Vulnerability

I didn’t think I’d be able to, but I made it through reading a piece of mine without my voice cracking. I wrote it just over a year ago, and it was the first piece I had submitted for a creative nonfiction contest. It’s a personal piece and also written in the first person. It was the first time that I have been able to read the piece aloud without my eyes welling or stumbling to voice the words I’d written about a traumatic experience that changed my life forever. When I wrote the piece, I thought it may be the end of my novel but through my online writing group’s reactions to it; the story seemed to fit well as my opening. It sets the tone, and I was so nervous about reading aloud in front of people today for my IRL writing group. I had read them my prompt submission for the month and they wanted to hear more.

So, I mustered you the courage and said: “I’ll read you my opening.” 

I wondered about revealing the reality of the story, but then felt I’d made a great first step in reading it publicly for the first time. And it’s not a topic I want to talk about, so sometimes it’s better to keep the origins of stories to myself…

Lingering long weekend

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” 

— Albert Camus

As temperatures drop, I’m thankful for the sunshine this long weekend. We had our first frost this past week, and it was a reminder: I’m running out of time! Meanwhile, this time away from work was a welcome brief interruption from my routine that gave me pause to the ever evaporating year. With my results back I had a moment to breathe, look forward and write... 

I’ve gotten so much completed on my current story, and the research aspect of it is invigorating. If only I had a few more days... But, I think I need to step back and take a breather before I continue. I am feeling like I am getting a little tangled in the story. So, the week away will give perspective and I have sent off my draft and I’m awaiting some insight from my readers. 

Muse

I was in charge of this month’s prompt and chose the image to the right combined with an individualized mathematical treasure hunt to find the sentence that would start or end the story we would each write (we each have different favourite books). 

My sentence came from Kafka’s La Métamorphose. “Nous avons fait tout ce qui était humainement possible pour le soigner est le supporter; je crois que personne ne pourra nous adresser le moindre reproche.” 

I had two competing ideas, and I’ve been trying my best to weave together the strands I followed. It’s not my regular writing genre, but I like to challenge myself with going out of my comfort zones. It used to scare me to write “people” stories, then “dialogue” and now I’m trying my hand at a suspense thriller. 

When an IRL character from one of my stories dear to me asked to read some of my work yesterday, I thought this may be the story for them. If for no other reason than that some snippets I’ve written are in their native tongue. 

I’ve been so enthralled with the research for this story, I think it may end up being a little more of an involved project. But, I will try to get a short story draft ready by the end of the week. So back to my story, while Mino tears apart bull kelp on the beach, I’ll let my thumbs take me back to my typing.