Yardsale Finds

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Last weekend I dragged Shaun to a yardsale that I heard about on Facebook. It was a fundraiser for — get this — some people who planned to build a giant wooden moose out in the desert, and then burn it. Best idea ever. It was actually an art collective who plan to go to Burning Man later this year. Buying other people’s stuff AND supporting crazy art projects? Sign me up.

Although I didn’t find a ton that I wanted to buy, I did score a few cute pieces. Check out this amazing ceramic cockatiel:

He was only $2!!! And he’s about 12 inches tall. I love him. When I went to pay for him, the girl working the table told me how much she was going to miss him. I assured her he’d be well loved in his new home. :)

I also got this beautiful little silver dish, for just $3. It’s great quality, very heavy and in really good shape. It’s currently in the bathroom, housing my jewelery.

And I got a little picture frame for just $1. It still had the with-purchase picture in it, so I don’t even think it had ever been used.

So for $6, I got three great little items, and helped contribute towards an epic art project / burning moose. Not too bad.

I’ve been working on my living room — the painting is pretty much done now, photos to come when I can get some proper daylight. I forgot how utterly EXHAUSTING painting is. All week I’ve felt like this:

Beezus is the very model of utter exhaustion. Her life is super hard.

Butterflies

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In the morning on my way to the subway, I see a dead thing. It is pushed to the side of the road, half on the curb and half off. At first I think: raccoon. My blood feels thick and slow in my veins and I walk around it, giving it a wide berth. I see its face then, its small little mouth and its white teeth. Not a raccoon. A cat.

I get the tingling feeling in my neck, where my ear canals might be. I get that feeling when things are bad, when they are bad in a way that I can’t do anything about. It’s a flushing feeling, like there’s too much blood going to my brain and nothing to do with it all. Two Muslim kids are walking towards me, on their way to the school on the corner, and I know they see the cat too, but instead we just look at each other. We three watch each other as we pass, meeting eyes and not one of us looking at the dead thing on the side of the road.

Later that day I come home and take my dog out for a walk. He is happy to see me and happy to go for a pee and he bounds through the park. The day is yawning into twilight and the wind is blowing hard. It whips trees and branches around in fitful gusts.

Yesterday Riley’s legs seized up and he struggled to walk, bowlegged in the grass. His hind legs wouldn’t cooperate. Shaun had to scoop him up in his arms, even though Riley is 35 lbs and too big to carry. It’s arthritis, we think. This stiffness in his legs, the way he sometimes hobbles downstairs. He is old and getting older. Shaun had to carry him all the way home.

But today he runs, nose to the ground, his mind on a squirrel or a sparrow or something equally delightful. Today his back legs don’t fail him. What about tomorrow?

Something flits past my face, and then something else. A butterfly lands on a branch in front of me. Another one rushes past me. I see four of them, five, six, a dozen. Monarch butterflies, rolling and cresting in the blowing wind. They find fleeting homes on branches and leaves, and then they’re off again, circling my head and weaving through the brush.

I think: how? How are we supposed to live in this world, where there are things that die? Where the things we love can leave us so easily, in a blink? How are we supposed to live in this world where there is magic and beauty and fear and death? Where there are oceans of it? Where we can drown in it?

Riley doesn’t like the wind and he pulls on the leash. He points his nose in the direction of home. “Okay,” I tell him. “Okay, let’s go home.”

Today’s post is a link up with Heather of The Extraordinary Ordinary’s Just Write. If you want to join in, write something about the details of your day and link up! Be sure to read a few other pieces and get to know some great new writers in the process.

Nesting

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Each spring, when the robins come and the leaves bud, I get the urge to nest. Not in a wintery ‘hunker down’ sort of way, but in a way that’s fresh and alive. Spring paints a new bright landscape on the world, and I want to do the same in my house.

I’ve recently felt the urge — the NEED — to change my living room. Shaun and I bought this townhouse almost exactly a year ago, and we haven’t done anything to change it. To be fair, it was a very nice place when we moved in, and the previous owners had done a lot of renovations very recently. But even though everything is perfectly nice, and even quite stylish, none of it seems particularly like US, you know? (Hmm, I think I just implied that we aren’t very stylish. Truth.)

I snapped a few pictures of our living room ‘as is’. As in, no cleaning, styling, or other prep went into these pictures. Consider these the official ‘before’ photos, and stay tuned for the progress.

