I AM WRITER!

A few nights ago, I woke up with a start.  I usually go through the normal writer anxiety:  What if I never get published?  What if I'm not good enough?  Will I be considered a real writer even though I don't have an addiction?

The question that woke me out of a dead sleep was: If I do get my novel published, will anyone read it?

This kind of self doubt is enough to kill any kind of creative process.  I've spent so much time motivating myself to finish the book that I haven't put any thought into it's potential market.  Sure my mom will read it, but will it appeal to the average reader?

Last week, I took the initiative. I joined a novel boot-camp that promises to keep me motivated.  The thing is, I was full speed ahead and then all of a sudden I wasn't. It's not because I have writer's block. It's actually for the exact opposite reason. I have writer's flood. 

I have too many ideas in my head and they're escaping before I can catch them. Perhaps not a flood but writer's wasp nest. I feel like a bee keeper, and not a good one.

The story has to be marketable.  It has to be Hunger Games meets The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  The thing is, my character is a fifty year old woman.  Putting a bow & arrow will kill all suspension of disbelief. 

What kind of antics and missteps can I put her through?

When describing my novel, I mutter, "My character goes through some bad experiences, and then some good experiences, and there's a conflict..and.. Oh! I forgot, there's a love story. Did I mention the conflict?"

Bored yet?  I am.

The key to writing a character-driven novel is to have the readers like the character; and to make the plot interesting enough that the readers will want the characters to prevail. So I sit down to write the most likable person that everyone is bound to cheer for. Here she comes. There she goes.

Then it dawned on me.  Maybe instead of creating a fictional person that everyone will support, why not encourage the person writing it?  Me.  In order for people to believe in her, I have to believe in myself. 

We need to be our own biggest fan. We need to shout a big "Hurrah!" or "Bravo" every time we finish a scene. Small rewards to keep ourselves going.  Then, when it's all said and done, we can give ourselves a big reward, or simply say "I told you so."

Who better to have believe in us - but us? I have given so many ideas to other writers about their stories, and it's been pretty good advice. Why can't I talk to my inner writer like I talk to them. I feed her (sometimes more than I should), I tend to other needs, but I need to talk to her and say that it's OK. We'll get er' done. 

So now, I have someone cheering me on. Me. I am writer! .  

Snacks and Naps

I want to go to daycare. No, I don't want to run one, but I want to go to daycare and play.

Every morning my son and I have a battle to get him to go. I carry him to the car over my shoulder as he screams, "Daycare is closed." When we pull into the parking lot, he declares, "See Mommy, it is closed. All gone. Bye, Bye Daycare." I then have to extract him from the car (gently) and carry him in while he screams some more.

Once he's there, they feed him breakfast. And not a typical cheapo breakfast either, but homemade muffins and juice.

I want homemade muffins and juice in the morning.

After breakfast, he plays and then has a snack. When snack is over, he plays again until lunchtime. After lunch - and get this- all of the children settle down for a two hour nap. Once the nap is over, they have another snack and play. He has one more snack before I pick him up.

Of course at the end of the day, I have to drag him out of the magical snack place, kicking and screaming, because he doesn't want to leave. Frankly, I don't blame him.

So there you have it. Snacks and Naps. It doesn't get much better than that (yes, I was intending to rhyme).

I want to adapt George Bernard Shaw's famous quote Youth is wasted on the Young to Daycare is wasted on children.

How many adults out there would like to be told when to eat a snack and when to take an afternoon nap. It's simple. All of us.

I think I might start a movement called ADULTS for SNACKS & NAPS (ASN). Care to join?

Suspicious Behaviour

Suspicious Behaviour

My husband and I became suspicious of our seventeen year old daughter. Once a happy girl who never got into trouble, she became distant, staying out late at night and not saying where she was going. If we asked her, she'd snap at us and then write something in her notebook.

We thought she could be pregnant, so every morning for an entire week we stood outside the bathroom while she got ready for school, listening for morning sickness. We heard nothing. We figured that it had to be boy troubles, or a sexual predator on the Internet, so we had a friend scan the computer and again, found nothing. It was then that our daughter became defensive due to our suspicious behaviour, writing in her notebook and laughing to herself.

Finally we resigned to the fact that it must be drugs. Devastated, my husband and I devised a plan. When she left the house, we’d go through her room. It would be an invasion of her privacy, but as long as she was living under our roof we had to know what was going on. That morning we sat at the dining room table, shaking, afraid of what we might find. We waited in silence. After a few minutes of sitting and staring, I got up. My husband looked tense, so I grabbed the coffee pot and refilled our mugs. We realized we couldn't do it.

The next day while vacuuming, I was startled by an outburst of sound coming from the furniture. Following the shrill, I found an unfamiliar cell phone in the couch cushions.

"He...Hello?"
"Is Christina there?"
"Um, she's not here right now, can I take a message?"
"Are you her manager?"
"No, I'm her mother."
"Uh, amateurs! This is Shelby from the Sunset Club on Queen Square. Tell Christina that she’s on tomorrow night at 10 o’clock”

Click.

I sat down on the couch, gripping the phone. What the heck did Shelby mean by on? And what is the Sunset Club?

I left the message on my daughter’s bed with the phone. I signed it Love you, Mom XOXO.

We avoided each other the next day, which was a relief. I didn't tell my husband. Instead, I devised another plan- a covert operation. I would stake out the Sunset Club. Wearing a black trench coat and a bowler hat, I drove to Queen Square. The club wasn't easy to find. It was in back of a back alley. This made me nervous, but my determination to be a good parent and rescue my daughter from taking her clothes off in front of drunken sex-starved men strengthened my resolve.

