What is your genre?

When I am not writing memoirs, I write an assortment of genres because creativity provides me with an idea and go with it. Many of my author friends have one main genre and they are successful authors. One of my friends writes historical western romances. Another friend writes fantasy, romance, and adventure, and started to dabble in Bête Noire. There are so many genres and I love that each of us has been chosen to write different stories to share.

So what is my genre if I’m not memoir writing? I would have to say a little thriller, mystery, and romance. The one story I’m working on that came to me in flash is a thriller romance. More Thriller/mystery with a romantic element to keep the story interesting and just because the characters are keeping me on my toes.

When we first moved to Victoria, BC, we lived in a new condo building that was located right across from the hotel I work for. I know, it’s a little to close for comfort but the circumstances of how quickly I got the job and needed to move to the city from a three-hour away small town, was indeed how my husband and I end up places. Say yes first and then figure out everything afterward. So we find the one bedroom condo and my husband ended up moving to Canmore, Alberta, for a job for about six months. I was so grateful for the universe to have moved into the condo that I only needed to walk across the street to my place of employment.

There was a gym in the condo building and the same people would be in the gym at the same time. They became my gym friends, except for one guy, who, well let’s just say he was the typical metrosexual man. I’m not kidding you, he was obsessed with himself. He would jump off the treadmill when his phone rang and say ‘go for Dean!’ (Not his real name). I would see him come into the lounge located in the hotel where I work. He would have a different date each time and for some reason, he triggered an emotion in me that I just didn’t like him.

One night as I got in the elevator he walked into the building and sauntered to the elevator and just stood in front of the elevator. As the elevator doors shut he gave me this look, his eyes were peering into the elevator like he wanted to say something. I glared back at him and the image of a woman who killed her victims in their hotel room appeared and there in the elevator was born Catherine Harris, a serial killer who kills couples who are cheating on their spouses. More about Catherine later.

Now I’m working on the rewrites of my hotel memoir. It is my passion and my main focus at the moment. I will be honest that there are times when I am editing that I feel overwhelmed. I am aware that the ego is trying to run away and stay in its comfortable old ways sitting on the sofa and watching Saved By The Bell reruns. (Who didn’t like Zack Morris and Kelly Kapowski?) I use to write episodes to be part of the Bayside Highschool crew. I embrace my imagination and all the ideas that are shared with me by creativity. Oh, how I love the creative process.

What genre do you write? What story are you writing now? How do your stories get inspired? I love hearing from you.

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Until Next Time, Keep on Typing. . . .

 

What Does a Writer Do on Vacation?

Road trips are one of my favorite ways to travel. My husband and I have been on many road trip adventures over the years and as a young girl, my family would take to the open road on our family vacations. We would visit my Grandparents in Ontario. We drove from Nova Scotia and we would take two days to travel, my father would drive through the US, sometimes it was quicker, but for me it was about seeing new sights, stay in different hotels and explore new neighborhoods. I didn’t know it then, but I was being given an education of life on the road, and I loved it!

There is something about sitting in a car or bus traveling long distances to get to a destination that stirs up my imagination. What else does one do when in a car for long periods of time but think of stories that take you away to another world. My road trip adventures as a child were way before the smartphone or built-in iPads to preoccupy my brain while parents sit silently up front. The things that kept me busy were a stack of books that I would devour as the miles passed by. My imagination was on overload when I put my headphones on to my yellow Sony Walkman where Joey Joe sang, Please don’t go Girl, over and over again because I wanted to be that girl the New Kids on the Block sang about. I use to daydream that I was the girl he spotted in the crowd, pulled me on stage, kissed me and we fell in love. I was a hopeless romantic at a very early age.

I won’t lie, over the years as I would drive alone on my own adventures, (I was maybe 17 or 18) I would daydream up more adventures with other celebrities. I use to play out a reunion of St. Elmo’s Fire cast as the daughter of Kevin and Leslie who now was attending Georgetown University. I would carry these ideas into my late twenties but with different characters and situations.

This vacation was with my husband and my in-laws. We travel very well together. This road trip involved a ferry from Vancouver Island to Port Angeles then making our way to Seaside, Oregon. After the hour and a half ferry ride, it was about a five and half hour drive to Seaside. The trip was lovely, the fall colors of deep reds and light yellows were making an appearance on sporadic trees. Once we made it close to the Ocean, I felt a sense of calmness and was happy to be back in the Pacific North West.

