So There, Mornings.

I realize that many people have to get up at five-thirty in the morning. And, strangely, many people actually like to get up early, drink their tea, sit in the peaceful silence and contemplate their lives without all the distractions of a busy, awake world.

I do not.

Remember my post called Please God, Don't Make Me Get up Early? I do. What I remember most is that I had a pretty strong feeling that getting up early to write would not be good for me or my book. Always trust your instincts.

The problem is, my nighttime situation has not improved much since then. My writer friend E was over one night and after witnessing the bedtime routine with my kids, convinced me to give morning writing a chance. Otherwise, she pointed out practically, I will never, ever get my book done.

So, inspired by E's pep talk, I decided to give it a shot. I would get up at five-thirty, do fifteen minutes of yoga and then write for two hours before my kids woke up (ha ha! Oh, it sounds so good...). Unfortunately, I was soon reminded that in order for me to be a pleasant, functioning human being, I should not get up before seven.

Here's how it went:

Although I was in bed early the night before, little J crawled in with me at four in the morning. It could have been the kicking, intermittent yelling in his sleep or blanket-stealing, but let's just say that by the time my alarm went off I was actually glad to get out of bed.

But not for long. I was still tired. The kind of tired that makes you act and feel like an angry, unreasonable toddler. I sat there in the dark glaring at my computer monitor (my bed is beside my desk and I didn't want to wake J with the lights). I wrapped my miserable self with the fuzzy penguin blanket I stole from the end of my bed after untangling it from J's feet.

Did I feel like writing? Hell no. But I opened the file for my new novel. I stared at it. I read over some paragraphs that I had been happy with the day before and decided that every single word sucked.

I told myself to just carry on where I left off, which was with my main character, a lovely young girl who I am quite fond of and had no cause to suddenly be so irritated with, standing at the door of a small shack in Yellowknife.

I sat there drumming my fingers on my desk, waiting for some sort of inspiration to happen. Waiting for her to do something. After awhile I got the sense that she was looking at me over her shoulder a little uncertainly, as though to say, "what next?"

"Just go in," I hissed. God. Did I have to spell everything out?

I went on to spend over an hour trying to figure out if she should knock, go running in or stand at the door and wait. I had her try all three and they all seemed ridiculous. I was getting reproachful glances after having her fly back and forth through the door so many times, so finally I left her sitting on the porch. "Stay there," I told her wearily. Weak morning light was coming though my bedroom window by then.

Poor kid. I hope she's still there when I get back. Which will not be before seven in the morning. Because I have read everything I wrote that day and I can't keep a single word.

See? I told you so.

Food I Have Burned This Week:

RICE
Reason: Got involved in a conversation and forgot to turn it down to simmer after I put the lid on it.

WAFFLES
Reason: Looking for one of my favourite red woolly socks. Still have not found it.

PEROGIES
Reason: Sweeping up broken glass from the decorative bottle that spontaneously fell off the bathroom windowsill.

POTATO
Reason: Boiling water for tea when a small chunk of mashed potato that had fallen under the element lit on fire. While I was checking my email.


Okay, I do see a pattern. But I can't just stand by the stove when I'm cooking. What if something breaks or gets lost? What if someone wants to have a conversation with me? What if my email makes that sweet little dinging sound?

Watch Your Language, Missy!

Recently an elderly woman came up to me in the health food store and said, "I read your book."

"Oh?" I said politely, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

She went on to say, quite disapprovingly, "I did not appreciate the bad language one bit."

It's true that Grace River has a lot of swearing in it. It kind of has to. It's told from the perspective of four different people, and two of them are male smelter workers. It would have been weird if they didn't swear.

My ten-year-old daughter has asked me many times when she gets to read the book. "When you're twenty-five," I say.

"But WHY?" she asks. I tell her it's the language. That's not entirely true, but let's just go with that.

That excuse probably makes her want to read it even more. My kids are fascinated with swearing. They hear it all the time on the playground at school, and although I'm pretty careful around them they have definitely heard adults use "bad" words.

But I have also told them many times that swear words are just words. The important thing for them to learn is when it's appropriate to use them, which for a kid is pretty much...never.

However, little J, my seven-year-old, decided a while ago that he wanted to write songs. He politely asked me if I minded if he used swear words in them. I thought about it and decided that I didn't really mind at all. I told him they were his songs and he could write anything he wanted.

He went on a songwriting frenzy, filling up page after page of his giant blue notebook. He showed them to me proudly, most of the words spelled out phonetically (taking into account his adorable lisp) and in brightly coloured marker. The result was sort of half Patsy Cline and half Rage Against the Machine: "Oh, you bwoke my hart, you f**ker. Dont evr bwake it agin..."

Who was I to judge? I told him he could write whatever he wanted and I meant it. But I don't think I'll be letting him perform his songs for the grandparents at Sunday dinner anytime soon.

Disco Bowling, Anyone?

I know there are writers who love to write. I read their interviews with a combination of awe, disbelief and irritation. They say things like, "I sit at my desk eighteen hours a day. I don't even notice the time passing by. There's nothing else I would rather do."

Seriously?

