Naked Lance

Hi Readers,
I just checked the analytics for my web site. It seems there was a spike in traffic when I posted a nude photo of Lance Armstrong. Point taken. Does half naked and sweaty count?
Love,
Me

Uh Oh.

I know my process is really up-and-down with fabulous writing days followed by crapola writing days of crippling self-doubt. But yesterday kinda put me through the wringer. It was a day of fabulous writing that led to crippling self-doubt. A new animal.

I worked on the book and decided to write a section about how Paris has a life of its own. The city is a character. Having just read Henry Miller, I began with the following sentences:

Henry Miller said Paris was a whore. I say she's a high-maintenance trust fund bitch.

And then I went on to describe how I always felt like the cool stuff was just out of my reach, around the corner or at some party going on someplace else. My plan was to write a snarky-funny extended metaphor comparing the city to those godawful women who are dressed to the nines and expect men to fling diamonds at them with one hand while opening car doors with the other. And then they still don't give it up. No matter how much you give her, she'll always want more.

Only something else happened. As it does when you are working with creative forces that are larger than you. As I was writing, a little, swirling rabbit hole opened up in front of me. The hole was labeled The Big, Scary Truth. So I went down it. My writing turned darker and went into a corner of my bile duct I haven't ventured into in a long time. In other words, my writing dredged up some dark, yucky personal stuff. Which actually made for great writing, but it's left me feeling weird.

The piece ended up illustrating how I've settled in life. The places where I've been too insecure, afraid, whatever, to ask for more. To demand more. Not in a high-maintenance trust fund bitch kind of way. In the way that we only receive what we believe we are worth.

And for the rest of the day I was not a happy camper. I felt haunted and unsatisfied, critical and bitchy. I went to bed wondering what kind of mess I've made of my life and then I couldn't sleep.

This disturbs me.

It disturbs me to think that I've settled, sure. But, it also disturbs me that the writing was good. It was the kind of writing that is so honest it scares you. Why would good writing trouble me? Because it wrecked an otherwise okay Monday. Because I might need therapy if I plan on doing any more of it. Or at least find some way to 'come down' afterward.

This is one of the reasons why writing is hard: being completely, relentlessly honest can be painful and upsetting. And these are the choices you have to make as an artist: to be honest no matter what it takes or to gloss over the truth for a cheap laugh. I can't help thinking that accountants don't ever feel like this after a good day's work. Is this what 'taking your work home with you' means for a writer?

My Awesome Rejections

Yesterday, a SUNDAY, I received two of the most ass-kicky rejection emails of my brief but burgeoning literary life. How can a rejection letter be awesome, you might ask? It's relatively common knowledge that if a person is going to receive a rejection letter, 99 times out of a hundred it will be some manner of 'We regret to inform you' cut and paste PFO form letter drivel.

But sometimes, you get a personalized letter. Which counts as awesome. Because it means your writing impacted them enough that they want to say something to you. If you are very unlucky, what they want to say is something like, "This is the worst writing I have ever had the displeasure of wasting moments of my life on. My eyeballs shriveled up and fell out. Thanks a fucking lot. Never submit to us again."

If you are very lucky, you will receive rejection letters like the two I got yesterday. Rejection letters that make you want to keep writing. Rejection letters that actually help you become a better writer.

Awesome Rejection #1 (For a piece called Blackbird Café)
Good morning. Thanks for thinking of [Magazine Name]. This one isn't right for us, but it is swiftly done. I think you will place it quickly. Best wishes.

Awesome Rejection #2 (For Crotch Management)
Hi - I read this one all the way through, which is really a success story in itself (I rarely make it past the first few sentences or a paragraph at most). Your writing is very clear and I liked the sassy, honest-almost to-the-point-of-recklessness tone. Very good. The image of the cellulite pressed up from the tight pants is perfect. I saw all those bikers I see along the river paths in Philly. But then when done, it seemed that I wanted more of a story, like this is the setup for something longer, or just an element among a few others about this biker's life and times? So I'm not going to post this but I'll totally encourage you to write more on this, that is, to extend your ambition another twenty-five feet or so, and in the meantime to send more whenever. Thanks for sending something readable and enjoyable - and again I hope you understand this note as an encouragement more than anything else.

Feeling Teenaged

I really know how to make myself miserable. Although, I never go IN to make myself feel like a moldy piece of dog poo. It just happens sometimes. Like when I go online and scour the World Wide Interweb for literary journals where I want to submit my work.

But I only have two officially finished pieces and so I feel like I need to choose really, really, really wisely so I don't waste a good piece on a bad journal. And then I read some of the published pieces from these journals and they are that really subtle kind of writing where the whole story involves someone walking down an inner-city block wearing Converse All-Stars, and you are left feeling lonely, confused and hollow at the end. Because that's how real art makes you feel?

I read a letter that someone wrote to one journal that said something like, "OMG! I've been submitting to you guys for ten years! And now I finally got in! OMFG!" And I had to read it three times to see if I got the "ten years" part right. And then I wondered if she was saying OMFG about the ten years or about the getting in. Hard to say.

And then I read some other writing, but it's either way more far out than I am (i.e. the intricacies of punk rock as it relates to the intricacies of being a gay man in New York) or just really terrible.

Makes you feel a little teenaged in the 'Where do I belong?' sense of things.

Because I really don't know. Where I fit. I write funny stuff. But not funny in a Chewbacca-mud-wrestling-with-Captain-Kirk pop-culture blahblah hipster way. Not funny in a Fart Joke Of The Day way. Not funny in a bitchy, snarky celebrity gossip columnist way. I mean, I'm sure I'm not the most uniquely funny person in the world, but when you're trying to submit your shit to snobby high-brow lit mags to whom "funny" is a version of the plague it sure feels like it.

Which is when I give my head a shake and say, "Mel? Quit bitching about literary magazines and get effing writing." I wouldn't feel so freaked out if I had ten finished pieces and a finished manuscript, would I? Prolly not.

Meeting the Preditor

I'm leaving in seven minutes to go meet with my editor. God, that sounds sexy. And it would be a lot sexier if I didn't have so much baggage with this editor. The kind of baggage where she canceled my column a year and a half ago without telling me.

Which isn't so much baggage-y as it is awkward.

It's the writer version of getting dumped and then your ex asking you for coffee a year and a half later. Should we talk about it? Or just pretend it never happened? Should I pitch her another story idea – a.k.a. ask her out again – or is that too desperate?

Also, I've now been in Hermit Writer Sweatpant Mode for so long, I am nervous about this meeting. I forget how to do meetings. And even dress for them. The shirt I'm wearing? Attractive and stylish, yet professional? Smells like dust. Which is how long it's been since I had a meeting.

Maybe I should have more meetings. I forget who buys the coffee. I hope it's her.

Non-Adventures in The Hat

I have really screwed up these five sun-n-fun-filled days in Medicine Hat. I have thoroughly not taken advantage of the tourism opportunities of this, Alberta's sixth largest city. The two days of mind-splitting pain where I was unable to read, write or leave the dark, silent shroud of the room didn't help. Neither does the fact that I snigger any time I see 'The Gas City,' which is how the brochures refer to this place.

This hotel, the Coast Hotel Medicine Hat, is located just off the highway and next to a sprawled-out mall of no consequence in the south end of town. I was right about the Starbucks down the block. It is the only one here. I was, however, wrong to mock Pasta-bilities. Apparently, it's very good.

Not sure if I can find time for lunch in between checking out the massive London Drugs or the giant Winners, or speaking of giant, the Giant Tiger Family Discount Store. Okay, I've already checked all those places out. At Michael's craft supply store yesterday, I seriously considered buying a 'Real Indian Moccasin Kit' for $24.

And after that, I went to Value Village. Because we learned, didn't we readers, that small-town VVs have the best stuff. Found some more kick-ass cowboy boots, but the jerks wanted $14 for them. Forget it. Considered buying another ridiculous hat. Boyfriend has experienced so much joy out of mocking me for that rabbit-fur Elmer Fudd hat I got in Kamloops.

