Category Archives: Writers and Writing

First, burn the Morning Pages, then, burn the body

1

I did a very stupid thing this weekend.

I sampled a decade of my Morning Pages.

I didn’t plan to. It just happened. But wait. I’m telling the story badly.

Morning Pages are the foundational practice of The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron’s 12 week recovery program for blocked creatives.

Shut up. I know it sounds woo-woo. It is. It’s ridiculous. There’s too much god in the book, also, kindergarten craft activities involving glue, glitter and imagines from magazines, exercises about childhood memories and worse.

It’s kooky.

It’s 100 per cent not science or research-based. The word “intuition” appears about twice a paragraph.

It steals wholesale from the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

It works.

The Artist’s Way works.

And the Morning Pages are its foundation. Three pages of long-handed writing, written right after you wake up — according to Julia, before you have coffee, do yoga etc. (I think she allows you to pee, although that’s not explicitly mentioned.) Me, I make the coffee first and drink it as I write, but that’s the only cheat I engage in.

I make the coffee, I sit down and I write.

Three pages.

About nothing, about everything.

My pages are often about how I don’t want to write them. I have nothing to write about. Or, I have too much to write — I want to jump right into the current work in progress. Or, these days, get to work and do all the things I’ve got happening that day — I want to get started now!

Sometimes, they’re about how I’m hungry and I can’t wait to eat breakfast. Or a debate about whether I should make more coffee after I finish writing, because I’m just on page two and the press is already empty…

Sometimes, I write this: Letters make words. Words make sentences. Look, that’s three sentences. Actually, a paragraph. At which point will this rambling become a thought that can be split across to paragraphs. Words. Word by word. Write. Just keep writing.

Silly, right?

But also — it’s in the morning pages that I’ve planned all of my novels, tried to find ways to stay in my marriage, found my way to divorce, anchored myself and stayed breathing and functioning when all else failed.

Morning pages are like journaling, I suppose. But also, different. You get three pages. You must write three pages even if you don’t want to write, even if you feel you have nothing to write about. Word by word. Sentence by sentence. Write until something comes. And you write. And at a page and a half, like clockwork, the hard truth appears.

At the end of page three, you stop.

You want to write more? You can’t, says Julia. You still have something to stay after page three? Execute. Turn into into art. Write a scene, a poem (a blog post).

Draft a screenplay.

The pages are a place to rest, sort, get inspired — to move you to action. Not to hide.

I told you. Woo-woo. Kooky.

They work.

2

The other rule of Morning Pages is you don’t talk about Fight Club. I mean — you don’t show them to anyone. Not your therapist, not your writing group — not the people you’re working through The Artist’s Way with. Julia’s advice is to not even show them to yourself. Put them away. Revisit them later if you like, but not the next day or the week after.

Julia also suggests you make arrangements with a trusted friend to have them destroyed when you die, so you don’t traumatize your children and friends. Or, I suppose, strangers…

She re-reads her pages periodically, to see where they are guiding her.

I don’t. I haven’t for 10 years.

My advice, after this weekend? Destroy them as soon as you write them.

3

I started keeping Morning Pages in September 2014, about a year after the Calgary flood and my monumental not-really-flood-related-but-everything’s-conflated post-flood crash. I promised to start them because a cute girl insisted I give The Artist’s Way a try. I had to trick myself into the process. I had burned all my diaries and stopped reflective writing when I was 16, for very good reasons. I did not want to expose myself like that again.

So for the first two months, I did not write Morning Pages. I wrote in the morning, and I wrote about three pages, but I used writing prompts to draft random scenes of what would become my second novel. And then, eventually, with gritted teeth, I told myself to do the whole 12-week program, glitter and all. If I managed to do that, I’d let myself consider a creative writing MFA. A writer’s retreat. A trip to Cuba.

Something.

Instead, the Morning Pages helped me write a third novel. Then a fourth. Then another. And another. A trilogy. An idea for a seven-book series. Redefined my marriage. Kept me on this side of sane while my child fought for her life. Helped me end my marriage with grace. Saw me through the pandemic and the end and beginning of so many, many things.

They took me to Cuba, too, actually.

Everything is in my Morning Pages.

They’re full of 10 years of terrible things.

4

Not just terrible things, of course. Plenty of good things happened in that decade too.

But all the terrible things are there. In grotesque detail. Writ large in pain.

5

I’ve never counted the notebooks and math is hard, but it takes me about two and a half months to fill the average notebook. So that’s about 5 notebooks a year. Times 10 years. About 50 notebooks. Plus some sketchbooks and process journals. 

I threw most of the process journals and sketchbooks away, easily. They’re not meant to be product. Or to be revisited.

The Pages, though.

I was going to throw them away. All of them. Burn them. Ritually.

But what happened is, I flip one open. I see a story. I don’t remember the story. I don’t remember the memory. Now I do. I flip over a few more pages. Pain. Lies.

The lies are the worst — the parts where I see myself lying to myself. (I know they’re lies, because the truth comes eventually. Later.)

The pain is awful, but at least it’s true.

The lies are a betrayal. Stupidity. 

They bring shame.

They need to be burned.

But.

In-between the pain and the lies—story origins, story ideas, story attempts.

I hesitate.

That’s a really neat one. I don’t remember it—but oh. I want to write it. Maybe now I have the chops to write it. I didn’t back then.

In the end, I don’t throw away the pain and lies, because I want to keep the stories.

6

I don’t have a cute wrap-up for this post. Truthfully, what happens is, I don’t deal with it. I stack 10 years of lies, pain and stories — and good moments too, but you know, where’s the drama in that? — in the corner of the crack house living room and hide them with my reading chair. I’ll burn them eventually. Soon.

I will not carry them with me into the future — I will not move with them again.

I will leave them behind.

But first. I will go through them and rip out the stories.

Not today though. Not next weekend.

But soon.

Eventually.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS Flora, my child, if I die before getting my act together and destroying the journals, shred them all. Burn them all. Don’t read them, don’t let anyone else read them. Thank you. Love, Mom PS2 Remember, Murder Mystery funeral. I’ll leave a few different scenarios you can use but if you’ve got a better idea, do it. I won’t care — I’ll be dead. PS3 Not dying. Just freeforming. This is why you need to burn the Morning Pages. Decades of this shit, immortalized forever. Burn them all. Ok, thanks. Love you.

The meaning of life, redacted

i

I have a problem.

I’m about to turn 50 and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.

That’s the question we inflict on children as soon as they master more than a dozen words. First day of preschool, first time you play with a fire truck or dinosaur: “What do you want to be when you grow up? A firefighter? A teacher? A palaeontologist? An astronaut?”

What, by the way. The question is what. Not who.

I think I know — no, I know, I know — the who. I know who I am. I am myself. I am a mother. I am a writer. Usually a human, sometimes a feral animal. I am myself — I am at peace with who I am. For the most part.

What I am, how I’m supposed to organize my life for the next 15 to 20 years to make sure I don’t spend my twilight years under a bridge somewhere… apparently, I haven’t cracked that yet.

You: You seem to be doing ok.

Jane: The operative word there is “seem.”

I seem to be doing ok. I have not just a job but a career. I’ve done the thing that I thought I had to do for my life to have meaning and not just once or twice, but, depending on how you count, four to 10 times (the novels, I’m talking about the novels, not the revolutions). I’ve birthed and almost shepherded into adulthood some fabulous new humans. If I died in a fiery car crash tomorrow — I think about this a lot — I’d largely have no regrets.

The thing is, I have to live for another 28 years, give or take half a decade on either side (but no more, please, and I’m ok with less). At least 15 of them should be productive, creative, meaningful, working towards some kind of larger purpose beyond that of keeping myself and my children alive, fed and housed. Right?

Or is that a first world whine, a neurosis of affluence?

ii

Sometimes, I just want to be a cat. A kept woman. A retired snowbird. An entitled parasite.

Sometimes, even the little that I do seems to take too much effort.

Sometimes, I want to sleep and not wake up.

iii

I always wake up.

I always do what needs to be done.

I always find something to chase, to build, to dream about.

Often, it takes a while, butI always get there. Eventually.

I’ll get here this time too. Eventually. Hopefully before my 50th birthday.

I’d like that.

iv

Interlude from a coffee shop, unedited:

The three baristas behind the counter form a funny triad. He’s at least 6’4, a mountain of a man. Not a Rocky Mountain — maybe that’s the wrong metaphor. He’s more of a giant hill —  sloped, rounded shoulders, a bell of a belly, a triple chin, an overall impression of softness. But you can’t say, a giant hill of a man. Bad metaphor. A mountain of a man. But mountain of a man makes you think of someone… less squishy. More powerful. Work on that. Still. Mountain of a man. He towers over his two colleagues, both female. They barely reach his belly button. Ok, I lie. But they definitely do not reach his chest. Their size difference would make a sex scene quite difficult to write. Don’t go there, why did you write that? But seriously. To talk to him, they crane their necks up at an angle that looks painful. He also cranes his down. All that craning. Ouch.

One of the small women likes him and thinks he’s funny. She’s laughing, chatting, flirting — tilting her head up like a flirty bird. The other is intimidated. By his size? By the repertoire between the other two? She talks to both of them always from a distance.

But she cranes her neck up when she talks.

When he leaves — end of shift? Just a break — and the two small women are left alone, they don’t talk to each other.

Yes, small, not short. That’s the right word. They are not just short but small in my head. An objective assessment or did their mountain of a colleague shrink them?