Our house has a pretty unique layout. It’s a split-level, and every room is on it’s own floor. So from the front door / entryway, you come up 8 stairs into the living room — and then go up another 8 stairs to the kitchen, then up another 8 stairs to the office. So in this picture, you’re seeing mostly the living room, with the kitchen in the upper right-hand corner. Also: my cute dog, stretching.

And this photo is just a little to the left. I have no idea what we were watching on TV here. It looks like some kind of 70s porn. (It wasn’t.) (I hope.)

The same wall from the opposite angle. And yet more mystery television. Please note also: we use a patio chair for additional living room seating. Yes, this is why we need an update. We’re in our 30s, not college kids.

Here’s another photo just a bit to the left.

Further left again. God, these are embarrassing. Please note our only wall decorations: An umbra clock I bought at a yardsale about five years ago, some St. Patrick’s day ‘toasts’ that I wrote out and hung up for our St. Patrick’s day party, and some paint chips I was considering. Please see also: Sleeve of Saltines on the table. Yum.

So I basically tried to do a 360 with the pictures. Here we are back to the stairs. You can see (maybe) that our living room is basically a box, with patio doors at one end and lots of stairs at the other.

I don’t think there’s actually anything ‘bad’ about our living room. In fact, it has a lot going for it. The patio doors let in nice light, and I love all the stairs (even though my butt muscles do not feel that love.)

Some of things I do want to change:

  • Wall colour. Big time. I hate the army green wall and I’m not a fan of the beige colour either. My preferred neutrals are always greys.
  • The black Ikea furniture. It’s too heavy in the room. I don’t know why I bought black, since I’ve always loved white furniture. So I’d like to change this up, although I don’t know if buying anything new is in the cards.
  • The seating. We definitely need more. Lawn chair must go!
  • The layout. It’s so sparse and the bookcase feels so weirdly placed to me.
  • The wall decor. In that we need some. I’ve already taken down the handwritten posters, so that’s a start.

I’ve already started implementing a few of these changes, but I can tell you one thing: it gets worse before it gets better.

 

The Art Of Shipping

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I recently finished reading Seth Godin’s book Linchpin. I didn’t love it — I thought the whole thing could have been summed up in a couple of short chapters, but it had a few things that really made me think.

One of those things was the idea of shipping.

The idea of shipping is more from the software industry. Shipping is when you finally get your product out to the consumer. In the software industry (well, many industries, really), you can work and work on a piece of software but eventually you have to ship it to your audience. And in the software industry, there are those who get lost in the ideas and the revisions and the tweaks — and there are those that ship.

The only way to really be an artist (or a writer or a musician or a designer) is to ship. You have to put your work in front of people.

If a tree falls in a forest, does anybody hear it? Cliche, right, but true. If a novel languishes in a desk drawer, does it really mean anything? We make art to change people, in big ways and small, and no one is being changed in your desk drawer.

This is something I’m trying to focus on more. How many hours do I waste reading blogs about writing? Reading books about writing? Switching back and forth from one story idea to another?

And how much time do I waste dwelling on logistics? I’ve been working on some short stories for the past couple of months, and haven’t published them because I can’t decide how many should be in the collection, and how the collection should tie in with my future plans for a novel. What if I eventually want to write a YA novel? Is it weird, then, if my short stories are for adults? If I put three stories in a collection together, is that enough? Should I have four? Maybe I should just sell the stories individually. But how much would I charge for that? Maybe they should be free.

This is called resistance and it is my master and I am its wench.

We turn things over and over in my mind and to what end? All it does is keep us from actually doing anything. All it does is keep us from shipping.

Is it better to ship a mediocre product — or, not even mediocre, just less than perfect — is it better to ship a less than perfect product than to ship no product at all?

Seth Godin would say yes. And maybe we should say yes too.

At the end of our lives, I don’t think we’ll remember how many blogs we read about writing. How many tips we got about plotting or dialogue. It won’t matter how we published things, or what we charged. At the end of our lives, we want to look back on a body of work. We want to be able to say: This is what we did. This is how we changed people.

 

The Story Is Everything Is The Story

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I’ve been thinking a lot about a stories lately — the stories we tell ourselves and the stories that are told to us. Stories are the threads we follow. They’re how we understand the world.