I settled on a book. I wanted a memoir because I'm writing a memoir, but I also wanted something that was the exact opposite in feel to Tropic of Cancer. The only memoir in the Medicine Hat Value Village Luxury Goods of America Boutique was Rebecca Eckler's Knocked Up. She's one of those love-her-or-hate-her people. Me = Hate. I read the whole thing in one sitting to get the insipitude over with and then I threw it against the wall. I think I'm a little bit dumber today. My memoir will be better than that tripe, I promise.

Last night, because it was our last night and anyone can tolerate anything for just one night, Boyfriend and I took the black light to the bedspread. Boyfriend has the light for seeing something inside of the gas vessels he's been lurking in this week. So, we went CSI on our hotel room. The weird thing? I was disappointed there weren't gratuitous bodily fluid stains all over it. Not a one. We wandered around the room, hoping for something (anything) to gross us out. But there was only a blob of mustard near the microwave and a streak of something on the curtains.

This morning when we got up and checked out, there was an email posted by the front desk. The guy who stayed in room 110 sells those CSI lights. He checked out his room and it was the cleanest room he's ever seen. In the whole world, he's never seen one this good. So, the one time I have a black light kicking around, I go and pick the world's cleanest hotel room. The room least likely to have spooge stains. My life stinks.

Putting the Session into Obsession

I don't know what that title means. At all. But I did get a magazine assignment out of nowhere yesterday to do a story about when a healthy idea becomes an unhealthy obsession. Um. Welcome to my life?

I started thinking and came up with an embarrassing number of personal anecdotes. From Diet Nazi ex-husbands to hand-washing ex-boyfriends to, oh you know, how I get when I take on a goal and become iron-willed and sanctimonious and ignore everything that makes life good, like friends and rest and food.

My friend DB hates it when I have a goal because the chances I'll stay up all night drinking vodka cranberry with her dwindle to zero.

Obsession is what gives a person drive isn't it? Obsession gets things done!

Lance Armstrong is riding the Tour again. You wanna talk obsession? Lance Dahling is the poster boy of obsession. He's racing this season for no salary, just so he can prove to the French that he's not a doper. Get a freaking hobby, man! Although, I can deal with more photos like this one:

Yes, ma'am, I can. Bounce a quarter off that ass. Thank you Vanity Fair.

Anyhoo.

There's an amount of obsession required to be an artist – or any conscious, courageous human being living on that bloody razor's edge I always talk about. I'm still labouring away at Henry Miller. Late in the book there is a kind of manifesto on being an artist and living at the edges of life, the extremes of existence. On grabbing hold of every, single moment and consummating it. It is inspired and inspiring, this section. Because these is a certain amount of discomfort, of pain, associated with making great change. Whether it's change within yourself – your life, your body – or on a grander, global scale.

And any obsession comes with its cast-offs. A committed person leaves a wake of collateral damage in the form of neglect. Look at Lance. His personal life is a travesty. Seriously, the longer Sheryl Crow dated him, the thinner and blonder she got. It was creepy. He's got Bad Boyfriend written all over him.

Dana said to me once: Sometimes you have to give up one part of yourself in order to discover another. Maybe it's a matter of what you need to find and how far you're willing to go in order to find it.

Against The Graine

Three migraine headaches since yesterday afternoon. Two last night, stacked one on top of the other like a double-decker club sandwich of pain. Another this morning, a landmine in my frontal lobe exploding almost as soon as I woke up. More later...when I can see.

Damn You, Henry Miller

I'm in Medicine Hat. Boyfriend's here working in the field and I'm pathetic and needy and want hugs and attention. So I came. And spent all day by myself in a cheap hotel that smells of potpourri.

I was writing in the room and some maintenance guy let himself right on in. "Oh!" he said. "I'm sorry! I didn't think anyone was in here." And then he stood there, even though there was very obviously someone in here. Kept standing there and saying sorry. I was like, "Listen dude. People make mistakes. Go ahead and come in or go ahead and get out, but make a frickin' move, brother."

I ended up leaving. That room, full of "silk" plants and potpourri stink, was getting me down. And Henry Miller wasn't helping either. Facilitator Bill suggested I read Tropic of Cancer – famous memoir of Paris and whatnot. Beautiful, detailed, evocative writing for sure, but depressing as all hell. Not a sunny fellow, Mr. Miller. And desperately in need of a 12-step program for sex addicts.

I hightailed it to the Starbucks down the block. You know, the one past the Pasta-bilities Restaurant and the sad, out-of-business cell phone store? Pasta-bilities. Yeah, there.

I stood in line behind four rich guys in black suits. One of the rich guys wore a tall blonde. They were all gorgeous and perfect and spotless. I realized that I've been holed up writing by myself and hanging out with poor writers for so long that I actually forgot what rich people looked like. They're pretty. But they tell stupid jokes. You know the standard Starbucks joke where you start rattling off stuff like "half-caf, double-decaf, non-fat, blahblahblah?" That joke is about seventeen years old.

I tolerate the joke from Boyfriend because he is new to coffee. My friend Ross and I used to imagine the perfect partner and he or she HAD to love coffee as much as we did. And then we both ended up with coffee-hating partners. Only, mine converted. And it wasn't even my doing. It was Ross' doing, actually. His tricked-out, high-tech, stainless steel espresso machine turned Boyfriend's head. Now I have someone who says, "Let's go get a latte," at various intervals and therefore my life is perfect.

So, I tolerate the half-caf joke from Boyfriend, but not from the rich people. If they can afford those expensive suits and the gas-sucking, enviro-bomb of a Hummer they drove up in, they can afford a better joke.

On Momentum

My Banff Centre experience has ended for now. Six intense, non-stop, morning 'til midnight days of writing, writing, writing. We talked about writing. We read about writing. We wrote, we read, we wrote some more.

And then suddenly – not with a bang but an awkward, poorly attended Farewell Reception – it was over. Not that I expected much from something called a Farewell Reception. The name evokes sweaty cheese and strained small talk. If it was called Last Night Piss-Up, well, that would have been a different story.

Have decided I'm terrible at goodbyes.

I used to avoid them altogether by perfecting the art of what I called The French Exit in which, at the height of the party's attendance and energy, I would slip out the back door unseen and vanish into the night. It's fine for nightclubs when there are creeps lurking about, but really, it's rude otherwise. So I quit that business. And now I suffer through my discomfort like everyone else.

But all this goodbye stuff is secondary to the fact that this residency was probably the most important experience of my writing career thus far. It was a perfect way to begin my year as a full-time artist.

I sat down with Facilitator Bill for an hour on Friday and we came up with a plan and a schedule for the next twelve months. He said what I already knew: that it's time to get published. The plan is pretty simple, I'll work on the book in the mornings when I'm most productive. In the afternoons, I'll revise, work on short pieces and submit them to journals. Bill always submits two stories at a time – shows them variety, gives them a choice and lets you know which of your pieces are resonating with editors and which aren't.

When I'm finished the book, I'll get an agent. Then get the damn thing published.

I've left this residency with rock-solid confidence and resolve. I got wholeheartedly positive feedback from all three facilitators and the director of the program – all of them prolifically published writers and one of them an Order of Canada recipient. You can't buy better affirmation than that.

So, I got a week-long confirmation that I'm on the right path. Now my job is to stay on it, keep writing, up the ante and GET PUBLISHED for God's sake.

Workshop Round #2

Wrote like mad yesterday after class and all the way to dinner. Missed lunch, even, pounding the keys down in the basement library until I was starving and couldn't see straight.

At dinner we talked about heartbreak. Connie described telling her daughter to remember everything that was good about her lover, to gather every good memory she had and then go in and tell him it's over. In my fatigue and overstimulation, I thought that was the saddest thing I'd ever heard.

The reading last night was mostly poetry, which sounds frightening, but was beautiful.

At the break, Best Friend Bill read my piece – the one being workshopped today and said, "Mel, for the first time I think you're trying too hard. Trust your material." I drove home when the readings finished at ten, opened up my laptop and re-wrote until midnight.