I don’t think there is an idea here. Is there?

v

Maybe it’s not a problem.

Maybe we’re not supposed to know.

No.

I need to know.

I need to be working towards something, building something.

Feeding the kids and paying the rent is not enough, it never was.

First World neurosis, mediocre artist problems.

vi

I plot out a love triangle between the three baristas but I’m in a mood. One ends up dead in the coffee shop bathroom, one of the lam, one devoured by guilt, everyone alone.

I do a take two.

This time, everyone dies.

When I leave the coffee shop, I feel like a murderer. The two women behind the counter — their mountainous colleague never came back — smile at me, say goodbye.

I avoid their eyes.

You should not look into the eyes of the dead. It’s bad luck.

vii

I have a problem but perhaps it’s not what I think it is.

And it could be worse, right?

At least I know who I am. 

Do you?

Xoxo

“Jane”

Project “The Rest of My Life is More Important Than Work” begins today

So the therapist I’m working with now – wait, before I tell you that, a caveat – the therapist I’m working with now exists only in my imagination, because the last one was so bad. But that’s ok. I have a fecund imagination and I’m a Gemini: magicking up a virtual therapist who disagrees with everything I say, believe and want to do is not hard.

With that caveat – the therapist I’m working with right now (in my imagination), unmindful of the reasons for which I’ve fired the last one, says that I’ll be much happier, fulfilled and healthier if I care less about my work.

And I might actually be ready to listen to her.

The last two years have been the first time in more than twenty years that I’ve had a job-job – applying my skills on behalf of one employer, for a salary, instead of, with every gig, article, script, book, building my brand(s) and business.

The difference between the two pursuits is immense. After two years of the job-job, while I value the stability and security of that biweekly paycheque (people, it’s amazing, it appears in my bank account like clockwork, and I never have to remind, plead, cajole or threaten legal action to get it), I’m starting to realize that giving my all to it, the way I did to the “I’m working for me” job, is not serving me.

When you’re engaged in creative work and when you’re basically your own employer and sole shareholder, the separation between work and life is blurred at best – impossible to achieve on the most meaningful projects. And not necessarily desirable. Some of the best work I’ve produced has been the result of personal passion, fueled by the demands of daily life. The process was arduous, but the end result, worth it, so worth it.

I was still in that place, trying to find ways to keep that fire going in the face of Flora’s illness and other pressures, when my (real-life, now fired) therapist suggested that perhaps the solution to my struggle was caring less about my work.

I fired her, stopped going to therapy and kept on caring, passionately, about every word, sentence, paragraph, project, initiative.

Today?

I’m very, very tired, and as my imaginary therapist echoes her words, I pause and ponder. Bringing that same level of passion and dedication to a Monday-to-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Eastern Time) salaried job, in which I have limited (zero) control over and, most of the time, inadequate knowledge of, the strategic vision of not-my-business? Recipe for angst, stress and unhappiness.

The cure, unfortunately, is probably that elusive Buddhist detachment: I do my best – for 35 hours a week – and I let go of the outcome. And I expand zero energy thinking, “OMG, I could do much better work if,if, if  [long list of things outside my control].”

So suggests my imaginary therapist.

She’s not saying work is an illusion (although sometimes, me, I do think work is an illusion). Her point is that all my pain points related to the job-job will disappear as soon as I stop caring so much…

And, dammit, she’s probably right.

Except, of course… passion is the secret sauce. Technique makes you competent. Passion makes you extraordinary.

Therapist: You’re sabotaging yourself. Again.

Jane: You’re fired.

Yes, you can fire your imaginary therapist. Her replacement sits down beside me.

Imaginary therapist 2: Where were we?

Jane: I want to bring my all to my work, and not be stressed about things outside of my control, and to definitely not bring that stress into my non-work life and, also, to have all the time – chronological and emotional – for my kids, my loves, my friends, my writing and dancing.

Imaginary therapist 2: Have you tried meditation? Or medication?

So she’s fired.

And I’m on my own again.

Still. Project The Rest of My Life is More Important Than Work begins today – as does a search for a new therapist. Perhaps a flesh and blood one this time, but no promises on that. I don’t need a therapist to tell me to meditate, take baths and walks, and smell the roses.

I need one that will help me dismantle the structure and conventions of today’s workplace while still collecting a biweekly paycheque.

In the meantime… I’m going to not work on Tuesday afternoon so that I can go to my youngest son’s year-end celebration at school and I’m not going to feel guilty about it.

Baby steps people, baby steps.

xoxo

“Jane”

On not buying a new notebook

I’m on page 136 of 250 in a bright yellow Leuchtturm 1917 hardcover notebook — my favourite notebook type and brand, yes, I’ve just inserted an unpaid product placement in this post, sorry. Each notebook lasts me two to three months. It’s where the Morning Pages and first drafts of posts, skeleton sketches of ideas and occasional texts live. (Yes, I sometimes draft texts longhand, don’t you? Perhaps you should. Halfway through the drafting, 90% of the time, I decide to make a phone call instead… or NOT send the text, let the argument go. And if I do decide to send that text? It’s PERFECTLY crafted. #highlyrecommendedcommunicationpractice — no, I don’t think that hashtag will catch on but how about #hrcp? ok I’m lost in a digression, let’s move on…)

Shopping lists also live in the notebooks, ditto bad poems (first and final drafts of). And, when I’m writing the way I want to be writing, the notebook is my process journal, the place in which I ponder how and when to kill grandma and where did I go wrong with the hero’s character development, because he is such a soppy milquetoast (it’s a GREAT word, look it up), I don’t ever want to be trapped in a conversation with him, so why should Amelia be remotely attracted to him when he trips over her umbrella and falls down at her feet?

Anyway, point: I’m on page 136 of 250 (137 now), more than 100 blank pages to go, and I want to abandon this notebook and start a new one.

Don’t get me wrong: if you ask me, ever, “Jane, look at this cute notebook, should I get it?” the answer is always, Yes.” If you’re a working writer and you enjoy working longhand, there is no such thing as too many notebooks. You’ll get to it eventually.

(But if you’re looking for a gift for me, please don’t get me a notebook. I’m particular: it needs to be hardcover, the lines need to be a certain size — too narrow or too wide and my experience is 100 per cent affected, the paper has to take fountain pen ink well, the size of the page needs to be just right and, god, it’d better lie flat when opened, how do they even get away with making notebooks that don’t do that? Dammit, I’m digressing again, it’s because I’m afraid to write about the thing I actually need to write about…)

The reason I want to get a new notebook now is because I want to abandon the current one. I want a hard break between today’s writing and tomorrow’s first line and I want it because I hope that new notebook will galvanize me into doing that thing I need to do right now — take one of my six unfinished manuscripts and take it across the finish line.

Yes. I currently basically have almost as many unfinished manuscripts than I have published novels – more if you count the 2020 trilogy as one mega novel rather than three novellas.

This is not ok. 

They’re not even rejected manuscripts. They’re just… unfinished. So close to finished — Matilda a final proof away from being ready for an agent’s and publisher’s eyes.

A new notebook will get me doing what I need to do do finish them, right?

You don’t have to answer.

I know the answer is, “Wrong.”

I know this. But I’m kinda thinking… maybe? Sometimes, a hard break, not just a new page but a new notebook is what you need to mark the end of one thing (procrastination, paralysis?) and the beginning of another (execution!). How else do you really make a commitment to the change you’re promising yourself?

Well… you just do it.

But I’m not doing it.

Maybe a new notebook… and if doesn’t help, surely, at least it won’t hurt?

Jane to Jane: Or, you could use the time you’d spend going to the store to get that new notebook to, you know. Write those final chapters of Bingo. Proof Matilda.

Jane to Jane: But I just don’t think I’ll do that until I get that new notebook.

Jane to Jane: I don’t think you’ll do that if you get a new notebook.

Jane to Jane: I hate you.

Jane to Jane: The feeling is mutual.

ii

Let me name the demon again, shall I? I know it intimately. The last time I set aside a generous block of time in which to focus on finishing Bingo – and also, to plan my writing year and quarter – I had a bit of a breakdown and cried for two hours instead.

So here’s the thing, here’s the demon.

The five years between the publication of my first novel and the publication of the last were really, really hard.

They sucked.

They had good moments, of course, and lots of photogenic highlights, but they were the worst years of my life to date.

I create the novelist and the novels as a way of getting through them.

I feel, right now, as if I’ve come through… a very dark forest, or that part in a video game where you just keep on dying and being forced to relive, over and over again, a really awful, unenjoyable part of the terrain.

I don’t want to go back.

And I haven’t quite figured out how to make my way back to the good parts — the writing, the finishing, the publishing — without revisiting, reliving all those shitty bits I want to keep in the past.

Him: Well, if you know what’s wrong…

Jane: We’ve been over this. Self-awareness is actually not enough.

I suppose what will happen is that I will not get a new notebook.

And I will not finish Bingo before the end of the month.

But I will finish it eventually?

iii

I am not getting a new notebook today.

I am writing this post, and I am looking at Bingo, and what I need to do to it. Also, All in the Cards. Clearly, what I should do, is proof Matilda and send her out into the world, but that’s too easy. And I’m thinking about writing a new short story about a wanna be dominatrix called Tina and her best friend Fran and I’m thinking I might have them discover a body in the dungeon and maybe what I really need to do right now, instead of finishing one of those six romances, is to write a murder mystery?

Help.