What day-dreams tickled my imagination? I have been reading Stephen King’s, 11/22/63 and not to give the book away, my thoughts were on time travel. As we drove through sections of clouds, creativity sparked up with some interesting ideas. Ideas that I let sit idle for a few days. I have another project that I am working on and didn’t want to start something else, but sometimes creativity takes over and you go with the flow.

Each day in Seaside we would go on daily adventures to Cannon Beach, Tillamook and other national parks to see the lush rain-forest areas. With every new adventure my imagination was turned on and I took notes on ideas, phrases or comments a possible character was sharing with me. I was very aware.

What did I learn on this road trip? It was more like a very nice reminder that my imagination is never turned off. I’m very content to sit in the car and daydream, I’m comfortable with sitting idle because the imagination needs room to explore and the story needs time to develop. For this I am grateful.

Until Next Time, Keep on Typing. . . .

When I’m in my flow I can…

Let’s get back to the writing prompts. I’ve been knee-deep in revisions and trying to find a place to live. The rental market in Victoria, BC is down right horrific. I don’t usually display my dark feelings so randomly, however I’m feeling the pressure of moving without any glimpses of hope. Deep down I know everything will unfold naturally as it will, but damn! It’s hard being patient while floating around in limbo land.

So to keep me in check and to listen as creativity is whispering sweet stories in my ear, I have picked up my writing prompt cards that I bought from Danielle Pope, a lovely woman who is a great inspiration in her commitment to creativity.

The writing prompt cards shares: When I’m In My Flow I Can… (Write for 10 minutes – write in poetic point form, list it out) I’m going to hit the timer and let the words flow across the page as this is my gut feeling.

When I’m in my flow I can do anything. I sit down at my laptop and sometimes it takes a bit to settle into the flow of things. I fidget with my pens and note pads on my desk, I straighten and re-straighten books that are piled on the floor next to my desk. I stare out the window and watch the grey squirrel run across the neighbors fence. It stops and looks around, what it sees I am not sure. It scurries off again. I look back at my laptop and I put my fingers to the keyboard and feel the flow of the words emerging. These days I am working on revisions for my WIP, but I am very aware of the stories that are lingering around within me, waiting to be written. As I am revising a chapter about the time my friend and I were canoeing at Lake Louise I remember when I sat in the canoe, and a story came to me in  a blink of an eye.

What if there are lake creatures living deep down in the frigid lake bottom? Are they friendly, could they be mermaids, how did they get here, how do they survive, maybe they take people from the canoes, but that’s not right we would have heard about mysterious people disappearing. Well that can happen, it’s a story that’s the beauty of it, make it all up the entire world of mermaids or a versions of mermaids that somehow live in the bottom of the lake. Did the founder of Lake Louise, Tom Wilson, maybe know about the magical creatures, did the person that told him about the lake in the last 1800’s know there was a mysterious energy about the lake and that’s why he told Tom about the lake, did the creatures need food and they prey on humans? What’s the story behind the lake?

All of this came to me as I’m sitting in a canoe facing the Victoria Glacier as my friend is softly paddling us around the lake and I’m gliding my finger tips along the glacier fed lake that hundred of millions of people have visited. Of course the sea creatures could feed off humans, but only people who have bad energy, the magical entities only want positive energy for the earth.

I am in the flow. I can see clearly that I was where I needed to be at that time and place, being idle, letting the creativity have fun. When I am writing, I am in the flow of the here and now.

The timer has stopped and I’m filled with excitements about remembering a moment that sparked my imagination. For this I am truly grateful

Until next time, keep on typing. . . .

Just do it!

I’ve been submerging into Julia Cameron’s, Vein of Gold and have been listening to some her past interviews and I love when she says “I like Nike’s slogan, Just do it!” I love this idea as well, I will encourage my friends who ask me how I have kept up my creativity routines and I will say “I just do it.” I just write, I pick up a pen and put it to paper and see what happens.  I am one of those writers who can sit down and write pages and pages of dialogue, a story idea, I get a whisper from a possible character and I just go for it and see what happens. I am also a writer who pumps out the words and then goes back to shape the story, I don’t get the entire story from start to finish, I will get maybe an ending or the climax of the story, or even the first chapter and nothing more.

