Ceridwen’s Cauldron

I went to the depanneur in our building to pick up a bottle of water when I noticed the candy rack. On it were at least a dozen different silver packages featuring googly-eyed cartoon characters and marked “Goomi”.

They’re gummy treats. I’ve never seen them before and though the cartoon characters were interesting, what interested me more was the “Yahoo Canada!” ad scrawled across the top.

So now they’re advertising on gummy candy packages. I almost expected to find my water bottle sponsored by Sprite! and my desk chair by Business Depot office supplies. Or something.

I bought a package of the candy so I can scan it in and post it here. Now I just feel icky. (Plus, they’re expensive. Dollar store candy is cheaper and though it’s also not shaped like large scorpions there is more of it.)

Posted by Ceri under Scribbles | Comments Off

Autumn left me a comment which read, partially:

It’s a natural thing because when you come home it feels like more work. And it is in the sense that it takes effort to complete a story, sketch, painting or whatever. But in another sense it’s recreation, because you can do anything you want -there’s no assignment and no deadline.

It makes me sad to see my creative friends not create outside of work when I know their brains teem with ideas and projects and unique concepts. I’m especially sad since I know that given time off of their creative work-for-hire, they don’t really go back to recreational creativity. They block themselves up instead.

This is absolutely not an accusation, nor am I pointing at Autumn’s husband, or anyone in particular. I know that I’m as guilty of this as the next person. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a lamentable, lamentable thing. That doesn’t mean I don’t look at them and think “What beautiful work they could create, if only they would let themselves”. And that doesn’t mean I won’t try, in my way, to poke them into creativity.

I’ve been doing this a lot more lately. I decided last summer, when I started hosting my creativity parties, that if my friends were creative people and weren’t going to kick themselves in the butt, I’d do it for them, at least in part. I know that part of being creatively blocked is believing that there’s nothing in your head that’s worth anything, and having a friend who says “That’s not true. Your work is worth something to me.” helps an unbelievable amount.

Possibly, my creative poking-of-people is the most annoying thing in the world and no-one’s told me yet. Possibly, I’ve encouraged a little creativity. I don’t know. What I do know is that as soon as I decided to do this, I felt that it was the one thing in the world I wanted to do more than anything else. Possibly even more than writing and getting published and becoming a famous authoress in my own right. I also know that I’ve made a lot more progress in my own work since I’ve started helping others and I think the two things are related.

So, to all of my friends and even just to creative people reading this blog, I have this message:

You are a beautiful, special, creative person. If you have ideas in your head that you want to share with the world, then you should share them. Because you know what? No one is going to do it if you don’t. No one can do it if you don’t. Your paintings, your stories, your art – whatever kind of art it is – will be lost forever if you don’t share it with the world. That’s too tragic to even contemplate, so get it out there. Create in spare minutes on the metro, get up an hour early before work or stay up an hour late. Squeeze five minutes of creativity in wherever you can, but do it. That’s all.

Posted by Ceri under Writing | 3 Comments »

I spent last night at a friend’s place painting a huge mural of Gotham City for the upcoming Superhero Party, complete with Bat Signal. It was a collaborative effort. One of my friends roughed in the drawing and 4-5 of us at a time jumped in with paint and brushes and filled in colour and details.

The painting wasn’t quite done when Scott and I left at just after 10:00, but it was well on its way. And it looked fabulous. Even better than I expected. It was dark and crowded with buildings, and everything that Gotham is supposed to be. There was very little purple at first, but we fixed that by the end of the evening.

I like painting. I like it in an almost non-artistic way. I’m not good at it. I craft with words, not pictures. I do, however, get a certain satisfaction from glopping paint onto the canvas and seeing the result.

One of my friends who helped last night remarked that this was the first time he’d picked up a paintbrush in ten years. This is from a friend whom I would term “artist”, though he doesn’t work in the painting medium. It’s just that when I picture people who draw for a living, I imagine them doing all kinds of creative things in off-hours, paintings, drawings, wood carvings, whatever. It seems like it would be a natural thing to me. I guess it’s no more true than expecting someone who writes for a living to churn out short stories and poetry in their spare time.

They don’t do it, but they should.

Posted by Ceri under Writing | 4 Comments »

My friend Tara, who is a professional artisan, has put up a website of her functional artwork. It’s called Dance on the Sidewalk.

The pictures on the website are gorgeous, but they honestly don’t do her work justice. It looks better when you’re standing in front of it.

Posted by Ceri under Scribbles | Comments Off

When I’m booking the interviews for a daily show, the opportunities for me to sit back and think about the interview I’d like to hear are few and far between.

In short, my job is a lot of “hurry-up-and-get-it-done” and less of the actual craft of finding the right person for the interview. The right person for the interview is very often the one who can answer my questions and who’s available at the time I want.

