Winter

It’s just cold, windy, white, and barren. There’s less to say about the writing when every word has to be forced out, a slow drip…drip….drip under an overcast sky that freezes instantly on the page. I can’t melt the ice. Even my breath is too cold and too fleeting.

Cuts

The librarian is gone. This is a sadder cut for me than the others—something about losing that scene where Frederick bumps into her on the library steps in a snowstorm, something about the blinding snow, something about the cold air, something about how we don’t see what we’ve run into until, so often, it’s too late… We’ll see how Frederick gets on without her. We’ll see whether I can really let her go.

Flow

The Tome has come back to me on the one month anniversary of my confinement. It looks fresh, inviting, alluring, seductive. It looks remarkably like a book I have never read before. It looks like a book whose rainbow pages—you never know—might just be in the best order. It sits on the coffee table, hefty and contented, looking as if everything is possible.

Too Many Books?

Some amount of serious distraction has occurred over the past few days, for life-altering reasons (watch for an announcement in the coming weeks) but I’m back at it now. It appears I have been at this mammoth editing task for over a month, since many of the books on order that I Suspended thirty days ago at the library have taken up residence on the Hold Shelf. Apparently there are nine there now, and several others In Transit. Luckily, as a library volunteer, I am Immune to Fines.

Crowded

I have reason to believe I’m getting close. Call it intuition. Call it corroboration (my reader sends back a favourable review.) Call it being crowded. These last few days I have had both Frederick and Arbour in my head, jostling each other, elbow into rib cage. Like me, Arbour is impatient, and wants Frederick to be gone; Frederick, being Frederick, moves over politely and tries to get his knee out of the small of her back. They are such different people. One wonders what they find to talk about.

Freedom to Write Week

The T-top business comes to an end, and again I am pleased. It seems that this week I am writing with much less anxiety. Tonight I realize it’s because I have sent the Tome out to be read; it has been out of my sight for three or four days, in someone else’s hands. Consequently, I only have to write. I can’t fret about the rainbow pages or the order of the action or whether the T-top should come before or after the graffiti, before or after “Ave Maria.” I can just write. Such freedom!

Graffiti on Graffiti

A late-getting-started day, a creation-avoidance day, a word-vacuum-of-a day. In the middle of the afternoon, finally getting down to writing about a drive through Toronto in a Cutlass Supreme with a T-top—those of you who know me will understand how utterly thrilling I am finding this scene (hint: I did not even know what a T-top was until an hour ago)—I get a comment on dayletters (see previous post) that makes me laugh out loud. Out loud. Joyously. No kidding. Thank you, Kristen! I miss you!

Graffiti

And today, four connected scenes have been created out of nothing but an image of graffiti on a bathroom wall. Today, writing seems so much more fun than organizing. I think I’ll do it again tomorrow—why not?! Outside it is like winter again, but inside it is still spring.

Confession

I took the weekend off. I quit The Room. I ate baklava with my family. I walked on a rocky beach with my love. I called my parents to check in. I didn’t think about Frederick much at all. Today I came back and spent the day writing a piece that thoroughly pleases me. I am like a new writer. It is like spring.

Tome

The Tome has overtaken my faith in my capacity to make a coherent story out of bits of coloured paper. Six pounds of coloured paper (yes, I stood on a bathroom scale with it.) Right now it’s not a book, just a heck of a lot of words on a heck of a lot of rainbow paper.