Writing in Concert

I found this on one of the blogs I am currently following: there is not much room in my head for reading much material, and a blog is usually just long enough without sending me into a panic over time.

Dacre Stoker, nephew of Bram Stoker, has written an authorized sequel. He and his writing partner have developed an interesting partnering technique described in the National Post article referenced. I couldn't do it myself - I am not very good at partnered writing. I tried with one on-line friend - it was fun, but we lost interest. A plan, like Stoker and his partner had, would have helped avoid that.

I know two other people presently working on their first novel after co-writing several fanfic pieces. I think it is a great exercise - I look forward to seeing whether it ALSO produces an interesting and compelling story.

Computer time =/= Wasted time

I spend a lot of time, when I can, reading on the computer. I read blogs, look up information, search YouTube for choirs singing music I might want to use. I correspond with other people interested in the television shows, bands, and writers I like, and have made some very strong and I hope lasting connections with people around the world through my varied interests.

Why do people assume that time spent in front of the computer is wasted time? I do read books - when we moved we sold or gave away close to a thousand books, and moved nearly twice that (twice now in a year). I buy books, borrow them from the library, trade them, and give them away. I love books. I want to write them, to edit them, to watch them being birthed.

I also read them online, on the computer, and as soon as it is more readily available and cheaper (any time now in Canada), I will probably read them on a handheld device - my iPod, Blackberry, or an e-reader, so I can carry hundreds of titles at once in my bag. Why do so many people roll their eyes and snicker at the idea of words being so 'demeaned'? A couple of years ago, Norwegian TV put out a hilarious spot called Medieval Helpdesk introducing the 'beek'. It illustrates with humour and grace the constant issue of change - how can one keep up, even get ahead, and not lose the core, the essential nature, of what is being changed?

I love books - the smell of old paper, the feel of leather-bound covers. I think the hand-crafted illuminated books of the early Medieval times are some of the purest forms of art known to Western Civilization. Handmade paper, brightly coloured card stock, rich inks and metallic embossing powder: stationary stores fill me with a sensory glee - I can spend hours in even such a utilitarian place as an Office Depot or Staples.

But it is words I revere - words and ideas, the challenges, the images, the concepts they force into my head. It is words that I remember, that I will keep with me under any circumstance fate may throw at me. Should everything I own be swept away by tide and time, the words I have read - the way they have changed me - the resonance they have set within me - that cannot change. Even in the worst case - brain damage or disease which steals all the words from my head - the effect of those words on how I have lived my life and affected others cannot die. Painted on parchment, incised in sand, typeset in moveable type, or produced in pixels: words will wind their way through authors to readers to auditors to the world in new and fascinating ways as long as there are people with something to say and someone to say it to. Technology - from quill to stylus - is only the medium; the message will continue on.

Re-Inventing the "Real"

Who do you say I am?

Every few months, it seems, I face the shocking truth that I am not the same person I was a few years ago, a few months ago - hell, a few minutes ago. I'm not talking here about the fascinating creepiness of the much quoted factoid that a person's skin is regenerated every seven years, although that is a thought that frequently keeps me up at night sweeping the floor of the discarded bits of myself. I am talking about the ever-lasting fascination I have with identify: the way who I am and what I do changes depending on the place I do it, and the name I use.

My mother named me within hours of my birth, but before I even came home from hospital, she had re-named me with the nickname my family uses. She says now she did it to give me a choice, and that has been borne out in my life. The trouble is not choice, but consistency - I have never been good at giving the right name in proper context, and by now, nearing my fifties, I am hopelessly confused - my 'professional' name is commonly used by people I consider intimate friends, but met on-line or through work, while my 'family' name is used by many I would prefer not to be acquainted with at all.

And the name is just one aspect of the problem. For 15 years, I taught a skill I now am paid to perform. I was a director; now I am back to being a performer under someone else's direction. I stopped writing nearly a year ago this month, and yet I have more to say than ever, and am more confident in my ability to say it well. I keep turning in a new direction, then turning back to look longingly at where I was: unhappy and frustrated as I was there.

I may never find the person I want to be, may never decide on one single persona to fill for the rest of my life. My history, my varied interest, my very name(s) argue against such integration of all the things that compel and intrigue me. I am like a fractured mirror: there are too many people in my life that are given one small reflection of me for me to ever pull it all together into one portrait. Some of that was protection, some fear, some simply circumstance. I cannot, and perhaps would not change any part of me to make a different whole.

But I find the process of disintegration and reformation sometimes exhausting. It cannot be a coincidence that these periods come on the heels of concerns about physical and mental health, about profession and money and family. I know these dark days - these questioning, troubling times - usually pass by like the storm presently dumping a month's worth of rain over the next two days. Beware of the floods, and know that the waters will recede.

And I will be a new person, washed clean by the storm.

Again.