Today, as a result partly of luck and partly of getting work done early, I had some time in the afternoon to spend researching one particular interview and trying to find a guest. I made several calls, even did one pre-interview. On any other day, I might have booked the person I pre-interviewd for an on-air interview, but he wasn’t quite the right guest, and I had time to wait. So the search continued.

Now I’m convinced I’ve found the guest I want. He’s an expert on the topic, and is even giving a presentation tomorrow about exactly the things I have questions about. He’s independent — not working for the government, or a company who might have a bias. Just a scientist who has the right kind of expertise.

Unfortunately, he’s unreachable at the moment. He’s left his office on the way to the conference and hasn’t arrived at his hotel. So I’ll have to leave off my interview chase for the afternoon and try to get him on the phone tomorrow morning.

It also remains to be seen whether he speaks english or not, or if he’s interesting to listen to. Minor problems, right?

In the meantime I’m enjoying the opportunity to do my job exactly right, as opposed to fast.

Posted by Ceri under Scribbles | Comments Off

Disturbing phrases can float across these cubicle walls at any given moment. A short while ago I heard the words…

“Julie has West Nile Virus”.

From which I surmise that Julie has booked an interview about spraying mosquitoes to prevent West Nile Virus from spreading. It’s just the short form of that phrase was a little…alarming.

Posted by Ceri under Scribbles | Comments Off

I’ve been talking to a couple of friends over the past couple of days about my writing. Specifically, I submitted a story to an anthology that’s coming out in August.

The story was rejected, which I sort of expected, though I’d hoped otherwise.

I’ve told this to a couple of friends, who are such good friends that they’ve all immediately encouraged me to submit somewhere else, not get discouraged, and even cast aspersions on the taste of the editor. They are all wonderful, loyal, supportive people and I love them dearly for it.

The truth of the matter, though, is that I’m ridiculously excited about this rejection, for two reasons.

1) “I got a rejection letter” means “I submitted something to an actual publication.” That means I not only did I think of a story idea, but I wrote it down, edited it, and sent it off. This is miles beyond where I was this time last year when I wouldn’t even have had a story to send! It’s an important step on the road to getting published.

2) And more importantly, it was not an unequivocal rejection. Though the editor didn’t accept this particular story, he asked me to send something else to him. He wants to see more of my work! He said he liked the writing! That’s so much more than I’d expected that it’s almost an acceptance in my mind.

Now the problem is I have to go through the whole process of making a story and getting it (and myself, too) prepared to submit it again, and this time in under a week, because the deadline is on Wednesday. That’s intimidating. I don’t know if I can do it.

But am I going to try? Hell, yeah!

Posted by Ceri under Writing | 3 Comments »

CBC has announced the book for this year’s edition of Canada Reads. It’s Next Episode by Hubert Aquin.

The idea is that CBC get as many people as possible together to read this book, which has been picked after debate with a panel of well-known Canadians.

About the book (taken from the website):

A tale of madness and espionage is the book selected for the second edition of Canada Reads. Next Episode (Prochain Épisode) by Hubert Aquin is part polemic and part spy thriller. A Quebec separatist weaves a tale of intrigue set in Switzerland, and injects it with his views about nationhood and the importance of terrorism as the means to an end. First published in 1965, Prochain Épisode was translated by Sheila Fischman in 2001.

It certainly sounds interesting.

Posted by Ceri under Scribbles | Comments Off

I wrote two pages of story in the first person. It didn’t work, so now I’m back to writing in the third-person and it’s going better.

Amusing. Yes. Very.

Posted by Ceri under Writing | 2 Comments »

I think I know what’s wrong with the story I’m trying to write now. I have the idea. I have the general sequence of events. It’s the voice I’m having trouble with.

The story wants to come out as a first-person narrative. “I did this. Then this happened.” I’m trying to force it into a third-person narrative and it’s coming out all wrong. Clunky. I never cared about whether I wrote in the first person before, but then I was reading Caitlin Kiernan’s blog and she had a post about the first person narrative and how beginning writers should never ever use it and how it’s extremely difficult to do well and we should just stick to the third person where we belong.

She later admitted to being mostly full of crap on this particular post. I also thought at the time I read it that it was rank foolishness and that while it may be hard to do well, that doesn’t mean the first person voice can’t or shouldn’t be used.

I suppose I’m demonstrating now that it made quite the impression on my fledgling writer mind, because this story is coming out first-person and I’m trying to make it stop. “It will be better if you come out as a third-person story. Trust me,” I say. But the story has its own demands and needs and voice and hell, I don’t know what’s better for it. I’m just the damn writer.

More terrifying to me than the thought I’ve been using a voice that is verboten for new writers, what if the editor I plan to send this to shares the same bias? Will the story get junked because I wrote “I” instead of “She” or “He”? Will it be a weaker story because I didn’t go the safer, stabler, easier route?

Friggin’ hell. It’s difficult enough to write the damn story and let it succeed on its own merits. I don’t need these artificial constraints.

Posted by Ceri under Writing | 1 Comment »