Sometimes this is frustrating because I start to blame someone or something for giving me the entire story, but it is up to me to do the work to shape the story, to do research to give the idea more thought and attention. Writing can but also can not be easy. The truth is you have to be willing to put the work in and being here on the page is part of the work, work that I love and doesn’t even feel like work and that’s the key. Don’t forget that what you want to do has work involved, nothing is handed to you on a silver platter. Have faith in your creativity. Be open to the possibilities.

As long as we remain closed to the possibility of spiritual help in our unfolding, we are choosing to operate off the battery pack of our limited resources. When we open to spiritual assistance – however tentatively, however experimentally – we tap into unlimited supply. No longer restricted by the circumstances of our birth (or our current life, for that matter) we are able to receive sustenance, guidance, and even material resources that support our dreams and our flowering. ~ Julia Cameron

I am very aware that I don’t want to be working with limited resources, I have my arms wide open to accept the unlimited resources that have been helping me from the very start. I have gone through many shifts, shifts of emotions, transformation of the old self to this true self that is full of creativity to share. I have spoken about this before but I seem to have to remind myself that I was very aware at an early age of my creativity, that I wanted to write, to share the stories that I’ve been blessed with. I realized that I am in my own way, the old self still lingers around like a bad boyfriend that just doesn’t go away until we stand up and say “Enough is Enough!” the universe hears this and synchronicity begins, the resources needed start showing up and all I have to do is accept them. So again I ask, why am I still sitting here with an unfinished manuscript, seemingly avoiding my true self?

We don’t always know what makes us happy. We know, instead, what we think should. We are baffled and confused when our attempts at happiness fail. We get the dream job and it is a nightmare. We find we miss the dead-end job we left behind. We finally purchase a swank new condo with high-rise views, only to find we miss the old back porch on the railroad flat we shed like a seedy coat. What’s going on here? Shouldn’t we be smarter? How could we be so…dumb?

We are dumb, no question, but only in the sense of being mute. We are mute when it comes to naming accurately our own preferences, delights, gifts, talents. The voice of our original self is often muffled., overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people’s expressions. The tongue of the original self is the language of the heart. It is the purpose of this book to amplify that voice. ~ Julia Cameron

I have been looking for my voice for some time, I knew it was within me, I just had to find and I did. I was given opportunities to try something new like take a playwright class and my voice was heard, right up there on a stage with actors speaking my words. What an experience, what joy, fear, excitement, everything that comes with the birth of your work, the birth of your voice. I admit I have taken some creative U-turns and slipped between the cracks of the old self and her nasty bad habits of fear and wanting to crawl back to the comfortable space where she doesn’t have to the work, just sitting on her ass watching TV, wasting time on the internet, randomly pacing the house, anything to avoid sitting down to actually write. I have to kick my own ass and sit down and write. Here I am. Thank goodness!

Until next time, keep on typing….

Favourite Movies

 

Do you have a favourite movie? I’m sure you do? Why is it your favourite? Does it make you laugh, cry, do you get angry, happy when watching a movie? What type of movie makes your heart go pitter-patter? I have a few favourite movies that make me do all the above.

So, to get to know me a little better I will share a some of my favourite movies with you.

The Top 5 Old School

1. Annie Hall by Woody Allen
2. St. Elmo’s Fire by  Joel Schumacher
3. Manhattan by Woody Allen
4. Romancing the Stone by Diane Thomas
5. Melinda, Melinda by Woody Allen

Top 5 other favourites

1. When Harry Met Sally by Rob Reiner
2. Finding Neverland by Marc Forster
3. Return of the Jedi by George Lucas
4. You will meet a dark haired stranger by Woody Allen
5. Pretty in Pink by John Hughes

There is a theme, yes I like Woody Allen  and romance fan. I am truly a romantic at heart. I believe in love and all that comes with love; the good, bad, ugly and joy. Most of all the feeling of true bliss when you find yourself knee deep in absolutely devoted love for that one person who makes your heart sing!

Why Woody Allen? Why not? I mean the man is a great write and director, he never holds back from his true feelings, his pain makes us laugh, cry, discuss, wonder, fight and feel love. I’m a fan, that’s all.

I saw Annie Hall for the first time when I was fourteen and I knew Woody Allen understood me or maybe I understood him when he said:

“I have some trouble between fantasy and reality.” – From Annie Hall

 A few other of my favourite quotes from Annie Hall:

 I wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that had me as a member.