At least I’m writing and not shopping for a new notebook. Right?

xoxo

“Jane”

It’s beginning to look a lot like (a writer’s) Christmas

The tree – fake, prelit, about five feet tall, $50 on Kijiji – is up. Fifty dollars, tbh, seems a bit high for a hand-me down tree. I mean, you don’t need it anymore because you bought a $300 or $900 new fake tree this year. You should, by rights, be paying me to take this unwanted, inferior tree away from your house. No? You really need that $50 to recoup your original 1990s costs or to offset the cost of your new $900 tree?

Yes, Virginia, there are $900 artificial trees. And, there are $600 trees on Kijiji. I quote: Prelit 7.5 foot Christmas free – some brand I’ve never heard of – $600. Ad text: Like new. Paid $900, asking $600.

Kitten. You may have been dumb enough to pay $900 for a Christmas free, I’m not dumb enough to pay $600 for a used Christmas tree. (Not even if it’s vintage or antique—but it’s not.)

Anyway—Christmas tree is up, the one glass ornament we bought is already in a thousand pieces and in the garbage. Within minutes of the tree’s erection (ha ha), the cats liberate two or three plastic red apples from the bottom branches and bat them around the house. I feel good. Almost in the mood to put on Christmas carols. Or, at least, Wham.

It’s a good day: hell is thawing and the temperatures are hovering around zero Celsius and not -100.* I’ve been up three hours before the crack of dawn and I’ve already worked and I feel guilt-free and entitled to take a 20 minute writing break. Funny thing about my job btw: I’ve been hired for my writing expertise but I don’t write enough at work to maintain it. None of us do. We work, hard, for sure, but nobody on my team has ever written at the pace a journalist with a daily or a romance novelist writes – the pace that really hones the craft and expertise and kills the myth of writer’s block. There’s something to be said for the expertise and practice sheer volume (and the fear of real deadlines) gives you.

In my prior life, a light month would have me producing 10,000 words of long-form copy – and that’s just the stuff that would be published. When I’m working on a novel, that’s the weekly – or weekend – word count target.

The end result of all that practice is that even when I’m bad and inspired, I’m pretty good at getting the words out – and fixing yours.

Practice.

A few months into the now not-so-new job, I noticed that I wasn’t writing enough to stay where I want to be. It’s not like riding a bicycle. It’s more like running competitively. Just because you’ve trained to run a marathon doesn’t mean that ability stays with you once you stop practicing. So I’ve incorporated additional writing practice into my slower workdays, on top of my Morning Pages and my personal writing. I write and rewrite headlines and leads as I read industry articles. I write ad copy for ads we’ll never publish. I’m turning my work bullet journal into a mini blog. I have to keep my claws sharp.

Flora: Workaholic, also, I think I’m starting to see where some of my issues might come from.

Jane: You know what? I’m sick and tired of people who don’t love their jobs and don’t excel at what they do calling people who are really committed to doing good work workaholics.

Flora: Don’t yell at me. I see my future and it’s scary.

Jane: It shouldn’t be. Mastery is intoxicating and flow is the best high.

Back to writing: I’m prepping notes for a couple of new writers’ conference presentations and looking for a new way to say the same old thing: Practice, practice, practice and also, find yourself a ruthless editor who will strip you of your ego and make you understand that the only thing that matters is whether the story works…

Flora: Speaking of, what is this story about?

Jane: Our new Christmas tree and me having a good day. Stop interrupting.

So it’s a good day because I’ve worked and I’m writing and it’s not too cold outside and the cats haven’t toppled the Christmas tree yet. Also, coffee is delicious and my new writing nook is adorable. I found it – or rather, its contents – at a thrift store ($25 for the table, $25 for the chair) while looking for a non-$600 Christmas tree.

I still kind of feel I overpaid at $50. But I understand – inflation, also greed. I don’t regret it. It’s a one-time expense and I’ll likely leave it in my will to Ender. Or post it on Kijiji in 2050 for $900: Vintage Christmas tree, only slightly pre-chewed by cats. You know you want it.

xoxo

“Jane”

*written December 8, before hell froze over again

More drama, please

Have you ever noticed that the people who tell you “I’m not the type of person who…” are guaranteed to be the type of person who, precisely that?

And, the people who tell you, at every turn, “No drama, please!” and criticize friends, lovers, and strangers for bringing drama into their lives—they aren’t just drama magnets, but drama creators?

Weird.

But maybe not…

Let me be honest and contradictory: me, I like drama. I prefer Macbeth and Hamlet to As You Like It and Love’s Labour Lost. I’d rather watch murder mysteries than sit-coms. And I like life to be… well, interesting. If you bore me, I won’t hang out with you—or work for you—but neither will I create drama in our dynamic to spice things up.

I’ll just move on.

Drama creation is on my mind these days because a friend-acquaintance of mine seems to be particularly bored in her life right now and hell-bent on making it more interesting by manufacturing drama. I get it—a boring life is, well, boring. It does not use up enough psychic energy, and all that energy needs to go somewhere. If I felt entitled to give her advice, I’d suggest she take up knitting or woodworking, maybe Zumba, aerial yoga or karate—but making such suggestions would be officious and, really, neither her boredom nor her theatricals are any of my business. I can watch from the sidelines and be amused—or decide that the show is tedious and move on.

A friend who has known me since I’ve achieved sentience—for me, that happened at 17, not seven, I guess I was a late bloomer—fixates on, almost idolizes this aspect of my character, this ability to define a clear boundary and maintain it—to move on from relationships. He keeps on getting sucked in by manufactured drama and, inevitably, becomes not just compliant in the drama, but its active co-creator.

Jane: You can stop texting. You can hang up. Leave the room. Unfollow, unfriend, delete and block the contact.

Him: But I can’t!

And he really can’t. Weird thing: unlike me, he’d probably say he doesn’t really want life to be interesting. He’d prefer it to be, if not outright boring, then at least largely predictable. He’ll protest this assessment, I expect—no one likes to be tagged as wanting things to be stable. (But they don’t like drama! No drama, please!)

As I write and reflect, I think that perhaps I lie: yes, I want life to be interesting. But I also want large chunks of it to be predictable. Predictably interesting, is that a thing? I thrive on routines, and so do my kids—Laundry Monday, Tuesday night dancing, Wednesday night movies, Friday night rambling and tacos, Saturday morning Pilates (hey, that worked for a while, maybe I should bring that back), Sunday night board games. I want to have a rough road map for how my day, week, year will unfold—when most things are predictable and constant, the unexpected and the dramatic, be it good or bad, when it comes, shakes things up just enough. I can ride it, enjoy it, thrive on it too.

When everything is out of control—I’m looking at you, 2013, 2019, 2020—everything sucks, including drama.

Well past the halfway point for 2022, I feel I’m still rebuilding my anchors and routines, crafting the predictability that lets me enjoy chaos. It’s going well: I’m now creating some space for boredom—not to create drama in your life or mine, but in my head.

I tend to channel my thirst for drama, when it comes, into story. Rachel’s grandmother is dead, now it’s time to pick up the pieces—is this the fall that I finally write Noelle’s story, go back to Felicia Elizabeth Jay’s drama, is my life stable enough that I can engage in my favourite type of drama again?

Here’s some dialectics for you (mostly me): Each one of my novels to date was conceived and completed in chaos, against a back drop of severe unpredictability. The novel was the anchor—my writing practice the key thing that gave a semblance of stability to my life.

A lot of things are giving me stability right now. If I can accept that the chaos of the pandemic (if not the pandemic itself) has firmly retreated into the past, my life right now is the most predictable it has ever been. I’ve never had so much certainty, security.

Yes, this means I’m about to start manufacturing drama to make it more interesting.

Let’s hope that it stays on the page…

xoxo

“Jane”

Today, I’m going to kill grandma

I’ve been thinking about killing grandma for days—weeks, maybe even months—and today, I’m finally going to do it.

Don’t feel bad for her. She’s ninety-three—maybe even ninety-seven, I have to double-check, hey, don’t judge, she doesn’t keep count anymore, not since she’s outlived all her friends—Mabel was the last to go, at ninety-two—and she’s had a good life, for the most part. A harsh beginning, child of the depression, and a challenging middle, unwed mother when that was not an ok thing, but until the broken hip a few months ago, she’s really lived her best life. Since the injury, she’s been bed-bound and while not miserable—hers is not a miserable character—she’s not been happy. She’s said to the people around her that she’s ready to go with, with increasing frequency.

I’ve known killing her is the right thing to do for a long time. What’s held me back is not quite knowing how to do it. Should she pass away in her sleep, to be found in the morning by the cleaner, the day nurse or her granddaughter’s roommate? Should Rachel—the granddaughter—be the one to find her? (Generally, I don’t want Rachel to find her—I want the news to be mediated, I want her to want to kill the messenger—I don’t want to miss that chance at drama.) Should she, maybe, die mid-conversation with Dark and Stormy—or, while texting on the phone? (Part of the storyline: she’s catfishing young men on Tinder. Because she’s bored. She’s that kind of ninety-three year old grandma.) Maybe I kill her while she’s sneaking in a wheelchair joyride down the condo corridor? Should she have a big fight with Rachel just before she dies, and leave her granddaughter dealing with even more guilt?

Or should they work all their shit out first?

I don’t want to mess her death up because it’s important. It pulls the rug out from under Rachel—takes away the one constant in her life, which is also her excuse for not doing certain things. It lets me shatter her, completely. The grandmother’s death is necessary.