Slept until six. We're starting early today.

Marathon of Words

The schedule for this week in Banff is intense. It's words, words, words from the moment I wake up to the moment I flop, exhausted into bed. A day in the life:

6:40 Press snooze three times, dimly aware that the number of snooze pressings is increasing steadily as the week progresses. Drag self out of bed.

7:00 Make latte with Mom's Starbucks Barista Home Espresso Godsend Machine Of Happiness. Scrounge brain for semi-interesting idea for blog post. Find nothing in brain. Write a half-assed schedule post.

8:00 Eat breakfast while showering, dressing and drying hair.

8:35 Receive phone call from security company, cleaning company, condo board or someone else who needs yet another key to the parents' luxury golf course townhome. You've distributed at least six keys so far, which reduces your feeling of personal safety by a factor of six, even though one of the keys went to a security company. Who locked you out of the house yesterday.

8:50 Dive into the car because now you're going to be late for class.

8:53 Enjoy the sun splashing all over the mountains while driving on Highway 1. Observe the difference between the recreational National Park drivers and the 'If I'm Late For Work Again, I'm Dead' National Park drivers.

9:15 Pull into Banff Centre parking lot, park the parents' silver Honda CRV beside the other silver Honda CRV just to mess with them a little.

9:26 Walk through Lloyd Hall, grab a "free" coffee that is probably intended for people who actually sleep in Lloyd Hall. Continue to class for brief awkward pre-class small talk.

9:30 - 12:10 Read and discuss deeply personal work of varying degrees of finishedness, interestingness and goodness. Sit in baffled silence as Facilitator Bill rattles off strange words, expecting you to know the Latin roots as though you went to school prior to 1970 or whenever they stopped teaching Latin in high school.

12:15 Wander stunned to lunch. Sit in same place at same table with same people.

12:17 Browse dessert options before proceeding piously to the salad bar. Make note of the greyish meat of the day. Yesterday was gargantuan, frightening-looking lamb shanks.

12:25 - 1:20 Discuss writing, workshops and the people in our group who drive us crazy.

1:20 - 5:30 Walk to tiny, mountain-view office. Write like mad, despite serious levels of creative exhaustion and sensory overload. Feel conflict between writing another short zinger piece to make people laugh at the readings or actually working on my book which suddenly, deflatingly feels a long, long way from being finished.

5:30 Wander in search of Best Friend Bill. There are two Bills in your life here. Facilitator Bill. And Best Friend Bill from Toronto. Find BFB either in the pub, at dinner or walking around with a coffee and the paper.

6:00 Gather for dinner cursing yourself because you said you would buy groceries and make dinner rather than going to the buffet with everyone every night. Rationalize that groceries would cost you at least $14.90 (what dinner costs) and that you're getting a 60% Artist Discount and where else in life do you get a 60% discount on food that reminds you you're an artist? Besides, you're making connections. Connections with other unpublished writers who don't have agents or editors.

7:30 Return to Writer's Lounge for readings. Observe pulse rate edge into mid-170s.

7:45 Make small talk, trying very hard to focus on what the other person is saying rather than freaking out over the fact that chances are good your innate need to be the centre of attention will overtake rational thought, forcing you to volunteer to read something that is nowhere near as polished and nowhere near as rehearsed as the piece you did the other night.

8:00 - 10:00 Listen to readings, observing who prefaces their work with things like, "This is a really, really rough draft," or, "When people complain about modern poetry, this is what they're talking about." Eventually give in to the people who want to hear another piece about lady parts and walk up the podium. Read about midgets from laptop, observing nervous twitching in butt. Realize halfway through that you are reading from an older, much less polished draft. Consider jumping out the window. Feel grateful when they laugh.

10:00 Mingle with wine and nod as the Political Correctness Police, a.k.a. Connie From Toronto, corners you and tells you how you can't say midget if the person had dwarfism. Start to explain how you've actually done research in this area and there are varying opinions on the subject, including a growing number of young little people who are 'taking back' the word. Shut up as she cuts you off because she would know because she's worked in non-profit community service organizations for thirty years. Look at the floor and mumble something about how it was an older draft and you've already changed it.

10:30 When her back is turned, duck out the door. Drive home berating yourself for responding to peer pressure and your big, fat ego. Decide to never read again.

11:00 Rethink that decision while brushing teeth. Get into bed with the three twenty-page stories Facilitator Bill wants read by tomorrow.

Big, Kick-Ass Day

Yesterday was a breakthrough day for Melanie The Artist. It started with our morning workshop, where I read two sections from my book and received the group's critique.

My instructor Bill's opening statement: "This is a book and it will sell." Yesssss.

There was some good debate about voice – not sure if you've noticed my casual, conversational style? Some people dig it, some don't. So the question is, do I change it? I could probably trim a few 'you sees' and 'I guesses,' but really, it was more interesting to see who didn't like it vs. who did. Seeing what kind of person responds to my work and what kind doesn't only helps me define my audience. A good thing.

Hoping to stretch my bravery a little further, I signed up for the evening reading. These readings are in front of the whole of our program: the travel group, memoir group and poetry group, plus Banff Centre staff and some people from other programs.

At lunch, I floated the idea of reading Crotch Management. (Read the new comment on the post.) Everyone at the table said, 'Yes please.' Of course they did. It's the title. Gets 'em every time. So, off I ran to my private mountain-view office to work on the piece.

Because upon re-reading Crotch Management, I discovered that it is a) not a finished piece of writing at all, b) not a memoir, and c) written in this strange second-person who-the-hell-is-"you" style that I'm sure worked well in the context of this blog, but stick it up in front of real writers and I don't think it would fly.

So, from 1:30 pm until 7:30 pm, I re-wrote and rehearsed, hoping that I didn't have my head up my ass and that it would be an entertaining piece.

While I laboured, I received a lovely little treat. Remember that epic writing day I put in recently? The one where 2,000 words about my divorce took me seventeen freaking hours? When Nightowl Boyfriend went to bed before me for the first time in three years?

The editor accepted the piece. Yessssss. Victory #2 of the day. The publisher still has to accept her manuscript, but she's accepted mine, so that's one hell of a start.

And it was a fabulous lift on my way to the evening reading.

Which kicked ridiculous amounts of ass. I went second after a travel writer who read poetry – much to the consternation of the Program Director, who really thought we should be reading from "our own" forms. I got up to the podium with a heart rate in the high 190s and began to read.

Friends, the value of rehearsing a lot before you got up there cannot be overstated. How else could you properly deliver such lines as: "Since my therapist didn't specialize in non-consensual relations between humans and sporting equipment, I thought I'd better try something else." And the classic: "Apparently Sexy Lance and the other elitist pricks at the bike shop were too busy jerking each other off with chamois cream to give me the heads-up."

As far as talking about my crotch in public goes, it went very well.

Afterward, Bill delivered another of his succinct assessments: "That's publishable. That's a finished piece." I love you, Bill. I love you very much.

My Creative Butt On The Line

I spent yesterday in a total haze and suspect I'll be in the same state of overwhelm for the rest of the week. So if I can't string a sentence together in this here bloggie, that's why.

Some Facts:

• They give you an ID card here at the Banff Centre with the word ARTIST stamped on it, all in capitals. I am a card-carrying artist.* Feels delicious.
  
• My best friends in this course are from the travel group. Their names are Mike and Bill. I know for sure Bill's in his 50s. Mike looks like he could be 50, but I wouldn't want to presume. Although, after reading his piece about getting his ass kicked all over Lake Chapala, Mexico, he could just be a really-worked-over 34. Hard to say.
• The travel group had a big fight yesterday. Something about false advertising in the Banff Centre brochure blurb. Big debates about what is travel writing and is it journalism and all that. Bill suspects it will be the first of many fights.
• Someone has already almost cried in Memoir group. Because 5-minute writing exercises can do that to a person.
  