I’ve been thinking about it like this:

Would you touch a hot stove? No. Why not? Because it’s hot. Because it would burn your hand. Because it would HURT. Because if it was bad enough, you’d have to go to the hospital. Because it would hurt for days or even weeks. Because you wouldn’t be able to use your hand for awhile.

Now tell me — do you know exactly how hot the burner is? Do you know at what temperature it would go from merely uncomfortable to being actually painful? Do you know, medically speaking, what the difference is between first and second and third degree burns? Do you know how many nerve endings are in your hand? Do you know exactly how many times a day you need to use that hand?

We don’t know those things. And we don’t need to. We don’t know the scientific facts about pain or the minute details of what happens to skin when it meets a certain temperature.

What we know is the story of what happens to a person who puts their hand on a hot stove.

We learned that story when we were probably three or four years old, either because we actually DID touch a hot stove and we lived the story ourselves, or because a parent told us that story and its power was so great that we still remember it today.

Isn’t that the coolest thing ever? That a story that was told to you — or that you told yourself — twenty or thirty or forty years ago is still having an affect on your behaviour today?

This is why we become writers or filmmakers or parents, I think. Because of the power of stories. Because of the way we can change a life with words or pictures, through stories. Because we can teach someone things that have no easy explanations — we can teach them kindness. Love. Fear. Bravery. We can show someone how to be in the world. We can show them how to change it.

I Come From The Lost Continent Of Lemuria. Apparently.

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The woman was named Lena. She had shoulder-length dark hair, and a white cardigan. She was sitting next to me at a communications conference last Friday.

I was being socially awkward as usual and picking at an almond croissant, when Lena tapped me on the shoulder.

“What do you do?” she asked.

“I’m a speechwriter,” I said.

She seemed to consider this.

“I have something to tell you,” she said.

“Okay.”

“You’re Lemurian.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Lemurian. You’re Lemurian.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you come from long ago. It means you’re an old soul.”

“Oh. Is that a good thing?”

“Oh, it’s a very good thing.”

“Huh.”

“Let me ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“Do you find you get affected by other people’s emotions? Are you sensitive?”

“Yeah, I do, actually.”

“I thought so. This weight you have,” she gestured vaguely at my body, and then the croissant I was eating. “It’s your buffer. It’s your protection between yourself and other people. It’s the way you absorb the world.”

“Huh,” I said. “I always wondered about that.”

“You need better protection,” she said. “I recommend healing crystals. Turquoise would be good for you.”

Here we go, I thought. Was she trying to sell me healing crystals? But the pitch never came.

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

She glanced furtively around to make sure no one was watching us, and then she pulled something out of her pocket.

“This,” she said. “It’s for dowsing.”

It looked like a bullet on a string, but as I watched she held it out, bent her head and muttered a question. The bullet swung in small circles, bigger circles, small circles.

She looked perplexed. She looked up at me and then back at the dowsing tool. She muttered something else and we both watched it spin and spin.

“You’re an Earth Angel,” she said. “But a kind I’ve never seen before. I just don’t know.”

She watched the pendulum again, and after a bit she said, “Thank you thank you thank you,” and laughed. She turned to me again.

“You have a real gift,” she said. “An amazing amount of talent. I don’t mean to scare you but – your job is to change the world.”

“No pressure,” I joked.

She laughed loudly at this. “No pressure.”

She left the conference mid-way through the very first speaker. I didn’t see her again. I looked up Lemuria later, when I got home. It’s a lost continent similar to Atlantis.  It’s apparently my birthplace.

I love having encounters like this. It’s like money in my imagination bank.

Reading In February

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Each month I recap what I’ve been reading. I bought a Kindle on January 31st, and I have to say — I’m amazed by how much it’s increased the amount I’ve read. I’m usually good if I average a book a week, but I managed TEN books this month. TEN. And it was a short month! Having my Kindle with me means I read on the subway, when I’m caught in line-ups, and sometimes at lunch.

The Watcher – Brian Freeman

I’ve been reading a lot mysteries and suspence novels lately, but I did not like this one. It was all over the place, and not in a good way. I even put it down for a couple weeks — which I NEVER do with mysteries. I almost didn’t finish it but I decided it would be useful in terms of figuring out what I didn’t like about it.