And, it will let me write the funeral scene, which is key and awesome. I’ve been carrying that one in me for months too—I know exactly how to write it. But I won’t let myself do it until I get the death scene right.

So. Today. The end of grandma’s life. I think she’d appreciate a somewhat theatrical death. Where are we in the story timeline? Is it summer yet? Can I make it Canada Day? Stampede? Pride?

She wants a day at Pride. She dies mid-Parade, but, a la Weekend at Bernie’s, Rachel and her crew take her around the whole island first, because she has a bucket list to check-off. No, not Rachel. Rachel gets called away (work? She’s a workaholic, I’ve established) and leaves her grandmother with her friends, isn’t there for the death and the day… of course, police end up being called in—why, exactly, did they not call an ambulance as soon as they noticed the woman was unwell, dead?—and Rachel extricates her friends from the situation, but she hates them. Oh, she hates them—for being there for Adinah when she wasn’t—and she hates herself.

Ok, I think that will work. I’ll kill her at Pride. I can seed some “My only granddaughter is a lesbian and I’ve never even been to a Calgary Pride parade, never mind New York or San Francisco. How did that happen?” into the first act.

She’ll have heads around her neck and a lap full of candy and condoms.

And she’ll die happy.

(I’m still not sure about Rachel. She should be there—she’d want to be there—but does it all work better if she’s not there?)

(Writer problems.)

I’m off to kill grandma. Don’t call the police.

xoxo

“Jane”

Hunting ghosts: hopefully, not a metaphor

Sometimes, my cat sees things that I don’t see—and yes, this freaks me out. What can a cat see that I don’t see? It can only be three things, really: rodents, insects, or ghosts. Of the three, there’s only one I don’t mind having in my house—and it’s not mice. Or insects.

My daughter mocks me for believing in ghosts. And it’s not that I believe in them, exactly. It’s just that I don’t… disbelieve in them. I’ve felt atmosphere of places polluted by past tragedy, the weight of history, paralyzing sadness—also, overwhelming joy, sense of sacredness… I’ve felt spooked, and warned.. Terrified. And, also, protected.

Flora: Therefore, ghosts?

Jane: Therefore, why not ghosts?

Flora: How are you an atheist and how I am your daughter?

I don’t think atheism is at odds with thinking ghosts might be thing. Shadows, residual energy, memories so powerful they outlive the corporeal form? I’m sure if I tried, I could come up with a pseudo-scientific explanation for ghosts, aka Ghostbusters, ghost hunters or The Sixth Sense.

But I don’t need one.

I just think—you know, they might exist… and I don’t need a because.

Flora: So not a scientist.

I make no claim to be a scientist as I take my budding scientist across Alberta ghost towns. She, of course, is hunting for physical things: animal bones, owl pellets, coyote carcasses. If we ever find a human skull, I expect she will expire from sheet joy right on the spot—perhaps becoming a ghost that haunts that place ever after.

Me, I’m looking for stories, which is pretty much the same as looking for ghosts. Who lived here? How did they live, laugh, suffer? How did they die? Why did they leave—what did they leave behind? If they saw this physical ruin of their past, would they experience pleasure or pain? What do they regret? If they could live life over again, would they choose to live it in this isolated prairie town?

Sometimes, we find real people. They can be scarier and sadder than ghosts.

I’m thinking about ghosts because last week, a work colleague and I attended a collaborative writing workshop in which we set down the bones of a play—a scene, really—about a ghost haunting the Banff Springs hotel, because—of course—love and betrayal. It was a fun exercise and a stimulating workshop.

And it got me thinking about ghosts—and whether my cat really sees them. (I think she does.) Also, writing, the process of. Also, how annoying I find ‘aspiring’/’amateur artists and writers who take four years to finish—more often, not finish—a play or a project and who set themselves as somehow better than the people who actually write, create for a living every day.

I find myself annoying in that same way too. It is two years now since I’ve finished a novel. I’m writing… but not enough. And I’m not polishing, finishing—publishing.

My shitty first drafts haunt me, like ghosts.

Flora: Maybe that’s what your cat is staring at.

Jane: Mean. But fair.

As the cat stares at ghosts, I stare at her. She is aesthetically perfect, absurdly beautiful. Is she happy, fulfilled in her limited, safe pet life? Does her inner hunter need an outlet more meaningful than stalking spiders, dreaming of mice, imagining ghosts?

(She is not a metaphor.)

She stretches. Yawns. Curls up into a graceful ball and sleeps.

(OMG, is she a metaphor?)

I close my eyes and listen to the whispers of ghosts.

xoxo

“Jane”

Hierarchy of needs

i

On the mornings when Bumblebee the beast sleeps at my house, I start my morning serving the biological needs of the pets. The dog’s bladder trumps the cat’s stomach—although by the dirty look I get as I slide on a coat over my pyjamas and put a leash on the Bumblebee, it’s clear that the cat disagrees.

I tell the cat—Disobedient Sinful Disaster, or SinSin for short—I’ll feed her as soon as I come back. She does not believe me, even though this drama plays out pretty much every morning. When I come back ten minutes later, she is lying on the floor, dying of hunger. How could I?

I feed her before I make my coffee.

That’s the natural order of things: the dog’s bladder, the cat’s stomach, my addiction. I pour water into the kettle, grind the beans, and enjoy every moment of the ritual. Then I take the tray with my Frida Kahlo cup, off-brand Bodum, cardamom and cinnamon to the sofa, sit down, open my notebook, uncap the pen and take my first sip as I write the first lines of my morning pages.

(Julia Cameron would disapprove. She’d say walking the dog, feeding the cat and making coffee have all woken me up too much and my sleepy subconscious won’t be present on the page; the censoring consciousness will obtrude. I don’t buy it. I’ve written first thing the morning before walking the dog or feeding the cat—occasionally before coffee—and it is more or less the same. Sometimes painful, sometimes easy—always grounding.)

Today, I am not sure how much time I’ll have to rest on the page. There’s a lanky child sleeping on my sofabed, so the coffee and morning pages are with me in the bedroom. A child’s needs trump everything else. I need to work—he needs to sleep—if he does not wake up before my first scheduled meeting, I’ll take my work laptop in the bedroom. If he wakes up before I finish my pages, I’ll stop writing.

When I was at home with him every morning, I’d make him—all of them—wait.

”Mommy’s writing. I’ll be with you as soon as I’m finished.” When he was little, he’d crawl into my lap or sit beside me as I wrote. As he got older, he’d abandon my lap, occasionally and then more frequently, for electronics.

Now, at 12, he’s old enough to get his own breakfast. I know that.

He never gets his own breakfast at Mom’s house—the sleepovers are still too few and too precious.

Both his dad and I would prefer if he spent more nights at my place. But children’s needs trump parents’ wants and needs—we had broken that rule with our separation—and what he needs most of the time in his bed, in his room, in the only house he’s ever lived in.

(You do see why he doesn’t make his own breakfast when he’s at my place?)

I find myself pouring a second cup of coffee before I finish my first page, and I frown. I’m not that caffeine deprived—slow, down! Relish and sip, don’t gulp. One of my partners shares my addiction, the other has mocked it for seven years and refuses to feed it. I recognize it for what it is, both a physical and an emotional habit. I’ve let go of it in the past, for months.

But I’ve always come back, because no Japanese mushroom or grain concoction tastes this good, or loves me back this  much.

(My coffee whispers sweet nothings into my ear. Doesn’t yours?)

My son wakes up and stumbles into the threshold of my bedroom.

“Foods?” he says, as if he’s four and not a preteen. He’s often four at Mom’s house, in Mom’s presence, these days. I think that’s the way it needs to be, for a while—Flora, my daughter, 17 and too clever by half, thinks we both need therapy.

I expect we’re both right.

I take a sip of coffee and a breath. I tell him I just need to finish my writing, and I’ll make him breakfast right away then. He tells me he’s going to torment—er, cuddle—the cat while he waits.

I write faster. Then take another breath. Slow down. Take a sip of coffee. Rest on the page.

ii

I’ve just finished teaching a four week course for writers that’s not so much about writing as it is about organizing your life so that you have time for writing—and, also, about thinking in terms of writing practice, not just focusing on, chasing the finished product.

In the course, I talk about the art of radical prioritization, the lie of multi-tasking, the freedom of discipline—and how you only ever have as much time as you are willing to give to yourself.

People generally leave the classes feeling empowered and energized, as do I.

This time around, teaching the class highlights for me, again, what a lifeline my morning pages are, and how often they lead to a morning writing sprint, a draft essay, an outline of a blog post, an idea for a scene or a new story or even book. They are foundational to my writing practice.

But they are not enough. Practice is important. But so is performance.

And product.

Ender: Mom? Are you still writing? I’m starving.

I’m still writing. Then I’m going to make my son breakfast, and also feed myself. For a few hours, I’ll juggle being present for him with working from home—my least favourite thing, because there is no such thing as multitasking. Then I’ll take him to his dad’s house so that Sean does the juggling, and I’ll return to work more focused.

(Maybe I’ll even run over to the office, because we can do that now.)

And in the evening, I’ll write again. In-between, I’ll walk the dog. Feed the cat again. Finish my taxes. Maybe meet you for a drink.

It will be a good day.

“Jane”

P.S. Drafted April 21, which turned out to be not that good a day, but not bad either—thoroughly average, let’s say, with bad news and challenging moments interspersed with small victories and deliveries of support and love. But it started and ended on the page, and in-between, other needs were met. For me, that’s almost always what makes a good day.