• I should talk. At the prospect of reading my 5-minute writing exercise to the group, my heart almost ripped itself from my body, got on a Greyhound bus and escaped to the wilds of Lake Chapala, Mexico.
  
• When I parked my car, I got out and three deer jumped down into the parking lot as though to greet me. I said, "Hello Beauties," and went to class. We saw another little Bambi when Mike, Bill and I made our way to dinner. The restaurant is called Vistas and once the sun dips behind the mountains enough so your retinas don't burn off, they raise the blinds in a dramatic Rocky Mountains reveal.
• There are in fact counseling services here at the Banff Centre. But only on Fridays. So you'll have to soldier through until then.
• The poetry instructor is a young-looking dude who, in his twenties, taught English in Japan for a year and saved all the money he made. It bought him two years of time in which he wrote and submitted like crazy, and created a paying writing career. He now makes his living as a novelist. In Canada. It can be done. I also got great validation about my Just One Year plan. (Even though it may take two.)
  
• I'm getting workshopped today. Which means in 4.2 seconds I have to leap into my car, drive to Banff and hope there isn't a massive line-up at the printer in the Writer's Lounge.

* Valid only until September 21, 2008

First Day Of Skool

Dudes. I'm at the Banff Centre for the Arts. At a writing residency. And the first person I talked to last night at the obligatory Opening Awkward Social was a guy who takes himself way too seriously and has a New York agent. Of course, he's in my memoir group. Of course, his memoir is about people dying in the former Yugoslavia.

He's either going to be my nemesis or my side kick.

That's how these things usually go. The people that drive me the craziest on the first day usually end up being my best friends. I'm already planning to interrogate him about how he got The New York Agent. And what this Agent is doing for him.

Met some other lovely people. Including Kathleen from Maine, Lester from Edmonton, Connie and Bill from Toronto. They aren't a couple. They're just both from Toronto. I'm one of the youngest people there. Besides Jason, the poet from Winnipeg, who dressed like a Capital-A Artist and got WAY too drunk at the Awkward Social. So drunk he couldn't operate a corkscrew anymore. If he ever could. He was that young that he might not even know how to effectively open a bottle of wine.

I helped him. Does that make me an enabler?

Part of the package of stuff we received for this course was photocopies of everyone's writing samples from when we applied back in May. Based on a quick scan through the other memoir pieces, I can safely say mine is the only story that will involve laughing. Of any kind.

I forgot this about memoir. I forgot about the possibility of pieces about breakups and not being able to have children and sexual abuse and being gay in the war zone of former Yugoslavia. Which is what all of them seem to be about.

So. My piece will either get way, way, way funnier in compensation. Or I will spend this entire week crying about the injustices of the world.

To be honest, I'm just the teensiest bit worried I will be facing a week of therapy writing. The kind of work that should have stayed in the journal or the shrink's office. I wonder if there are psychologists on staff at the Banff Centre.

Regardless, I've decided that if other people's stories are going to be about the extremes of human experience, I will use it as an invitation to push my work further. Like way further.

Here is what I know for sure:
1. I am a performer.
2. I am unafraid to use myself and my life as the butt of my own jokes.
3. They let us do readings every night.
4. Watch. Out.

American Dreamz

I'm not a very political person. I don't partake in rallies. I don't "back" candidates. Even voting is a stretch for me sometimes. But one can't really help getting just the teeniest bit swept up in the U.S. pre-election hubbub. (Mmhmm. Hubbub.) Because that's all the Internet's talking about these days.

I don't read very many blogs. I wish I read more. One of the blogs I read is a misnamed e-newsletter, even. And the other is a bonafide blog called Dooce (thanks Mark H). This blog is so good you might consider abandoning me for it. If you did, I wouldn't blame you. I'd be sad alright, but I wouldn't blame you.

Both of my blog-like reading materials this week went rant-style on what's going on on the Republican side of the ticket. The rants are usually about how Sarah Palin is pro-life and that makes her scary or about how some families simply don't have the money to eat AND have health insurance. You know, little picky things.

And I have a feeling that if the two blogs I read are going ape-shit, the rest of the country's going ape-shit as well. A brief visit to Twitter put me face to face with four-hundred-thousand Sarah Palin jokes. That link I gave you to Dooce? Her rant post has over 2,000 comments. Almost 2,500 actually. (And she got a death threat, too.)

Our neighbours to the south are off the hook right now.

Meanwhile, Boyfriend has joined me here in lovely Canmore, bearing good news about the new Mac products that were announced this week. I don't care even a little, but he's a tech guy and gets rilly, rilly, rilly excited about these things. (He even subscribes to a newsfeed called Mac Rumours. For serious.)

And then he showed me a thingy called Fitbit, a wee paper-clip-lookin' unit that tracks your physical activity and sleep patterns. After that, Boyfriend and I spent a cozy moment on the couch browsing through iPhone applications. Because he'll probably make one next week and make a million dollars.

And I realized the only really good thing about America is the wide variety of consumer products a person can buy. That's the only, only plus. "Well yeah," Boyfriend said, using his iPod Touch as a remote and turning on some romantic music. "That's the American Dream. To sell people stuff."

And I am the most naive person in the entire world because I kinda thought that was just a myth. Like, really, we just say that's the American Dream, but the American Dream is really a country full of gloriously happy, healthy people and everyone knows low-priced consumer goods can't buy happiness, silly. Oh, and pssst. Don't worry, we'll pull ourselves out of the gaping jaws of self-destruction just in time for the closing credits.

I think the child inside me just died.

Café Procreation

Yesterday, I went in search of café writing. It's my favourite kind of writing, but something I've been unimpressed with here in North America. Is it that Parisian cafés are that much cooler? Or is it that screaming babies are more acceptable when the screaming is in French?

Normally, I go to the Rocky Mountain Bagel Co. not because the coffee's spectacular, but because my friend Tanya used to own it. She owned it with her husband and another couple and they all lived in some trailer on the edge of town. Only the other couple broke up, so the Bagel conglomerate dissolved as well.

Then Tanya's hubby opened a car wash and Tanya opened Café Books – the place where I had my first and only very embarrassing book signing and also where I have the dubious honour of having been a bestseller...for like a week.

But, given that Tanya no longer owns Bagel Co. (or Café Books if the rumours are true) and also given that if I'm to be a "local" here in Canmore I should know more than one place besides the Safeway, I decided to try someplace new. I went for Communitea, where in addition to their irritating name, they serve an esstra-snobby brand of espresso called Intelligencia.

Mm. Pet peeve? People who call it expresso.

Communitea makes an excellent first impression – all chic and fabulous and white on the inside. But then that first impression shatters into a million really sharp pieces as shrill, mind-splitting voices and clattering plates bounce off the stark, minimalist decor and into your brain, edging you into homicidal maniac territory almost as soon as you sit down.

I cursed myself for ordering a large coffee. It would take me forever to drink it and get the hell out of there.

There was a table of teenage girls in the corner. I used to be one of those. Remind me why we needed to yell everything we said? Remind me again why we needed to shriek with laughter? Has anything in life ever really been that funny?

I took my shit and relocated to the other side of the white lacquer IKEA shelving unit which separated the Chic Café Area from the Hippy Hang-Out Area. Lots of beanbag chairs going on over there. Bean bag chairs are hard to write in. But if you build a wall with them, they muffle the glass-breaking shrieks of teenage girls.

Everything was fine for a moment. Until the Babymamas moved in. Two of them. They were really cute and mountain-stylish. And their husbands were cute, too. And the babies, being offspring of cute, were...you get my point.

They looked so happy and balanced and healthy and attractive. And one of the kids was named Aria, which is not an annoying 10 Most Popular Baby Names name and neither is it a Let's See Whose Last Name We Can Bastardize Into A First Name name. It's a really smart, beautiful, culturally aware, I-wish-I'd-thought-of-that name.

And it wasn't that I felt bad about not being married and having kids.

Well, yes, it was.

I stared at these blissful family units and I thought, 'That would be lovely. Just....lovely.' And for a brief moment, I considered trading in my laptop for a onesie.