 

Pentecost – J.F. Penn

I enjoyed this book a fair bit — it started off really strong, but I admit I got a bit bored in the middle. The research and descriptions were wonderful though — it really made want to travel and visit different parts of the world.

 

If You Go Into The Woods – David Gaughran

I liked this a lot. It’s actually just a couple of short stories packaged together. The first one (If You Go Into The Woods) was the better of the two — although I felt that it ended too early. The second story wasn’t as compelling to me, but it was still well-written.

 

Ultraviolet – R.J. Anderson

This was a YA novel and I LOVED it! It’s essentially about a girl with synesthesia — a condition where your senses get mixed up and you can do things like taste sounds and hear colours. It was fascinating! Now, there’s a big ol’ twist about 2/3 of the way through that is definitely NOT going to be for everyone, but I liked it.

 

My Memories Of A Future Life – Roz Morris

Hands-down my favourite book this month. This year, actually. It’s so big and beautiful and complicated. I actually couldn’t start another book for a day or two after I finished, because I just wanted to sit and think about what it all MEANT. I have a total internet crush on Roz Morris now.

 

The Guardians – Andew Pyper

Another great book. It’s about a haunted house, and I found moments of it to be genuinely scary. I read it on the subway and kept noticing I was making these horrible grimacing faces. Ha! This is the kind of book I love — that has a rollicking good plot but also makes you think about the deeper meaning of things, in this case, what it means to grow-up and be a man.

 

Faithful Place – Tana French

Okay, I’m a huge Tana French fan. I loved both her other books and I was thrilled to start this one. But in the end it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. The writing was still superb, and the characters were outstanding, but the mystery itself fell WAY short for me. It really lacked the momentum of her other books.

 

Let’s Get Digital – David Gaughran

One of three writing / publishing books I read this month. I thought this was a really good comprehensive look at digital self-publishing, and I liked the thirty or so first-person ‘success stories’ that made up the last part of the book.

 

How I Sold 1 Million eBooks In 5 Months – John Locke

Okay. Okay, John Locke. Love him or hate him, this was an incredibly useful little book. What I actually liked was how positive it was. Like when he says that a bad review just means that your book got into the hands of someone who wasn’t in your target audience. I think that’s such a fair and sensible way to look at it — as a writer AND as a reader.

 

Author 2.0 – Joanna Penn

This had a few good tips about being an author in the online arena — how to build your platform, etc. BUT I’m kind of annoyed that: a) It’s not available on the Kindle, and b) I couldn’t find a proper thumbnail of it anywhere. Which has nothing to do with the book, but as a reader 2.0, I sort of wanted those things.

 

Anyway, I’m always on the lookout for good new books. Any recommendations? I’m leaning towards mystery and suspense these days, but I like good writing and well-drawn characters.

 

 

20 Excuses I Have Used To Avoid Writing

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Inspired by YA Highway‘s post on Reasons Not To Write, I decided to chart a few of the many excuses I’ve used to avoid writing. There are more. There will always be more.

  1. My desk is too messy to sit down and write.
  2. Grey’s Anatomy is on.
  3. Grey’s Anatomy is on Netflix.
  4. I’ve been eating popcorn and my hands are greasy and I don’t want to touch my laptop.
  5. Making epic lists of possible character names is part of my research.
  6. I have to go somewhere in two hours anyway, what’s the point?
  7. Writing isn’t just about writing you know, you have to do research and blogging and tweeting too, to be a writer.
  8. I haven’t had my glass of wine yet.
  9. I’ve had too many glasses of wine now.
  10. I’m only going to hate myself in the morning.
  11. I’ll be more motivated to write if I just take a nap first.
  12. I’m just not very creative on Wednesdays.
  13. It would probably be more productive if I spent a couple hours reading about what kind of marketing Amanda Hocking did.
  14. It’s too cold in the room where the computer is.
  15. I think I ate too much sugar and now I have to wait for my head to get unfuzzy.
  16. Other people write better than me.
  17. It’s selfish for me to take two hours by myself to write, so instead I’ll just spend two hours on Google Reader.
  18. I don’t have the right notebook with me, so if I write something now I’ll just have to transcribe it all again later.
  19. My writer’s block has writer’s block.
  20. The cat is sleeping on  my laptop and I don’t want to move her.
What are some of your excuses?