What’s your anchor, bookend, consistent key to a good day?

Yeah? You gonna do that today? And tomorrow?

You should…

On work, time and money: Happy first anniversary to me

One year ago, I started a new job.

It was—is—my first Monday-to-Friday, 9-5 (more like 7-3, because I work on Toronto time, really, well, 7-5, because also, Calgary and Vancouver—point: people expect me to be reachable from 7 a.m. until whenever it is that they finish work)—and I haven’t had to pay attention to days of the week or hours of the day since, yeah, July 2000.

(I am now so old that I have 20+ years of experience as a freelance writer and 30+ years of industry experience, when da fuq did that happen?)

(I also have a child who’s about to turn 20—again, when did this happen? How? But I digress.)

As you have no doubt inferred, I’m having a moment. Anniversaries always throw me for a loop, and I have a birthday just around the corner that’s only two circles around the sun shy of 50, so I’m, you know. Reflective. That’s the word. Reflective. Not angsting. Definitely not angsting (yet).

Anywhere… where was I?

One year ago, I started a new job, my first Monday-to-Friday type thing since the year 2000—the turn of the century (!!).My brother outright asked me—“Do you think you can handle it?” We both knew he didn’t mean the technical aspects of the work. He meant Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday, 9 a.m.—well, 7 a.m.—to 5 p.m. Routine. Predictability.

(Pro tip: When someone asks you, “Can you handle it?” always say, “Yes.” You don’t need their doubts in your head—your own are enough.)

I’ve been handling it—killing it, really—for a year now. The pandemic lockdown and work from home orders definitely eased the transition. I’ve been working not in an office, under my own supervision, for more than 20 years and initially, very little had changed. It wasn’t until I was in the office physically for the first time, with my team, more than six months into the new adventure, that I really felt I had a job.

As I celebrate my first anniversary, we’ve slowly going back into the office, in a new, hybrid model—work from the office, work from home, work where you like, just work together and get the work done. I’m mostly happy about this—a little worried that too many people will choose to work at home most of the time and I’ll be as lonely in the office as I get in my living room. But I appreciate the flexibility of the model, which stems from the recognition of how well we worked together from the isolation of our respective homes.

This stage of going back has its challenges. I only have two suitable for work outfits. I can’t quite remember how to pack a lunch. I keep on forgetting that it takes time to actually get to the office.

Transit time. It’s a thing!

When I do go in—I’m aiming for two to three days a week—I’m often alone on my floor and that’s not much different from being alone in my living room, except that there’s no place where I can have my post-prandial power nap. (Note to hybrid world architects, at my employer and elsewhere: nap rooms! Or yoga mats besides each desks and officially sanctioned yoga nidra sessions during that dreaded mid-afternoon productivity slump—think about it.)

When there are two or three of us, it’s a party, and when we all come in for a team meeting or lunch, all is bliss.

Still, overall, I’m thriving. This is surprising a lot of people—my brother, who thinks of me as a non-conformist hippy born in the wrong generation, for one, also, my corporate world loving lover in Toronto, who conceptualizes me as a flighty artist who has to be coached on how to dress appropriately before leaving the house. To be honest, even I’m surprised—who would have thought I’d find this industry so interesting, and this particular corporate assignment so fulfilling?

There are trade-offs. I can’t do all of the things. I give the job my all, which has taken moonlighting and freelancing mostly off the table. I miss some of those opportunities—a journalist gets to meet all sorts of fascinating people and hear so many stories. I’m teaching again, but just a little, and that’s lovely, but it makes for long and intellectually and emotionally demanding days. I haven’t quite figured out where to carve out the time for the novelist. She’s writing—she’s always writing—in the mornings, on the edges, on weekends. When she’ll find the desire and energy—it’s not a question of time—to submit, to publish, market,  I’m not sure—that’s never been her favourite thing. I expect she’ll manage somehow, eventually—she always does.

Time is, for sure, more rigid. There are still twenty-four hours in each seven day week, but not all of them belong to me. I can’t spontaneously take a sunny day off and take the kids to the river or on an impromptu road trip. I can’t go for a mid-day two hour walk with you when you drop by unexpectedly. Everything has to be scheduled—we’re lucky if I can tear myself away from my portable office for a fifteen minute coffee.

But right now, it’s all worth it.

What makes it worth it is, first of all—I won’t pretend—the money. It magically appears in my bank account every two weeks, a nice, predictable amount, and I still feel I don’t have to do anything for it. No invoice, no follow up invoice, no begging email, no semi-threatening phone call… it’s just there. All I have to do to get it is work. Amazing!

Also, the people—I’ve been professionally lonely for a while and the pandemic exacerbated that by taking way what writing community I had, so I’m loving having colleagues. Brainstorm sessions. Peer reviews. Professional development support.

Most of all? The daily recognition is da bomb. I’m really, really good at the work, and people reflect that back at me all the time. I’m not conflict-free about this—there are moments, when I look at my job satisfaction and tell myself, “Really? This makes you high? This is your purpose in life?” I struggle with its narrowness and limited impact.

But within that small sphere—I do make a substantial difference. And I make that difference with words, with my gift.

So happy anniversary to me, and thank you for coming to my Ted Talk…

“Jane”

P.S. I am going to take the time to type up and publish this post—yes, I’m drafting long-hand again—and as I do it, I’m going to reflect on the increasing reluctance I’ve felt over the past year of making most of my writing public, and poke about in that resistance.

But I won’t tell you to expect more posts from me, or a new novel from the novelist, in the months to come. I’m writing. Everyday. That’s key.

The sharing will come in its time.

As Julia Cameron says in The Artist’s Way, “The first rule of magic is containment.”

Also—and this is Mary Oliver, from “Black Oaks” in her poetry collection Blue Iris:

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another—why don’t you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.

But selling some time for money—well. It’s definitely working for me right now.

How to craft meaning in a cloud of smoke

i

I began the year with three and a half exhilarating weeks at work, followed by a massive setback/roadblock/slam into a brick wall that had me screaming, not just into a pillow, but into my headset on a Teams call—my director slid off their headphones so as not to puncture their eardrums—and plunged me into severe existential angst. Ever have days like that, months like that?

No, I figured not, just me. 😉

I’m working through the existential angst the way I always do—by walking for miles, writing down all the unsayable things, re-reading risque romance novels (K.J. Charles, thank you, from the bottom of my aching heart, for all your books, especially the Sins of the Cities series), smoking sheesha, arguing with Julia Cameron and reminding myself of my responsibilities to my children and other important people in my life… and also daydreaming about running away to Cuba and being Ernest Hemingway—but hey, he didn’t end so well, so perhaps he is not the role model I should be looking at right now, or ever.

(But, man, could Papa ever craft the world’s most perfect sentences.)

My bouts of existential angst always boil down to the very simple question of “Why am I here?” … and “to craft a collection of perfect sentences” seems like a pretty inadequate life purpose.

Maybe I’m confusing skill with purpose, talent with meaning.

ii

Because the human brain is wired to look for patterns (and stories) in the randomness thrown at us by our senses, The Marginalian’s Maria Popova chooses this moment to pop into my inbox with Thich Nhat Hahn’s epiphanic loss of self—and discovery of his true nature:

Yet every time we survive such a storm, we grow a little. Without storms like these, I would not be who I am today. … when such a frenzied hurricane strikes, nothing outside can help. I am battered and torn apart, and I am also saved.

…

I, too, will soon disappear.

…

Some life dilemmas cannot be solved by study or rational thought. We just live with them, struggle with them, and become one with them… To live, we must die every instant. We must perish again and again in the storms that make life possible.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Fragrant Palm Leaves

Ok, Maria, not helpful. I don’t want to just live with my dilemmas, dammit. I want to solve them.

iii

The thing about creative work is that while you’re engaged in it, you can’t think too much—at all?—about reception. The inner critic is hard enough to silence; if you let the outer critic shape the work as you’re drafting, you will never finish anything worth sharing.

And once you share it, when the outer critics start second-guessing you… while you’re listening to them—and you have to listen to them, because critical feedback is, you know, critical—it’s very difficult to shut them, and the inner critic, out on the work you haven’t yet shared.

But I digress. I’m just chasing thoughts where they want to go.

I’m going to give them free reign for a few more hours.

Then, I will shape them.

iv

The thing about creative work that “aspiring” (I hate that adjective) writers and artists don’t understand is the amount of discipline it requires.

Moving out of existential angst requires a similar type of discipline.

Iron will.

I’m trying to find mine in a cloud of smoke.

v

Discipine, and that exercise of will, requires a clear sense of purpose. What I have learned over my decades (when did I get this old) of battling existential angst is that it doesn’t have to be the purpose.

It just has to be a purpose.

Sometimes, that purpose just needs to be—I need to get through this day, this hour, this minute.

But it helps if it’s a little bigger, more constructive than that.

vi

Constructive is a good word.

vii

We construct meaning. Purpose. We create our stories and our narratives before we live them.

Well, I suppose we can live them without construction, but I’ve never been capable of that kind of in-the-moment existence. Have you?

I chase clouds of smoke, looking for a way to shape the narrative.

viii

The nice thing about my existential angst is that it has been my fairly constant companion since age four, and the nice thing about being a storyteller is that I have a lot of experience in shaping its narrative. Bending it to my purpose.

I’ll do it again.

In the meantime, I’m going to read some K.J. Charles and meander through another cloud of smoke.