Because, can I just say? It gets a little tiring watching every single person you know get engaged and married and pregnant. And sometimes you think, 'If I can't beat 'em, maybe I should join 'em.' And then I can wear a cute Lululemon coat and cute clogs and drink cappuccino with my cute husband as our cute daughter with a smart name runs around the café before we go to our eco-friendly home and drink organic wine while we prepare vegetarian cuisine.

Rather than being the anti-social, agoraphobic spinster artist huddling her shriveled, dried-up ovaries behind the wall of bean bag chairs mumbling about The Road Of Trials and how it's not coming clear goddamnit.

A year ago, my biological clock was bonging so loud, I couldn't hear anything else. I'd been pressing the snooze button on the thing since I turned 29. And then my best friend had her daughter and all bets were off. Clanging, banging, ringing, buzzing insanity. You wanna talk Aria? I had an internal procreation soprano shrieking at me 24-7.

And then I went to Paris. And on April 27, the bio-clock stopped. Tick tick.....nothing. For real. It was bizarre. And now, most of the time, except for these moments of I'm A Freak weakness, the whole marriage and babies scene makes me a bit itchy.

Which I think makes my parents want to cry. Because their grandbaby clock started going off awhile ago and they are getting antsy. All signs point to The Middle Sister delivering (ha!) on that front.

And me? I just think I'll give café writing a rest for awhile.

Acceptance is the First Step to Healing

Hi, my name is Melanie and I'm an email addict. Step One: we admitted we were powerless over email, and that our lives had become overly accessible.

I've been sober for one day. A Certain Introvert in my life staged a minor intervention on Wednesday night. He challenged me to go one day without email. I was permitted to check my email before I went to bed and then not until 5:00 pm the next day. I made it until 6.

It was ridiculously, embarrassingly hard.

I'm a stage four e-junkie. For sure. I probably check my email, on average, every two minutes. No joke. I can't even wait for the automatic Send/Receive setting, which does it every five.

Which is all hilarious because I really don't get that much email. So, most of my obsessive checking is pressing the Get Mail button over and over and staring at an email inbox that refuses to give up any new mail. Very unsatisfying.

Maybe I should start online dating again. Now that's a good way to get lots of email. From creepy stalkers twice your age. Meh. I'll take what I can get.

No.

No, I won't. Because since yesterday I get to consider myself to be a "recovering" email addict.

Boyfriend (a.k.a. Intervention Stager) sent me an article by Neal Stephenson, a novelist who writes geek-friendly prose in the postcyberpunk genre. (Huh? What the hell is that?) The fact is, a sci-fi novelist like dear Neal is really going to be the only place where Boyfriend and I connect on the literary front. Again...I take what I can get.

Anyhoo, Neal is a very bad email correspondent. "I simply cannot respond to all incoming stimuli unless I retire from writing novels. And I don't wish to retire at this time," he writes. He doesn't pull the punch in the title of the article either: "Why I'm a Bad Correspondent." Only the link is broken, so I can't take you there.

Boyfriend is the world's worst correspondent, incidentally. But these cats are really on to something because by not checking and/or responding to email, they give themselves great swaths of uninterrupted, creative time. "And then there's call display," Boyfriend said, rubbing his hands together.

"You don't screen my calls," I said.

"That's because I'd face your wrath."

Geeks are smart.

So, I quit the junk cold turkey yesterday and also turned off my cell phone, which felt like cutting off a limb and leaving it on the side of the highway as I drove to Canmore. Alone and uninterrupted in the mountains, I got lots of writing done. Finished reading a book. Had a pleasant dinner and watched a documentary on surf gangs in Australia.

All in all, it was the loneliest day of my life.

My former co-worker Nadine used to get lonely in between leaving the office and getting to her car in the parkade. Between the second floor and the fifth floor, she'd have to call someone for moral support. For seven years, I've used Nadine as my At Least I'm Not That Bad preamble. And I'm not. It just that I find unadulterated Melanie a little scary sometimes. You would too. I can't spend too long with her or things get weird.

The funny thing was, by 5:00, I was too nervous to check my email or turn on my phone. Because emails and phone calls usually mean someone wants something from you.

The trouble was, I needed to use my cell as an alarm clock. It seems my folks have taken their travel alarm clocks with them on their travels (duh) and that's the only kind of alarm clock they have. I switched my cell on and set the alarm.

Almost immediately, my phone started ringing. It was 10 o'clock at night. Are. You. Kidding. Me.

But then I found out why cell phones are the most beautiful invention in the world. It was the Credit Card Fraud Department from my bank and they were calling to save my Not Very Wealthy To Begin With And Certainly Not Wealthy Enough To Support Some Thief Buying Porsches On My Dime...life.

Does this mean I'm off the wagon? Mmmm. Maybe.

Cream

I saw my ex-father-in-law the other day for the first time in six years. It was my first visual reminder of The Bad Old Days in a long, long time. I never see my ex. Never see his friends. Never see his family members.

Until I met my friend Russ for lunch and there he was, Father of Ex, sitting on the patio of The Coup. Wearing the same navy blue sweater and khakis I swear he had on six years ago when my marriage went Hiroshima-circa-August 6, 1945.

For whatever reason, the Ex and I have adopted a policy of studiously ignoring each other during any chance meetings or passings by. I don't know why. You'd think twelve years of history would warrant at least an awkward hello. And in this case you'd be wrong.

Because apparently it involves no more interaction than between people at the bus stop or in the Tim Hortons line. And even in those cases, there's the likelihood of someone saying, "No, you go ahead," which is not going to happen in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Ex.

I guess that's what happens when each party firmly believes the other party is a complete and utter waste of organic material who thoroughly ruined their life.

And I guess the ignoring applies to ex-father-in-laws, too.

The thing about ignoring someone is that you aren't actually ignoring them at all. You pay closer attention to people you ignore than you do to anyone or anything else.

And the thing about stuff that happened six or more years ago is this: you no longer get that feeling in your stomach. That feeling, when you see the person who broke your heart, that is probably equivalent to someone dipping a serrated knife into some kind of high-potency acid or maybe liquid explosives and then plunging it into your solar plexus. That particular sensation is gone. Along with things like Resentment and Anger and Sadness.

But what isn't gone is this strange thing about ignoring each other. And the awareness of the possibility that every move you make may be observed and recounted at a later date. So, I looked across the table at Russ, a work friend, and wondered if Father of Ex would report back about how my new "boyfriend" and I have the same haircut.

And, here's the embarrassing part. I was nervous about the cream in my coffee. Because dairy products are like the Ebola virus in Family of Ex. Which comes from a long history with a particular illness.

The result of this illness was a Stalin-esque approach to food and diet. Which worked well because that family has a Stalin-eque approach to everything else in life, too. They were the most hard-line, judgmental, black-and-white people I have ever met. There was good. And then there was bad. There was right. And then there was wrong. If you planned on becoming part of The Family (and all the Godfather images that conjures), you had to conform.

One can only assume that I, as Crazy Ex-wife of the eldest child and one who clearly did not conform, fall into the Bad/Wrong side of things. Along with the cream in my coffee.

The funny thing is, cream in my coffee was the first step to regaining a sense of joy after my marriage ended. I was so depleted of deliciousness after my years with this iron-willed spirit-crusher, that cream was an act of defiance. And a kind of rebirth.

Cream came to represent all that is good in life. The richness of how life should be. Every morning when I stirred the thick, white sweetness into my cup, it was as though I was pouring in life itself. Filling my bony, devastated carcass with all that is sensual and decadent and possible.

In Paris, when you order a coffee with milk, you say, "Un creme, s'il vous plait." A cream, please. God. It's even wonderful to say it.

And there I was, sitting in a restaurant six years later, completely aware that how I take my coffee could potentially be used as metaphoric confirmation that I was as pointless a person as they thought.

So, what else could I do in a situation like that?

I added more cream.