I can think of a million things I would rather do. Writing is hard. It's not like going dancing or riding on Space Mountain or disco bowling. It's not fun.

First you have to lay out a plot that slips and slides all over the place, taking you places you might not want to go. Then you have to deal with characters who won't do as they're told. Then you end up having to research something you have no interest in just because a character decides she is an expert on crickets or bull fighting. And once it's all down, there are the countless hours, months, years of revisions. Not to mention the crippling self-doubt, late-night pacing and isolation.

In a recent conversation with my dad, who is a poet, I was complaining about structure issues with my new book, writing a play that just isn't working, and that niggling feeling that my kids and I will end up living in a tent on the beach if I don't go fill out an application at Canadian Tire.

"God, Dad," I said. "Why do we do this?"

"Because we're compelled to," he said with a resigned sigh. "We don't have a choice."

Right.

Last week a friend asked me if I could imagine my life without writing. I tried, and was instantly overwhelmed with panicky horror. The answer was pretty clear. No way.

Effing Libraries...

I have trouble giving stuff back.

Most people who have lent me things already know this. What they probably don't realize is that it's not that I want to keep their stuff and pretend it's mine. I have every good intention of giving it back. I want to give it back. I just need to be reminded an average of four or five times before I actually do. (It helps if you come to my house, see the thing that belongs to you and say something like, "Hey, there's my sweater!")

There might be some psychological explanation that involves an innate inability to let things go instead of trying to hold onto them, but who cares? It's costing a lot of money in library fines.

Libraries are a painful reminder of my disorder. My children believe one must pay for the privilege of taking books out, because every time we go I am scraping change from the bottom of my bag or from under the seats of the van to pay the fines. They used to be bewildered that we had to return the books. "Why should we?" they would say. "We paid for them!"

Man, it's such a nice idea. You can take out books you would never, ever buy but are still curious about. You can borrow forty books at a time. If you want, you can just stack them up on the kitchen counter and look at them.

But libraries reflect back to me my inability to change certain patterns in my life. You would think that I would have learned, that I would have somehow altered my behaviour so I didn't have to feel the shame of shelling out seventeen dollars so my kids can take out a battered Garfield comic and nine Star Wars books.

But no. I continue to resist being a functioning part of this wonderful system of sharing. I mean, the system clearly doesn't work unless people actually return the books.

I am not proud of this. There's no need to lecture me.

By the way, if I happen to have any of your stuff, don't worry. I'll be returning it any day now.

Kid Quote #2

I was at J's baseball practice when a friend told me her twelve-year-old daughter, N, had read Grace River. N was lounging on the grass in front of us.

"Really?" I said. "It's not meant for kids..."

"It's fine," the friend said. "She reads everything. She liked it. Didn't you, N? Tell Rebecca what you thought of her novel."

N glanced at me over her shoulder. "It was okay," she said. "But I prefer books about vampires."

I'm Not Crazy, I'm a Writer

If you are ever out with a writer who suddenly becomes sullen, gives one-word responses to your questions or starts doodling intently on a napkin and ignoring you completely, you should probably tell her to go home.

Writers just need to be alone sometimes. Okay, I just need to be alone sometimes. Maybe other writers don't have the sullen doodling problem.

The need for space can be tricky when you're a parent. But my kids are older now and no longer constantly reside within three feet of me, so I rarely get that panicky feeling of needing to lock myself in a room and breathe.

At least not when I'm with the kids. I still get it all the time with strangers.

I now understand that when I wish I could completely disappear into the vinyl seat on a crowded bus, I am not socially crippled or dangerously introverted. It's just my cue. Enough people for now. I am like a super-absorbent sponge in public. I think way too much about what all those people might be thinking or feeling or doing.

I'm learning to live with it.

For example, I recently went to a workshop put on by the Writers' Union of Canada. I was excited. I thought, "Hey, here's a chance for me to be in a roomful of other writers AND I get to learn stuff!"

Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of those days. The bus vinyl days. The "don't look at me and please, please don't talk to me" days.

I got to the workshop late and walked into a small room crammed with about 70 people. An instructor was already speaking. A woman greeted me at the door and said there was a seat for me right at the front. I tried to politely decline but she insisted, and as she happened to be the executive director of the Writers' Union, I said yes. I then had to walk directly in front of the speaking instructor, who stopped speaking while I passed. All 70 people stared at me.

My seat was on the side of the room farthest from the doors. I spent the entire day feeling vaguely trapped. During the breaks I had no desire to go and talk to anyone in the sea of chattering, networking people. Instead I stared out the giant windows, studied the label on my bottle of orange juice and played with my phone.

It turned out okay in the end, though. We were put into small groups after lunch and I did meet a couple of people who were very cool, funny and interesting. Not that I was surprised. It isn't that I think strangers won't be interesting. I know they will be. That's the problem. Because on the bus vinyl days, I just can't take in any more. I have to process a bunch of interesting stuff that's already happened first.

I spent most of high school and college mortified with how quiet and awkward and prickly I felt in large groups (like classrooms). I try not to do that now. I try not to worry that people will think I'm shy or a snob or ~worst of all~ boring.

I tell myself it's just a writer thing. And I'm good with that.