See you on the other side.

xoxo

“Jane”

Sitting on the couch and eating bonbons

My inner artist is very lazy these days, and much as I know that the only way to want to work is to start to work—desire comes from action—my default mode is still inertia and exhaustion. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not just sitting on my couch eating bonbons. I doing all the things that bring me a guaranteed revenue stream. The rent is paid.

But, instead of performing my labours of love, I am sitting on the couch—laying, really—eating bonbons.

Hey, at least I’m not drinking wine—day 11 of no alcohol here, dry January, kittens. It’s not hard exactly, it’s just that tea is an insipid beverage and water is so boring.

By the way, a friend one told me, “Tea is my poison,” and I almost had to terminate the relationship. Tea is nobody’s poison, nobody’s vice. IT’s the liquid equivalent of saying you eat too much kale, especially if you take it black. (Green?)

So, Day 11, no alcohol. I have not replaced it with weed, cigarettes or cocaine, so, you know, kudos to me all around.

Hey, it’s not cocaine.

All that as belaboured exposition to say—as I sit on the couch, not drinking wine and not doing my work, I’m waiting for boredom to set it. I mean, not doing anything is boring. I’m a driven, ambitious person with a high need for stimulation. Surely, any moment now, my inner artist will become so bored, she’ll get off the couch and create?

Problem is… I’m not bored. Not yet. The not doing doesn’t feel bad. It feels awesome. The couch, wine-free though it is (full disclosure, there is always chocolate within reach), is a great place to chill right now.

This may all be part of the process.

Or, I’m totally spent as an artist and I’ve become a regular Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-fiver working schmuck.

Where is that wine?

Part of the process. It’s part of the process.

Right?

😬

“Jane”

Accidental self-reflection, about, of course, writing

i

Hobbit hole. Baby, it’s cold outside, and the fireplace is roaring. The Giant Beast is sprawled on the couch beside me; the Svelte Beat is roaming the tiny apartment as if it were the Serengeti. I’ve got a cup of Turkish coffee beside me, and a lover tidying up in the bathroom.

I’m writing.

I don’t want to be self-reflecting, though. I realize this as I finish my morning pages, which flow well enough but which read more like a laundry list of the day’s and the week’s tasks than the “brain dump”—or space for self-reflection—that they’re supposed to be.

(A decade later, I’m still not sure if it’s possible to do the morning pages wrong, but if it is, mission accomplished. I think I do them wrong all the time. Still. I do them.)

The lover in the bathroom spent the weekend with me and between that and kids, I missed two days of morning pages since Thursday. So, no more. One missed day makes me feel off. Two missed days make me feel tetchy. Three missed days, and I am unwell.

So, I’m writing.

The people who love me value, encourage, and facilitate this need to write, be it the morning pages, these blog posts, the novels nobody reads or that other stuff.

That helps me stay on the path.

One word, one scene, one post at a time.

ii

I don’t want to be self-reflective and so I’m accidentally preachy.

(Side note: Flora and I debate earlier in the week weather accidental and unintentional are synonyms—I maintain that they are not, she’s not so sure. We also talk about the “Baby, it’s cold outside” lyrics, which she thinks are rapey, and which I think make total sense in the context and time in which they were written, and tell you a hell of a lot of about patriarchy and how fucked up gender roles and expectations still are, and, really, you want to combat rape culture, there are more practical ways of doing it than losing your shit over an American songwriter born in 1910, but hey, I’m old, what do I know.)

I definitely do not wish to be preachy either (man, it’s hard, when you’re in the mood to preach, everything‘s an opening–I am aware of what I did up there, thank you, let’s move on). One, nobody wants to be preached at—except, I suppose the people in church, but, maybe even there, really? They’re already converted: they don’t want to be preached at, just reassured. Preaching, kittens, is not how you change the world.

Two, who da’ fuq am I to tell you what to do?

Fortunately, the preachiness occurs primarily in the  morning pages and in drafts of posts I choose not to inflict on anyone else (except for that one, sorry, it slipped through). A moment of unintended self-reflection: if I’m preaching as a way of avoiding self-reflection, should I listen to what I am… Nah. I most definitely do not want to be preached at my myself.

iii

Today, I’m going to take the kids over to my parents for a pierogi-making marathon—assembly line might be a better metaphor—ok, it’s not a metaphor, it is a pierogi making assembly line.

I’m looking forward to it with an intensity that surprises me. Christmas is not the easiest time of year for me, but after last year?

Every holiday ritual, every chance to be with family, is extra precious.

iv

Baby, it’s cold outside, although not as cold as earlier this week. I’m a little bummed that you won’t get to read my panegyric about life in Viking Hell when it freezes over, because there are a few funny lines in there, but, alas, I’ve spoiled that with preachiness too. Still, nothing is wasted, everything is source material: the unpublishable blog post is still practice and process, and maybe I’ll use that turn of phrase elsewhere. Also, that particular cadence—I like it a lot. I’ll play with it some more, make it better.

The important thing is that I’m writing.

v

I’m writing, finally, again, the thing that I want to finish too. It’s not going well yet. I’m rusty and I have a hard time holding the plot line in my head. I don’t remember what seemed so obvious, inevitable ten months ago. But it doesn’t matter. I’m writing. One clunky sentence, one awkward scene at a time.

Novels get written, life gets lived in 15 minute increments.

Less.

I’m writing.

🙂

“Jane”

Still writing?

i

I pick up my Ender from his homeschool school—like school, but part-time, like school, but for weird, unsocialized homeschoolers, like school, but you can tell the teachers you don’t care about academics and grade level and if you see them screwing up your kid’s love of learning and confidence—OMG, none of this is relevant to this post, except that clearly, I still feel defensive about sending Ender to fake school at all, because I didn’t really want to and I wish I had been able to give him the full ten years pre-high school that his siblings got, but such is life and so far, he seems to be thriving—although it was a rocky start, point: I’m picking up Ender from school and as I’m circling the playground with the Bear called Bumblebee, I bump into someone from my previous life.

“Still writing?” she asks me after giving me a shorthand of what she’s been up to over the past decade.

(People always ask that. See Dani Shapiro’s Still Writing for a book-length riff on why that’s such a weird question for a writer.)

“Yes,” I say.

It feels like a lie. Because outside of my morning pages, the occasional blog post, and a handful of bad (so bad) poems, what am I writing?

Well, I write at work, but that’s not really writing, it’s more production… anyway. It feels like a lie and as I excuse myself and yank the dog to finish our round-the-playground loop, I force myself to examine why that “yes” feels like a lie.

The answer is the same as it was on the day I realized that despite the undisputable fact that I’ve made a full-time living writing since I’ve been 17, whenever I said, “I’m a writer” when people asked me what I did or who I was… it felt like a like.

Because real writers write books.

Novels.

I haven’t been working on a new novel since I paused Bingo in February or March. I haven’t even been trying to sell the finished one(s).

So am I writing?

The published titles on my shelf say, “At least you wrote.”

They mock me.

I’m still writing, I tell them.

I think…

ii

There is, of course, one way to NOT make myself feel like a liar and that’s to pick up Matilda, Honey or Bingo and take one of them across the finish line. Matilda just needs a proof and can be subbed. Honey needs a consistency edit and polish, and it’s ready for a beta reader. Bingo needs 50K more words, but that’s a month’s worth of work at most, full-time job, kids and lovers notwithstanding. I’m only working one job now and I live alone, with the kids coming and going only three or four days a week—I definitely have the time.

Why aren’t I writing?

iii

If I were a friend asking me for advice—please don’t—I’d remind them about the hell that was 2019, the strains of the pandemic, the divorce, the stress of living on imaginary money for eight months, the five months of working two and a half full-time jobs, and suggest that they stop being a self-aggrandizing queen (queen can be a gender neutral word) and cut themselves some slack—also, what about that memoir they just finished ghostwriting, what is that, chopped liver?

(It’s so good, btw. Coming to a silver screen near you one day soon, I’m sure of it. Well, I hope. Nothing is certain. But. It’s so good.)

But I’m me, staring at me, and I think that clearly, I need to stop reading Ann Cleeves novels, watching Brooklyn 99 (because, inter alia, ACAB), dancing and dating and, like, write.

At least proof.

So I don’t feel like a liar.

So I don’t disappear.

Because, as everybody knows, when a writer doesn’t write, she doesn’t exist.

iv

Ender had a great day at school and is excited about everything. He likes his math teacher—I like his math teacher—and he loves gym and recess. There’s too much homework, though, he complains. When we get home, I make him a snack and he gets on his computer to double-check what he needs to do for next week—ends up making rockets instead (also homework, but he was just supposed to make one—he makes at least six).

I make supper, assist him a little with the rocket production line, in-between, read The Healers by Ann Cleeves and check work email. Flora walks over in a bit to join us for supper—have I told you Cinder has flown not just the nest, but the province?—and we eat, then clean up and play Anomia.

I walk them to the Coop house in the dark. It’s still early, only 8:30—I could, I should write. Right after I walk the dog, I can write before bed—but on the days that I pick up Ender from school, I like to start work by 6:30 so that  I’m essentially done for the day by the time I leave to go get him from school and now, I just want to stretch out on the couch and read.

Be asleep before 10.

I write a couple of (very bad) poems and this blog post first.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS Still writing.

When someone who doesn’t believe in writer’s block doesn’t want to write…

i

For the second time in my life—no, wait, third—I’m having a hard time writing. For someone who does not believe in writer’s block, this is a most humbling admission. And when I say I’m having a hard time writing—I should clarify. I’m still writing for money. And I’m practicing in the Morning Pages. But as you’ve seen by the long stretches of time between blog posts, not a lot more than that.