Epiphany Party

There's an epiphany in my pants and you're invited:

Epiphany #1
I have nothing to do but write for the first time in my entire life. Do you understand what this means?! I'm freaking doing it. Is what it means. After 32 years of living on this planet, I am finally committing to my creative work. It also means that I no longer walk around my house. I dance. And sing little silly happy songs. Because that's what happens when you are really, really, really happy.

Epiphany #2
Everything in life is source material. I received this 'How To Be An Artist' message from Elizabeth 'Eat, Pray, Love To Be On Oprah' Gilbert's web site. She spent her twenties traveling around the world working in bars and on ranches, listening to how people spoke and the stories they told. "My travels were a very deliberate effort to learn as much as I could about life, expressly so that I could write about it." This underlines my realization that...

Epiphany #3
Life is very, very, very funny if you pay close attention. This one came to me around the time Orange Garbage Bag Boy came into my world. Since then, life has become a series of hilarious experiences that it is my glorious job to write about. Including my friend who has finally decided to try online dating, only the site has decided she is Male. And she can't change the setting. Which is funny, sure, but even funnier is the sheer volume of email she's receiving from men who want to date her. Him. We're not sure.

Epiphany #4
Do it regardless. This 'How To Be An Artist' message was brought to me by an old dance prof of mine. This woman fell in love with dance in her early twenties. And then she fell in love with the prairies. Common "wisdom" states that you can't have a dance career out here in the boonies. She has. For thirty years. The lesson here is this: decide what you want to do and find a way to do it, no matter what.

Of Hairballs and Band-Aids

Started my day with a swim today. I was annoyed at yesterday's Big Dream Check-In. I mean, fitting in a half hour of exercise is not that hard! Why is it that when I was in university, I managed a full course load, a part-time job, tons of performing and still had time to get frequently and thoroughly intoxicated? And now, all I can do in a day is write and maybe (maybe) make dinner.

Is this about releasing the need to accomplish, accomplish, accomplish? Is it about recognizing the three hours of sleep that worked back then doesn't work now? Or am I just a lazy slob?

My friend Renee recently quit her full-time job because the stress was literally killing her. Everyone knows a full-time job is never 40 hours a week. It's 50 or 60. And then there was her part-time "fun" job, and the freelancing, and the condo board meetings. And her long-distance relationship. The girl ran herself into the ground.

I used to be much like Renee. If there was a 20-minute hole in my daytimer, I'd fill it. I think I topped out at nine jobs at once. One of them was full-time, too. Ridiculous. And what was really weird was that I was proud of this fact. I had a chip on my shoulder because I had absolutely no down-time and was a train wreck waiting to happen. Um, I don't get it.

But, I keep looking back at the Glorious Ironman Days. That year when I worked full-time and trained up to 20 hours a week. I ate incredibly well. I slept a ton. I drank lots of water. I was very, very healthy. And very, very busy.

Which, I suppose, is easy if you're stone-cold single, only hang out with triathlon people and don't plan on getting a lick of creative work done. Life is a series of trade-offs, I guess.

I'm not going to get all work-life balance on you here. But, I think there's something about creating the life you want. And working hard to make that happen. I want to be a full-time, self-supporting artist. I also want to be fit and healthy. And no one can make that happen for me...but me.

So, I think that might mean hitting the pool before I do anything else in the morning. Dodging the people who do that bizarre breast-stroke-on-their-backs thing in the Fast lane. Waving hello to the hairballs and grey-looking Band-Aids undulating at the bottom. Wondering why, when you are a slow swimmer, you wouldn't let the faster person tailgating you freakin' pass already.

Personally, I can think of very few other ways I'd want to start my day.

What's the Donate Deal?

I have added a Donate button to the blog. See it? It's right there on the left side of your screen.* It's simple to use and fun for all ages. Especially kids who have stolen their parents' Mastercards and don't know the meaning of the words Credit Limit.

I've added this button for two reasons. One, because smart people told me to. And two, because I want to attract more good energy to my Just One Year Plan. The JOY Plan is about committing 100% to my creative work for one full year. The more good energy I attract, the more likely I'll be to succeed. And that's what money is...energy.

Love is also energy, so feel free to send that, too. And if you don't feel like donating money, why not donate a reader?

That's enough on the sales pitch side of life. But, while we're talking about the JOY Plan, let's check in on progress, shall we? M'kay. The goals for August/Beginning of September included developing a daily writing routine, finishing the memoir and writing a book proposal for agents.

The book proposal hasn't happened. But the condo renting has and I got so much good material out of it, from getting stuck in the elevator with a prospective tenant to having a guy move into my lobby, that it was worth it. I have enough for at least two short creative nonfiction pieces there. Which I will write and submit after the Giant Book Project is complete.

The book itself has been an incredible journey. My Banff Centre residency begins in one week – I've been at this thing for five weeks already ?!– and there's a lot left to write. But I don't plan on talking to anyone or dislodging my fingers from my keyboard for the next seven days, so I think I can do it. Actually, I know I can. I get off on massively intimidating deadlines, and any suggestion that I can't do something just fuels the fire of I can. I'm like a far less motivated and much shorter version of Michael Phelps.

As far as developing the daily ritual of writing, that's been weird. It seems I can write everyday, but doing anything else is a challenge. Like exercise. That's my next challenge I think – to write every day AND be a healthy, functioning human being. However, I've learned a lot about my own process and limits – i.e. three days without writing turns me into a homicidal maniac, which may or may not just be part of my process.

Beyond finishing the memoir and forcing my rapidly melting ass out the door for a run, another challenge is to protect Canmore as a sacred creative space. Which means not having the sounds of NFL on TSN booming through the place while I'm trying to work. Will all the women who have successfully whipped their partners into sports-watching submission please tell me how you did it? Thanks.



*Unless, of course, you are one of my faithful Facebook readers, in which case the only thing on the left side of your screen is an ad for Sexy Sluts In Your Area. Jump on over to melaniejones.ca to view the mystical and powerful Donate button for yourself.

The Writer's Journey

I am still getting body-checked by my creative process. And even though I don't actually sleep, but drift just above sleep in some strange thinking-dream state, leaving me spectacularly exhausted – I'm happy.

The joy at not only being in a creative process, but beginning to understand how my process in particular works, is almost holy. Well, it is holy. Because I believe the creative process is a divine one.

Only I don't look very divine today, what with the suitcases under my eyes from lack of sleep.

I give you the process so far:

Embracing the Deadline
In which the writer commits to a barely human deadline for completing a massive project. And also in which the writer tells everyone she sees about this deadline, making it "real" and preventing her from backing out lest she look like a flake.

Copious Notes
In which the writer pukes out great sheaths of notes on character, plot and structure, usually becoming too smart for her own good and imposing such gimmicks as "The entire thing's written in haiku!" or "It's a great spiraling journey from the outside arrondissements of Paris to the centre of the city...from the external aspects of personality to the core of one's soul!" (Wait. That one might actually work.)

Twenty-Page Vomit
In which the writer bangs out pages upon pages in two days, her fingers barely able to keep up with the waves of completely misguided creativity pouring forth. Resulting in twenty pages of complete and utter crap.

The Sliced Bread Stage
In which the writer believes she is so far ahead of the game (who's game? there's a game?) that she adopts an irritating swagger in her walk and tells people she'll be writing two screenplays/novels/PhD dissertations by the Big, Ugly Deadline and will be sitting on Oprah's couch sometime next week.

Dark Night of the Writer's Soul
In which she reads through the thirty pages she has now written and discovers that she has no talent whatsoever and this project is a complete waste of time and perhaps she should do the world a favour and throw herself of the nearest bridge. Taking the Laptop Of Horrible Writing with her.

Torpor
In which several days pass without the writer dislodging her rear end from the couch. These are the horse latitudes – a period of no current, no movement, no writing. Just waiting. And drooling. And staring into space.

Spastic Insight
In which the writer sees something, like a midget, or reads something, like the original idea from way back before she got all "clever" with it, and the project comes jerking back into focus. Despite it being nervewrackingly close to the Ridiculous Deadline, the writer begins again. From scratch.

