child I worked with when I was a Child and Youth Worker) 13 years ago. Justin is 25 years old now and I've lost track of him.

As a child when I said I wanted to be a writer my family told me that it was a nice hobby but I needed to choose a career. I've wandered aimlessly trying to find a career that could support my writing hobby. Through the stress of dysfunctional co-workers and often borderline abusive bosses I'd nearly given up on my dream. People, friends, family members, will tell you things to help you to avoid the pain they've lived through. They tell you things because they love you. Most times they are best to follow their own advice and stay the heck out of your dreams.

My mother always wanted to be a country singer like Charley Pride (first African American to play the Grand Ole Opry). I know she wanted me to be financially secure. She couldn't have known that I would feel broken, not knowing what I wanted to do other than writing of course.

My Oma (Dutch for Grand mother) was the only adult that liked that I wanted to be a writer and she encouraged my dream. She gave me my first writing magazine at the time called, "Canadian, Author and Bookman." She told me that she had to give up her dream to be a housewife and care for her husband and children. There was a sigh that said that despite the joy her children and grandchildren gave her , if things were different, things would be different.

With her biological grand children she always encouraged marriage. The discussions were about what jewelery would be passed down to them prior to their weddings. She encouraged me, on the other hand, to wait until later in life before I got married. There was more than enough time. "You don't want to give up your dreams because of a man."

Considering how old fashioned her beliefs were her advice to me was like she could see into my future. I was going to be a late bloomer or better yet I was going to follow my own self imposed norm. I never could understand the expectation that a woman should be a constant follower to her husband's every whim. I couldn't understand how a woman had to subtly manipulate a man into believing that he had come up with an idea that she had actually come up with. All those games were tiring to me. I couldn't stand that my brother got special privileges because he was a boy there was no way that I was going to live with a man who made all the decisions.

Had I married young I probably would have given up on writing altogether. Had I started out as a writer without the multitude of jobs and experiences I've had I definitely wouldn't have the ideas I have now.

Favourite Books
Mood:  bright
Now Playing: Jamie Cullum - Catching Tales
Topic: Books to Love
Monday 24April06 9:12pm

Favourite Books to Re-read:
The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker

Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald


Favourite Writing Handbooks
Writing the Natural Way by Gabrielle Lusser Rico

Writing Down the Bones by Nathalie Goldberg

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

The Weekend Novelist by Robert J. Ray

30 Ways to Help You Write by Fran Weber Shaw (out of print but can buy it through Abe Books

Wild Mind by Nathalie Goldberg

Favourite Inspirational Books

Creating Money by Sanaya Roman
Living with Joy by Sanaya Roman
Personal Power Through Awareness by Sanaya Roman
Sanaya Roman

The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer

Ask and It is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks Esther and Jerry Hicks

Seth Book 1,2 &3 by Esther and Jerry Hicks

Conversation with God Books by Neale Donald Walsch

What I'm Reading
Now Playing: Incognito - Adventures in Black Sunshine
Sunday 23April06 10:17pm

Personal
The Circle - How the power of a single wish can change your life - By Laura Day

Research
On The Breath Of The Gods by Ariel Tomioka
- research for novel in progress tentatively titled The Fold (3019)

The Uses of Enchantment - The meaning and importance of Fairy Tales - by Bruno Bettelheim
Dreamways of the Iroquois - honoring the secret wishes of the soul - by Robert Moss
- both books - research for novel in progress tentatively titled Dreamweaver (Life's Miracles)

For General Writing
Writing Fiction - A guide to Narrative Craft - by Janet Burroway
Setting by Jack M. Bickham

I always have a few books on the go.

Computer Illiterate
Mood:  amorous
Now Playing: Rahsaan Patterson
Topic: Clueless
Farting around. Have not figured out an easy way to add images (the odd one) to my blog. It'll soon come. I just realized that I finally had a use for this image. If you are a writer and you have balls of steel check out http://www.nanowrimo.org
before November.

Not Ready to Log Off
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: Brenda Russell - in the Thick of it
Topic: Freeflow
8:05pm

Okay, so I'm a little gung ho tonight with the blogging. Actually I'm just chatty but don't feel like calling anyone.
I've been doing a television fast now for a week. I got the idea from a newsletter called, Early to Rise.
http://www.earlytorise.com/index.php

Basically, I've stopped watching t.v. and am taping the shows that I do eventually want to watch. It's funny how I can turn on the television and find excuses to watch repeats of shows and get nothing accomplished. I can remember a time when I didn't have a T.V. and didn't know what I was missing. Those were in the days when I would blow my whole paycheque on records, listen to my music and write until bedtime. If I want to get some semblance of writing discipline back, I need to turn off the T.V. and that's what I've done.

One of my writing groups mentioned this idea of getting your characters to keep blogs. I'm considering doing that. A good way to work out the kinks and get to know the insides of a character. I've currently got seven novels in progress and one book of personal essays. I'm not short of ideas by any stretch, I just need to get down and work them out.


White Wishes which will eventually become three novels has been giving me a hard time so I've had to take a bit of a break. It's weird because I'm actually interested in it but I seem to keep hitting roadblocks. It's gone through many incarnations over the last decade or more that I've been writing it. It can be so gruelling when you get stopped up. My main characters name was originally Janay because I like the name but when I changed her name to Kali that seem to get me going. I had the bulk of the novels being Kali's story and in the third novel there would be a whole section of her mother Rachel's point of view. Now I realize that readers were seeing the mother in too harsh a light so I'm in the midst of changing where the chapters will alternate points of view between mom and daughter after the first four chapters of the daughter. Since it is still the daughters story it will still be Kali heavy but a more evenly proportioned Rachel. It's ragged but I'll get it!

One of my favorite videos to watch for inspiration is, Listen Up the Lives of Quincy Jones. In it he's doing his rap for Back on the Block and when he's finished, knowing that he's not on point, he says, "It's ragged but I'll get it."
I loved that line because it implies that he's fair to himself. He knows it wasn't his best job but he's not going to give up and he'll get it. I love Quincy Jones (Quincy is the name of my other cat) because what he does musically is what I'd like to do as a writer.

Others that inspire me are Prince (if I was stranded on a desert island and could only take one artists music, he's my guy), Pablo Picasso (his pieces on war inspire me poetically), Saki - he wrote a story about a talking cat called Tobermory (my cat Saki died 4 years ago and I still cry).


I love prolific people. I like the output of Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. My favorite writers however are A.M Homes, F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby specifically) and Alice Walker. I love Jasper Fforde for his hilarious Tuesday Next books starting with the Eyre Affair. His books are the adult equivalent of Harry Potter. fun fun fun.
Okay, I think I'm going to stop here even though I could go on for several hours. tee hee hee.