I can’t claim lack of time as the culprit. I blame it in lack of energy—the pandemic, the continuing emotional and financial adjustment to the divorce (I have to make a lot more money now and all transitions, even good ones, are draining), missing my love who moved to Toronto, still adjusting to the demands and rhythms of my new job…

Lots of legit reasons, but, really, they’re also all just excuses. Clearly, right now, I don’t want to write enough… or I don’t know, I can’t sell myself on the purpose of writing.

My five years of trying to make it as a novelist battered me financially and weren’t that great on my ego either. Why should I pour myself into another novel that nobody will notice or read? That thing I did at work yesterday potentially affected 250,000 people, maybe more.

If you write a book and nobody reads it, does it really exist?

(The answer is No. No, it does not.)

ii

I’ve been in this place twice before and what got me out the first time was a lover, Julia Cameron, an encounter with a practicing, hard-working artist, and a story that I HAD to write.

The second time, it was sheer will. The therapist said, “Could you consider that part of your problem is that you identify with your work too much?” And I said, “Fuck you, bitch, if I don’t write, I don’t exist,” and I went home and wrote three novellas.

The third time… well, I’ll keep you posted. I’m leaning on Vladimir Nabokov and Ursula K. LeGuin right now, but that might be a mistake. He’s a genius and she’s brilliant, and I am ordinary. I’m not downplaying my talents: I write well. I’m funny. I’m creative. Other things.

But nothing in my head or soul will ever produce something as ground breaking as Pale Fire or The Left Hand of Darkness.

Maybe it’s time, again, to lean on Julia. Go on a solo artist date, and make that a weekly ritual again.

Write a bad poem, send it to one of my loves.

Julia, she’s a lot like me: talented, insightful, with stories to tell and a deep understanding of the bones of writing and creativity.

But also, ordinary.

iii

Over the past six months, I’ve led an intensely ordinary life. A Monday to Friday job, children, dogs, friends. No grand events, goals or aspirations—no chasing dreams, tearing pockets of time out of life with my teeth and claws for art.

Just doing the everyday, very ordinary things.

The basics.

I’ve been… content.

Life is much easier this way.

Do you see why I’m reluctant to return to the edge again?

iv

Easier, but, but… if it goes on like this much longer, I will cease to exist.

Julia.

What do I need to do?

xoxo

“Jane”

Backwards through time: All the thoughts not fit to print

i

I just wrote a post about how we need to stop trying to save the unvaccinated and build their resistance and refusal to save themselves into public health policy. You don’t get to read it, because, in the end, I don’t think it’s worth sharing—you don’t change anyone’s mind by calling them too stupid to live, and while I’ve learned many things over the course of the pandemic, I have not learned how to talk to science deniers. The ones I love, when they go there, I change the subject, because I want to preserve the relationship…

I still want to preserve the relationship. And other things. But I’perm tired of watching small businesses, my children’s education, and my mental health crash and burn because we as a society don’t seem to be able to control a stupid cold virus.

Fitting, really. What, in the end, brings human civilization to its knees two million years after our ancestors domesticated fire—and more than 5000 years after the first written script, 2333 years after the first aquaduct, 1550 years after the longbow, 1000 years after gunpowder, 225 after the smallpox vaccine, 76 years after Hiroshima, 52 years after the moon landing?

A sneeze.

ii

The post before that is about how you should drink less, or maybe not at all. Not going to share that one too, because we’ll talk about that face-to-face, in what I’m afraid will be a relationship-ending conversation… Anyway, here’s a heads up. It’s coming. Another conversation I don’t know how to have, because I don’t like telling people what to do and you don’t like being told to do, but suppose you die because I’ve said nothing?

I’ll talk to you. Soon.

Probably.

iii

Then there’s that post about why I love drag shows and why I love dragging straight people to drag, burlesque and draglesque shows to shake up their worldview, but it seemed to exist only so I could say “dragging people to drag” and didn’t go any deeper, really, so, not gonna transcribe it, publish it.

One of the most important things you learn, I think, as a writer, is that just because you wrote something that doesn’t mean that you should share it.

Food for thought.

Ha.

iv

Before that, a post about the first conversation about the divorce with the kids, coming thirteen months post-divorce. I needed to write it. You don’t need to read it. Although, maybe you do. Some of you do: I know my guilt, my struggle, the things I had to wait for over the past year, they’re not unique to me.

But I also think you probably need to sort all that out for yourself.

My only un-advice: patience.

Patience.

v

A terrible poem about how much I miss Persian tiramisu, but hope it’s very happy in Toronto.

Poetry should never be literal.

I read it again.

Jesus.

It’s even worse than I thought.

Delete.

vi

A post about my trip to Vancouver with Flora and my mom, that echoes my Three Generations post of almost a year ago, but doesn’t really go deeper.

Let it go.

Done.

vii

A “Thank god for rednecks” post that’s actually really, really funny but it was relevant when I wrote it in mid-August, and is relevant no more.

Dammit.

That one, I should have typed up and published as soon as I had written it.

Alas.

viii

Whiny notes from my first solo camping trip that I thought I could turn into a Waldenesque reflection on lessons from the wilderness, but then I decided to drink wine and read Nabokov instead so…

Moving on.

ix

One really terrible poem and one that might actually have soul.

Copying that one into another book.

I don’t know if it will fly but it might crawl.

Maybe walk.

Maybe.

x

Me on Nabokov: “He’s so exquisite, it hurts. And I don’t want more pain right now.”

xi

An attempt to celebrate my mother’s retirement after 50 years of service as an ER nurse.

Impossible to do it justice, right now.

But. Look, there—that line. That’s the beginning of the next draft.

It can be a gift for her 70th birthday.

Yes.

xii

A way too personal post about how much I missed my kids when they went to visit their paternal grandparents for a week. You don’t get to read it—you don’t get to be a voyeur to my pain.

Mine alone.

xiii

“Extreme self-reliance is a trauma response.”

I don’t know. Is it? Maybe it’s just a recognition of the fact that when the shit hits the fan, the one person I can absolutely count on to get me through it all is myself.

Also, is that trauma, really, or is it just life?

I don’t think the word trauma means what you think it means.

The piece is “sharp as a guillotine.”

Also kind of mean.

I don’t think you can handle it.

Also, as I re-read it—I notice it reveals way more about me than I want you to know.

Del…

No. That one line. Can I do something else with that one line?

Save for later.

Click.

xiv

A really sappy account of our last week together. What am I, fifteen?

Apparently.

xv

Attempt to turn a walk with a friend into an urban vignette with a moral.

Fail.

xvi

A lot of introspection and whining.

Fuck, woman. Pull yourself together.

So much evidence in these pages of people who love you and are there for you.

Honor them.

xvii

A pretty good poem.

xviii

A story called “My cokehead lover.”

It’s kind of funny, except it was supposed to be serious.

Can I rewrite it as a comic piece?

Maybe.

xix

Lover, tonight I miss your closed eyelids.

xoxo

Jane

[Review of Morning Page/ Process Notebook, June 9 to September 5, 2021]

Radical prioritization or, choosing to stop, choosing to begin… always choosing focus

Did you know, when you start a WordPress blog, it comes with a draft post that walks a ew blogger through what to write, where (not so much how).

Its headline is ‘Hello, World.’

Cute, innit?

Hello, World. I’m here, writing, emoting, sharing. Are you paying attention?

(It isn’t.)

It’s been a slow blogging summer for me, because, 2.5 jobs, children, sleep—also, walking the dog, also, dancing, also, that teary, long goodbye. I’ve been writing longhand every morning, but spending more time glued to my laptop to transcribe and post the occasionally shareable insights—just not in the cards.

And I’ve been ok with that, just as I’ve been ok with putting the novelist on ice for the summer. Radical prioritization—we need to focus on what is most important at the moment. That’s how we get things done.

This practice, and its application this spring/summer in particular, still against the backdrop of the pandemic, drove home to me the importance of choice. This season, I chose NOT to write (much), I chose not to blog—I chose not to chase those dreams, ride those frustrations. So I didn’t feel bad or unproductive (how could I? I was working 2.5 jobs).

Same thing as choosing to stay home versus being forced to stay home…

Choice empowers.

(Most of us are very bad at choosing though, aren’t we? But that’s another story…)

So—I’m choosing now to start stretching those writing muscles more seriously again. Not ready for a marathon yet, I’m not even sure about sprints—but the stretches are about to get more intense and I’m going to start lifting some weights too.

I picked up my first new literary kettle bell yesterday:

Think, Write, Speak, Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters
Valdimir Nabokov
Edited by Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy

People. Nabokov. I would have been his fourth-string mistress, char, boot cleaner in a heartbeat, without a second thought.

Anyway—Hello, World. I know you don’t care. But I’m here.

I exist.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS The reason I had fired all the therapists who were supposed to help ground me, save me while my Flora was so sick—I could not make them understand this very simple truth:

When I don’t write, I don’t think I exist.

I disappear. To myself, most of all, and if I don’t exist for myself, how can I exist at all?

Therapist: We really need to work on your over-identification with your work.

Jane: And, you’re fired.

Right now, I exist.

It’s a great feeling.

Pandemic diary: But if the world is ending, I don’t want six pack abs…

i

I’m doing writer stretches this morning.