Humble Servant
In which the writer, backside still stinging from the spanking she's received from the Great Creator, humbly opens herself to creative guidance from the Universe. She slowly and carefully works through the material she's gathered, paying close attention to twinges from her intuition and keeps her big, barking ego tied to a post in the front yard so it can't get in and slobber all over everything.

Tumult
In which the project is clear and gaining momentum. So much momentum that it is like a freight train inside the writer's skull and if it doesn't come out through the writer's frantically typing fingers, it will gladly blow a hole right through her frontal lobe. At this stage, the writer thinks people who want to "have dinner" or "meet for coffee"with her are either insanely unaware of how a writer works or are spies sent to sabotage her process.

Trusting the Process
The project is not perfect, but the writer is aware of that. She simply works with what she knows at that moment, trusting that clarity will come when it is required. And not a moment before.

This is the state the writer would be well-served to be in all the time. Unfortunately, it's usually forgotten as quickly as the pain of childbirth. (Or so I've heard.) And so at the beginning of the next project, the writer will believe that she is not only driving the bus, but she designed and engineered the bus herself. And it's the fastest, coolest, prettiest bus anyone has ever seen.

Things I Do When I'm Alone

It's nothing pervy. Sorry. Unless you consider wandering around mumbling the lyrics to Don't Stop Believin' pervy.

While I'm up here in the mountains writing, I've had lots of time to observe my own behaviour. It's obvious that a person is different in solitude than with other people. A lot more wedgie-pulling and butt-scratching, one would think. Although, I don't know how this fits in with the Most-Common-Self-Written-Wedding-Vow-Of-All-Time which is, "I can be myself around you." Which isn't really a vow of any kind, except maybe in the sense that the soon-to-be spouse can look forward to a LOT more butt-scratching and wedgie-pulling in the future. In which case, I wish you both the best.

Regardless. I am fully aware of the difference between being around people and being alone. And it's not that I'm a different person altogether, it's just that I'm a weirder, less-socially-functioning version of myself.

Things I Do When I'm Alone

• Consume atrocious amounts of the world's most precious resource, water, in the form of two to three showers or baths per day. This is more about comfort and warmth than obsessive complusion.
  
• Prodigiously use old-lady scented bath products, including jasmine and lavender. This, too, is about comfort and relaxation. Being confronted with creative forces all on your own is stressful. I'll take what I can aromatherapeutically get.
• Mumbling and wandering. There's a scene in The Hours where Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf wanders around town mumbling and looking quite crazy because, of course, she is crazy. Only I don't think mumbling is crazy. I think it's normal. Occasionally, I will look myself in the eye in a mirror and yell, "The bearded lady KNOWS!" Or something of that nature. It's fine.
• But it could be related to the constant state of over-caffeination.
• Become nomadic. I will begin a day at my desk. Then, when I feel stifled or antsy, move to the couch (which is, incidentally, right near the fireplace). And then I'll move to the kitchen table or the massive granite kitchen island, which serves as both a writing desk and a plate if need be.
• Create stylish combinations using these items: wool beret, scarf, wool socks, long underwear, down vest, sweatpants, sweaters, roaring fires and a thermostat jacked to 30.
• Pee with the door open. When I bathe or shower, however, I close the door. Because axe murderers are far more common in shower scenes than toilet scenes. One takes one's precautions where one may.
• Play the same CD approximately 15 times in a row.
• Suffer from acute agoraphobia mixed with inertia such that I struggle to leave the house. Especially if I've been working since first-thing in the morning. This leads to me getting to the bank at 4:58 p.m., wearing strange clothing which may or may not include a second-hand rabbit-fur hunting hat, a wild, slightly insane look in my eye and a symphony of nervous twitches and mumblings that have replaced The English Language and any social skills I may have, at some point in my life, had. It really is no wonder people think artists are strange.
• Possibly based on my inability to function in normal society or my constant need of comfort as demonstrated by the obsessive showering and application of heat to my body, pie becomes a viable vegetarian dinner entrée.
• Go to bed by 8:30 p.m. without fail. My sleep, however, is tossy and turny and terrible. Which may, again, be due to the over-caffeination. Or the fact that I'm at the Tumultuous Stage of my creative process, where my work writhes in my subconscious and won't let me rest until it breaks free of my head and lands on the page with a great splatter of relief.
  

Free Melly

Don’t ever call me Melly. Like EVER if you want me to still be your friend. The title is simply a pop-culture reference representative of how I feel...like a big, barnacle-crusted whale, flying through the air, splattering cold water on a blissed-out child actor as I belly-flop to freedom.

My sister got on a plane. My parents got on a plane. My condo is rented. And I am free. I’m an unbound, unfettered artist, sitting in Canmore, staring at the mountains and breathing the delicious fragrance of vanilla-jasmine body scrub. The vanilla-jasmine body scrub that Boyfriend hates but it doesn’t matter because he isn’t here to smell it.

No one is.

It’s just me.

Me and my creative work.

All alone.

With my gargantuan, nowhere-near-finished book.

*Blinks*

SWEET, MERCIFUL JESUS ON A ROCKING HORSE, SOMEONE SAVE ME!

Kidding. Two days ago, when I rented my condo and felt that head-rush of freedom, joy and possibility, I almost passed out. I haven’t felt this good since I was in Paris. For serious. It’s been four months since I’ve felt this goddamn good. Which is actually kind of lame, but I’m not going to quibble with the details.

If you flip it on its head, it only took me four months to recreate the experience of living my dream of being a full-time artist. Well...four months, a casual mental breakdown, a brush with bankruptcy, a relationship that sustained daily napalming and the overriding delusion that being 45 minutes west of the soul-sucking suburbs is somehow equivalent to Paris-Freaking-France.

Meh. Who’s counting?

Yesterday afternoon, I set up the Official Writer’s Garret. It’s my mother’s sewing area and since she’s not here to sew for the next six months, I cleared it out. I packed up bits and pieces from her mid-70s quilting phase, her early-2000s needlepoint period, the brief knitting moment from 2007 when she decided needlepoint was too stressful a hobby and the Ugly Reusable Shopping Bag incident of 2008.

Hideous cloth grocery bags in unnatural colours were the most recent innovation in a long-standing tradition of making anything and everything possible out of bedsheets. Curtains are the gold standard in that department, but there have also been strange bed skirt wrap things, table runners, place mats and a junior high prom dress or two. It’s no wonder I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 27.

That’s a lie, but the bedsheet obsession isn’t. And for those who are wondering about the thirty-year gap between the 70s quilting and everything else, those were her Children-Who-Can-Walk years. Not a lot of sewing happening then. A shitload of microwaving and multitasking, but not much sewing.

Anyhow, here I am. Writing in the mountains. Does it get any better than this? Well, yeah, because I forgot to bring chocolate or any form of dessert-like material. I may be forced to eat sugar straight from the 5 kg bag with a spoon. Whatever. It’s my process.

Hero's Journey

In my memoir, a focus and structure has been emerging, forcing me to sit still until it comes clear. The insights came in interesting little messages, as they always do. The first was the impulse to open up the material I sent to the Banff Centre when I applied for the residency. In there, under the dry title of Project Description was a crystal-clear summation of what this book is all about.

"The memoir is about coming-of-age as an artist. It’s about living one’s dreams. And it’s about getting to know a cast of characters through the process of creating them. My characters came alive as breathing, desire-filled beings struggling to make their way out of my brain and onto the page. We frustrated each other. Fought. Fell in love. I’d beg them to reveal themselves and they’d become reticent and refuse to speak.

As my month-long writing sojourn progressed, it occurred to me that a meta-narrative was emerging. Not a story within a story, but a story above, around and through a story. What also became clear was that the process of accepting, allowing and coaxing a lifelong dream into reality runs parallel to the process of opening up to the creative forces that make character and narrative a reality. Part manifestation, part serendipity. Part writing, part listening."