I paid the ten-dollar cover charge and took a seat at the back. There was an equal amount of men and women sitting at the tables, the waiters were dressed in black, and there was no stripper pole in sight. A man in a hideous suit came on stage with a drink in his hand and introduced my daughter. The moment of truth. As she walked on stage I covered my face. I couldn't watch but I also couldn't walk out because she would see me. With my head buried in my hands I listened for Def Leppard or Prince or whatever girls stripped to; but instead, my daughter started talking. And people started laughing. Slowly looking up, I saw my daughter on stage fully clothed and holding her notebook. She was telling jokes. About my husband and I.
To my relief and mortification, my daughter was an aspiring comedian. Her punch lines included us waiting outside the bathroom door and scanning the computer. She wasn't defying us; she was using us for material. The crowd loved it and she ended her set to raving applause.

A few minutes later, as she was going out the door, I grabbed her arm. She stared at me, horrified, probably thinking I would embarrass her. I took off the hat and we walked to the car in silence.
Before I turned the ignition, I looked to her and said, "I'm proud of you."
"Why?" she snickered, "Because I'm not doing drugs?"
"That, and for getting up in front of a crowd and performing. I'd never have the guts to do that."
She laughed, "I know. Just don't tell Dad okay?"
"I won't tell your father on one condition."
"What's that?"
"Get rid of the notebook."

Stories that will later embarrass my children

It was a face-off. I was in the middle of the supermarket, armed with a shopping cart full of groceries. He was lying on the supermarket floor, armed with stubbornness.

In the distance, underneath the beeping sounds of cash registers and crashing shopping carts, I could hear the music of old westerns. Whistling of "do-do-do-doooooo" and tumbleweed drifting past as we stared each other down.

He would prevail.

It wasn't the first confrontation. In fact, last week a security guard approached me and asked me if there was a problem. There is a problem- he's two years old.

Why is it that people walk by slowly and stare at you with patronizing eyes when your child is screaming holy hell ? Like we've done something wrong?

I'm a working mom, I pay taxes, and all of my bills are up to date. I obey the law and I have a good, steady job. I don't understand why my entire existence as a human being is judged by how my children decide to behave in public. It's unfair. I'm sick of looking like a bad parent and a bad person.

So, on a suggestion from a good friend, I've decided to act. I've decided to write down all of these anecdotes and when he's fifteen years old and 'too cool for school', I'll show him how he used to behave. I take solace in the fact that his appalling behaviour will be shown to him later when he thinks he's a model citizen.

If you have any stories that you would like to share about your children, or children that you're close to, please post them. I'd love to know that there are other people out there who are struggling too.

And if you are out there, remember, just because they've won the battle it doesn't mean they've won the war.

The Japanada Chronicles- April Fools

Six years ago, on April 1st, I landed in Japan. I had given up my life in the Maritimes at the tender age of twenty nine in the pursuit of finding myself. My first encounter after giving up my old life though, was finding myself wearing a faux fur winter coat, pleading with an Air Canada agent to let me on the plane.

It was six o'clock in the morning in Montreal and I was ready to get on the plane and start my new life. I had no idea of what was ahead of me, or if I was making the right choice by leaving, but I was ready. The agent wasn't.

What was her issue? I had a one-way ticket.

The country where I was going to start over, according to the agent, needed proof that I intended to leave at some point.

My hopes of landing in Narita airport, throwing my tuque in the air and singing the theme from Mary Tyler Moore were dashed by the mean lady tearing up the boarding pass she had just printed.

Who defects to Japan? Apparently a lot of people do. The agent explained that Japanese immigration could sue Air Canada for $10,000 for selling me a one-way ticket. I showed her my work visa issued by the Japanese consulate, but she wouldn't budge.

Defeated, I went to the ticket counter. I managed to change my ticket by promising to fly to Beijing, China after I landed in Japan. Ticket in hand, I made my way to the gate. Once on the plane, I nestled into my window seat and was instantly excited. I frequently lifted the cover to look out the window, hoping to see the Pacific Ocean.

Instead, I saw snow- and lots of it. Twelve hours of snow.

When we finally landed, I couldn't have been happier. I went walked off the plane and into Narita Airport, exhausted, only to look at the clock. My journey began on Wednesday, March 31st at 6:00 am. It ended on Thursday, April 1st at 7:00 pm. Thanks to the time difference, I lost a day and a half.

Frazzled but not Hysterical

I am mad. Not mad in the way that the word is supposed to be used; but the mad in common everyday usage.

I spent my holidays catching up on reading. As I poured through classics and best sellers, I couldn't help but notice that there are no favourable depictions of mothers. They are either hysterical, selfish, or non-existent. In The Secret Life of Bees, the mother is dead. In Q&A- the movie Slumdog Millionaire is based on, the mother is dead. In Pride and Prejudice, the mother is ridiculous. In the Twilight series (the best sellers I was referring to), the mother is immature and selfish. In Bridget Jones Diary, the mother is overbearing and sexually charged. I could go on.

As a new mother I'm disturbed by this. As you can probably see from my profile, I have a lot on my plate and have no time for being hysterical. Frazzled- yes. Hysterical- no.

Don't get me wrong, I do have my moments. They usually happen in parking lots.

I would love to read a book where the mother is a positive force in the story. Where maternal presence is valued and not sacrificed for hilarity or dramatic effect. I'm sure they're out there, and I would love to hear suggestions.

Until then, the 'madness' continues.....