Word plus word plus word equals sentence. Two or three of those make a paragraph—except this one, it stands alone, and this one is fat, seven sentences long. Hmmm, take the scalpel that is the return key and split that chunker in half.

I’m not saying you can’t have long paragraphs in your work.

But if you want people to read it? You shouldn’t.

A great deal of my teaching/coaching work involves undoing the work of English teachers everywhere. Sometimes, I feel bad about it.

Most of the time, I do it with glee.

ii

I’m writing about writer stretches and thinking about body stretches, which I haven’t been giving my body for months.

Body: I can’t stretch myself, you know.

Jane: I know. But exercise is so boring and I just want to eat chocolate croissants instead.

I go for a walk in the crisp November sunshine with a friend then spend the evening wrapped in the love of another. Some of the businesses in my city are entering a voluntary lockdown for a couple of weeks to help the health authorities get ahead of the second wave. It’s a good moral call, but financial suicide.

Body: What the hell does that have to do with your refusal to exercise me?

Jane: Everything. Everything is interconnected.

iii

Everything is interconnected, and that simultaneously makes us strong and also vulnerable, and I really should do some sit-ups this morning and maybe hold the plank for 45 seconds, but really, if the end of the world is coming, do I want to gout with six pack abs or with the memory of pain au chocolate on my tongue?

Body: You hate me.

Jane: I’m doing writer stretches and when I finish, I don’t really want to do physical stretches all alone on the floor of my living room. You know?

I thought gyms were stinking cesspools of infection and disease before the pandemic, anyway. But I did go. Once in a while.

Body: 15 lousy sit-ups. Come on.

Jane: And then, a croissant?

Body: You’re hopeless.

I am, it’s true. Optimism in my heels and hope floating up into the atmosphere like helium, escaping one atom at a time over the past few months… not much of it left.

Still. The important part of me feels stretched.

Body: I’m dying here.

Jane: Shut up. Eat some chocolate. I’ll take you for a walk later.

Writer stretches.

Ouch.

xoxo

“Jane”

Pandemic Diary: Instructions to Self

i

Get up. No, really. Pull off the covers and get up, get out of bed. Feet into slippers. Aren’t you glad you bought those when you did—these floors are cold and the fur inside the slippers so soft… Pause. Enjoy this first joy of the morning. Yes? Now, dressing gown on. Good. Look at you, almost at the door. Turn on the light. You’re doing it! Open the bedroom door. Look at this space that you love and glory in it. Fine, don’t, too early for glorying. Just don’t crash yet, ok? You’re doing it, you’re moving. Turn on the lights and turn on the heat—don’t think about the darkness and cold of winter, coming relentlessly—don’t think about it. Why are you thinking about it? It’s like you don’t want to be happy, bitch, come on. Pull yourself together and work with me! Yesterday was a sunny, warm day and while the sunset comes well before even your lame early bedtime, wasn’t it beautiful? Don’t think about winter. Think about your fireplace. Actually, don’t think, just get your ass into the kitchen. Fill the kettle with water. Light a burner on the stove. Grind the beans. Why did you wash the Bodum last night, ya’ lazy fuck, you’ve got to do it now. Sigh. Ok, done.

Fuck. You forgot to pee—how is that even a thing? Pee.

The bathroom is cold. Be grateful for your robe and slippers, and that living room fire. How lucky are you that that’s your main heat source and not a hedonistic indulgence? As soon as the kettle boils, you’ll make coffee and sit beside it and be cozy and warm. Will you work today? Don’t think about it until after the coffee is made—but also, why are making that an option, a question? Do you want to pay rent and the credit card bill? Then pull your whiney shit together and work.

Don’t think. The kettle is whistling. Turn off the gas. Pour the boiling water over the ground beans. Inhale the smell. Yessss. Glory in that. Good. Now glory in the gas stove—think about how hot that gas fireplace will be now. Good. Cup, cinnamon and Bodum on tray. Where’s your notebook? Beside the burning fire, with your pens. Perfect. Sit down. Pour coffee.

Write.

ii

Every once in a while, a friend or a stranger provides me with an external reality check—a reminder that while I feel that in the last two months, I’ve been treading water (again), doing nothing, writing nothing—I’ve written 40,000 words plus revisions plus queries plus thinking of course—and, course notes and materials—also, of course, these blog posts.

It doesn’t seem like enough; it never seems like enough.

Yesterday’s crop of work: editing one 900-word piece, gratis, for a friend, proofing (really, ghostwriting) a 2000 word article for a client. No proofing of Matilda, and no work on the memoir project. Today, I am afraid, will be the same. Same but different—I will make myself work on one chapter before letting myself eat breakfast. No work—no breakfast. No work—no food. This is the stratagem I am reduced to right now—but at least I have a working strategy left.

I talk with another creative yesterday. He’s taking up singing lessons in an attempt to shake his malaise up, light a fire of motivation, creation, action under this inertia. Induced by the pandemic or other life’s stressors? He doesn’t know and neither do I. Let’s not talk about it. I don’t care about root causes anymore: I just want to DO things.

A lovely stranger tells me to think about adrenal supplements. A less lovely stranger suggests a multi vitamin and more iron. I tell him that he, in turn, could use to lose some weight. That Quarantine 15 looks more like a Quarantine 35, that is, if he had a flat belly beforehand—and also, two or three drinks every night probably does make you an alcoholic, and it’s definitely not good for the complexion. We part in mutual acrimony; ironically, we’re probably both right. Maybe some of this low energy in me is due to an iron deficiency; and eating, generally, is more a chore than a pleasure these days, so a multivitamin might not be a bad idea—but really? Shut the fuck up and don’t provoke me—OMFG, I can’t believe I just told someone to lose weight, not something you should say to stranger, foe or friend, ever. But in my defence, between his “you need to take an iron supplement” and my “and you need to lose 20 or 30 pounds, asshole” retort, came a suggestion that I wax the dark fuzz on my upper lip, and would I consider taking out my lip rings?

Motherfucker is lucky I didn’t bury his body in the gravel of the playground at the local elementary school, at which children lick each other during recess, then wait six feet apart, masks obediently on, before being marched back into the building.

But I digress. What was my point? I want to DO things. Ok, specifically—I want to WANT to DO things. I feel this is probably a positive first step. To desire desire. I am out of bed. I have ranted, emptied myself on the page in my Morning Pages practice. I have closed my eyes for two minutes in a fake meditation and, still feeling resistance instead of desire-to-desire, I’ve started writing anyway.

Start to work, start to write, start to move. Desire comes next, desire comes from action—and even if it doesn’t, the action, once executed, persists.

Also, honey, if you don’t revise that fucking chapter, you get no breakfast and aren’t you hungry? Starving?

Work, dammit.

Tummy grumbling, I work. The desire doesn’t come. But the words do, anyway.

The mark of a professional; OMFG, I wish I was an amateur, a hobbyist, did not have to get out of bed today—no, I don’t—I… work.

I work. And, finally, five pages in, flow. Not ninety minutes, not hours. Just a few minutes. A taste. But enough, enough, enough to spark a little bit of desire. Enough to remember what the heroin feels like. Enough to chase it onto the next page. And the next one. One more? And one more.

Two more—so hungry—two more, and you can eat. You can eat soon.

You can invoice soon.

The mark of a professional.

Doing the thing, even when you don’t want to.

xoxo

“Jane”

There are good moments
From the first post-COVID GoGo Battles at Dickens

Pandemic Diary: Of sentence fragments and their opposite, and also, parenthetically, purposeful procrastination

i

Me, in bed, much coffee, a bare foot sticking out from between tangled blankets, notebook, leaky fountain pen. Morning pages done but not yet quite ready to work—unfinished business? Sneezes—not COVID-19 and not a common cold—I think I’m allergic to my feather pillows, oh, but they are so comfortable!

Achoo.

Mentoring a writer and ripping her work to shreds in a big way. I mean—editing, but a new writer doesn’t understand the process and every correction hurts. Also—“But you use sentence fragments all the time!” True. But I do it on purpose, to achieve a certain tempo, feeling. You do it because you don’t understand grammar.

Ouch.

I need to learn how to deliver life lessons in a more gentle, supportive manner.

Except… successful, published writers need to learn how to survive criticism—even harsh, unjust criticism.

Just read the comments.

(Don’t read the comments.)

ii

I guess this is still a Pandemic Diary entry because the pandemic is still happening. But man-oh-man—boy-oh-boy—why do we not say girl-oh-girl, do you think we could make that a thing—it sometimes feels like it’s not, and I still don’t know if your grandma, your son, your immune-compromised system are worth all this—I wish you’d show me they were—but I suppose what all this is illustrating is that I am just not a very good, compassionate human being—I’m sorry (not-sorry), I fucking suck, aren’t you glad I’m not making policy decisions?

The above is an example of a run-on sentence that I can get away with in a blog post (but not in an article) and that Henry James could have kept on moving for pages and pages, but which you, beginning writer, need to chop into six simple declarative sentences.

You heard me. Six.

Maybe seven.

Chop.

Ouch.

iii

Achoo.

I’m sneezing again. Another cup of coffee. Almost ready to work. (<<<— Sentence fragment used to a purpose.) (<<<—Sentence fragment used to a purpose to illustrate the purpose of sentence fragments.) Yawn. Sneeze. Curl and stretch the toes of the foot peeking out from between the sheets. Sternly tell it that no, it does not get to crawl back under and snoozle.

It’s time to work.

Achoo.

Ouch.

More coffee?

“Jane”