Aside from my thoroughly irritating use of the word 'meta-narrative' – you are welcome to slap me next time you see me – this resonated. And I wondered what I've been writing for the past three weeks. I got to work, poring through my journal and my blog, marking down timelines and insights. My various fights with Charlie. The ridiculous joy at discovering The Undertaker. The days when I wanted to jump out of the window. The point at which I went all Henry-Miller-In-Paris and wrote: I am an artist.

It occurred to me that if my screenplay's characters were characters in the memoir, and people like Dana the Artist were characters in the memoir, then I am a character, too. I am the protagonist. I am, in other words, the hero.

I started to wonder about the archetypal hero's journey. I looked it up. Bizarrely, my journey to come of age as an artist followed the hero's journey almost exactly. The departure, the mentor, the road of trials, apotheosis, the return.

Now, I'm not saying I'm a grand and glorious hero. I'm more Frodo Baggins than Leonidas of the Brave 300.

But, the hero isn't out for glory or fame, he is on a path from the ego to a new, higher self. The journey separates him from his comfortable world and thrusts him (yeah, we'll go with 'thrusts') into an unfamiliar world, where he is put to the test for the sake of his goal. The hero doesn't begin his journey capable of completing it, he has to learn and grow along the way. He doesn't start out a hero in a grand sense of the word, he starts out weak and unsure. He becomes something else entirely along the way.

This morning, I pulled out Martha Graham's autobiography. Hers was most definitely a hero's journey. I started to think about all artists and their paths. And now I'm thinking about Athena. About anyone who has received the call, packed their things and ventured forth into the unknown.

It's one thing to feel like you're walking in the dark on your own. It's another to know that there are other people out there, somewhere, fumbling along too. And it's something else entirely to know that you are treading an ancient path, a well-trodden path, and that great warriors have walked this ground before you. They had trials. They were weak. They were tempted to turn back. But they kept going, and ultimately they succeeded. Because in the face of doubt and struggle, they stayed true to themselves and their quest. They were – and I think we all could be – what Martha Graham called "athletes of God."

The Hair

My mother has a lot of moles. You know, beauty marks. And she's pretty freakin' beautiful because those things are all over her body. And I, sharing half her genetic material and half of my also-moley father's, am bloody gorgeous.

Some moles, however, are not so beautiful. They come in weird colours. Sometimes they're kind of lumpy. And some moles...well, some moles have The Hair.

Like the one on my mother's cheek.

And being that my mom is nearing 60 and uses reading glasses for things like menus and the Safeway coupons she gives me every time I see her, she's no longer able to see The Hair.

I think The Hair is one of those things that's out of sight out of mind and at this point she's forgotten The Hair ever existed. Besides, she gets a bunch of microdermabrasion and photo-something-wrinkle-blaster treatments, so maybe she thinks that if her wrinkles haven't survived, there's no way The Hair has.

Oh, it's survived all right. The Hair has prevailed.

So I, being understanding of people who need reading glasses and being the kind of person who will tell you if there's spinach in your teeth, have taken it upon myself to tell her when it's time to pluck.

Only it's always a quarter past Time to Pluck by the time I get to her and the thing is usually an inch long. And when The Hair is an inch long it, you know, curls. A curly freaking hair spiraling out of my mom's face. It's a travesty.

Also a travesty is that my parents just left for a six-month sabbatical in Australia and New Zealand. The Australia and New Zealand bit isn't a travesty, it's the six-month part. The Hair will be down to her waist by the time she gets back. She could get strangled in her sleep. She's halfway around the world and I won't be there to save her!

Maybe there's an international agency I can call.

But, right now, I think it's time to review two facts.

FACT #1: I have been rather preoccupied for the past few weeks, what with my bank balance going down like a DC-10 and my condo not renting and the seven thousand showings to seven thousand weird people and the casual little sidebar of the ENTIRE BOOK I'M WRITING.

FACT #2: I have my mother's DNA. A whole lot of her DNA. In fact, it's safe to say that half of me is my mother's DNA. Very, very safe to say that.

So, as I brushed my teeth before bed last night, trying not to stew over the really nice couple I was sure was going to rent my place but didn't, while scientifically examining the co-incidental occurrence of a zit emerging in the exact spot of one of my many moles, making that mole look on the large and scary side, I suddenly remembered that I have another mole on the left side of my jaw intimately related to my Mom's cheek mole in that it is also privileged enough to have The Hair.

I am fairly obsessive about the hasty and frequent removal of this particular hair. I usually pluck the thing before it even breaks the surface of my skin (which is funny because I think someone needs to take a weed whacker to my eyebrows right now). Despite that, I figured, as I enjoyed the vanilla-minty flavour of my Sensodyne Pronamel toothpaste (9 out of 10 dentists agree), that all was well with regards to The Hair.

No. It was fucking massive.

I'm talking LONG. Growing poker straight down the side of my neck, encroaching on my collarbone. Shrouding the entire left side of my face in its giant mole hair shadow.

I threw my toothbrush down and scrambled for my tweezers. Forget oral hygiene. This was a Code Red Hair Removal emergency. My heart was pounding so much from all the trauma, I needed a cocktail after that. I pulled out the mickey of rye I keep in my bedside table drawer for just such an emergency, took a shot and went to sleep.

And today, I'm thinking about how many days or weeks The Hair was there, hanging off my face for all to see. How many of my friends have seen it and not said anything? How many times has Boyfriend seen it? God. I'm surprised he hasn't divorced me. Although, he has been acting weird lately. All smiley and chatty and I-love-you-y. I don't get it.

Unless he's been all smiles to cover up for the fact that while I've been cultivating a foot-long, 4H prize-winning mole hair off my face, he's gone and found another girlfriend.

Back to the Bleeding Edge

Dudes. That extremely overused quote about getting to the end of your rope and hanging on is pounding in my brain today. And my heart has removed itself from my chest and is flopping around on the floor like some epileptic rump roast. Welcome to the edge of my Comfort Zone.

Today is the day I didn't really want to see - Pay For Two Houses While Trying To Live My Dreams Day. I know it's happened to others. It might have even happened to other writers. Maybe writers who bought a condo in their flush ad copywriting days and then suddenly realized they had to live their dreams or they'd start dying and then committed to their creative work only to find that mortgages and aspiring memoirists/screenwriters aren't a comfy mix in the early days.

Maybe other folks are completely familiar with waves of toxic stress acid crashing in their stomachs and thoughts like 'Just run away! To the mountains of Peru!' teasing their minds and the complete absence of, y'know, sleep.

My friend Erin gets it. She opened a homeopathic clinic and shop when she was something like 20. She had no freaking clue what she was doing. She just knew that she wanted a store. She went through the whole sleepless night thing. Approximately five million times. Sitting at her desk, staring at the bank statements. Willing bigger numbers to appear at the bottom of that page.

This is what happens when you hang out at the edge. When you toe the line of everything you already know and get a face full of everything you don't.

It's interesting.

Giselle told me not to be a victim the other day. Point blank. Don't even go there. And the key to Erin's case was being unafraid of death. When you aren't afraid of dying, everything else kinda seems like small potatoes. And now, after all those sleepless nights, she's doing great. Of course. Because that's what happens when you commit to your dream.

So. No victims. No fear. Those are the rules of this road.

We're gonna need faith out here, though. Curiosity will help, too. We'll need to watch out for signs and messages. They'll tell us if we're on the right track. Or not. We need to keep positive. Relentlessly so.

I say 'we' because I know I'm not alone. I know you're out here, trying to stay vertical on the edge of some big cliff with violent surf beating down the rocks and a storm rolling in. I know you are. Maybe you aren't sure you can do this, either. Maybe your foot is slipping and the path is deteriorating and it's dark and cold and you think that means you should just turn around and go home. I know that thought is comforting, but you understand that home, that place you thought would make you happy but didn't...isn't there anymore. This edge is home now. I'm sure there's a warm, safe place up ahead, but right now we need to keep going. I'll hang on if you hang on. Deal?