 

 When I started to date, I would use this line on my boyfriend when they said they loved me – I actually would make them watch the movie to get the line. Let me tell you, not all of my boyfriends got me or Woody’s humour.

 

“I use to say this all the time after I saw the movie, then I stopped in my early thirties for some reason, then I started it up again after I felt like something was missing – ‘La-deee-da” meaning “whatever, la de da.” So simple, so easy, it makes me smile when I those three little words.

St. Elmo’s Fire – another great movie filled with love, joy, betrayal and friendship.

“You know, it ain’t easy being me.” – Kevin

 

One of my favourite scenes is when Leslie and Kevin finally get together, when Kevin puts his hand on her face to kiss her passionately and quickly, send shivers of joy up my neck.

 Manhattan

 

I love this picture, so romantic sitting on a park bench until sunrise talking and just being in the moment.

I have this romantic notion about smoking – I don’t smoke, but I think the idea of lighting a cigarette and looking mysterious is kinda romantic.

Romancing the Stone – best romance move about a romance writer.

Joan Wilder is one of the reasons why I wanted to become a writer. Sitting in your pj’s writing best seller romance novels – hello! What a life!

The reality that the market is saturated and you might need more than one best seller to pay the rent; but who cares! Keep on writing, you never know where it’s going to take you!

When Harry Met Sally – Another great love story.

Movies, like books take you a journey, the writers journey, a magical place that was created to tell a story, to share, to learn – that’s just simply amazing to me! I love movies and reading. Currently I’m ready a fiction book that is for pure fun, just to tell a story and to escape into the writers world; reading is important to a writer – Stephen King said “If you want to be a writer you have to do two things; read a lot and write a lot.” I’m trying to read more and more and I’m finding as I read more I want to write more – creativity really is an amazing journey.

What are you favourite movies? Favourite quotes? I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time, keep on typing…

Follow your heart

Last week I talked about goal setting and I shared some of my goals; one of my goals was to share more. I wrote my goals down and I sat down with my Polestar Planner and mapped out the goals I felt I could achieve each day and this week I was able to:

• Research places to submit non-fiction work.
• Work on the non-fiction piece to get ready to send in before January 30th.
• Work on my memoir edits on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for at least 30 minutes (Thursday I got 15 minutes of work done, but it’s better than nothing).
• Research and work on a new blog.

Here I am working on a new blog – I wanted to do this on Friday, and the only excuse I have is that I didn’t get my ass off the sofa to move to my writing room. I had a long day at my day job and wanted to sit and stare at the wall or the TV that would numb me from the the day. I have to be truthful to myself because writing is my job and I have to take it as serious as my hotel life, there is no time to be messing around.

If you want to write, write. You don’t have to give up your day job, you do have to get up earlier. You don’t have to sacrifice your family. You write when they go to bed. Don’t romanticize being a writer. Just write. ~ Lindsay Price Playwright

I love this very simple and true statement about writing.

The first goal was to start researching paid submission calls for non-fiction. Natalie Macniel suggested one of the goals should be financially driven. So the goal is easier to plan when you are researching for specific criteria.                 I had already been reviewing a freelance site writingcareer.com – help for freelance writers: calls for submissions, editorial staff changes, writing opportunities, and writing advice. I have found a few submission calls that are up my alley and I’ve started on one submission call for the next Chicken Soup for the Soul series, I’m very grateful for these opportunities that I have been able to come across. It’s important to honor those little treasures of synchronicity.

Even if I didn’t do any work on Friday, I did write in my planner that I would catch up on Saturday and I am honoring that commitment now. I do have a goal to write at least two blogs a week and I’m just researching another form of writing and blogging. Have you heard of Biosgraphy? It’s a social network for deeper and meaningful human connection that touches hearts, opens minds and inspires the world through storytelling.

I love the idea of storytelling and it fits in with my goal of sharing more, so I will try to at least do one blog here and a smaller blog on Biosgraphy. I’ll make sure I let you know how it goes.

These are just a few steps that I have taken to get my goals started and on a path of success. Every day is new and fresh and it’s important what we do with each new day. How do you want to spend this day? Have you set goals? Do you need some guidance on how to set some goals? Let me know, I’m happy to help.

If you need any information on the sites I’ve provided let me know, and if you need any help with getting your goals started, I’m happy to help.

Until next time, keep on typing….