quick, crawling ruination

Lisa Moore on short stories versus novels, from The Globe a few weeks back:

"Short stories, unlike novels, can be consumed in a few hours, or even less, they are full of mood and show a precision of language more akin to poetry than lengthier kinds of prose. They are closely related to memories or daydreams - they flit through, there and gone. But how intensely they are felt. Fast, potent hits.

A novel, which can take weeks or months to read, does not mimic, in quite the same way, that pleasurable, involuntary falling away from the noise and action of our lives, very briefly, in the middle of whatever's going on. That hijacking of the "right now" so the tumult of reflection takes over. The plot of a short story is like a snag in a nylon stocking: quick, crawling ruination that runs the length of the whole garment - life - as fast as one can cross her legs.

A short story tends to move through the day like a weather system, like those time-lapse films of clouds on the prairies, uplifting blasts of light and shadow.

That's the way it is with short stories. Lesser writers don't attempt them."

I am a novel reader when it comes down to it, have been since I started reading. And, in fact, I have always looked to novels for just that feeling she describes: the "pleasurable, involuntary falling away" from real life, and have found it many times over, in novels good and bad. (In fact, sometimes it's easier to find in bad books. I've had to learn to also love those books you really have to work at, where the sentences are dense - or jarring, or cacophonous, or old-fashioned, or obscure - where it's just not that easy to lose yourself.)

I started writing short stories because I was too scared to attempt a novel. How could you ever - especially if you're lazy and self-critical like me - start writing something so...big...and then just keep going on and on and on?

So I started with short stories, and I realized that Lisa's right: they're hard. Hard to do well. Hard to be spare and not too obvious and yet hold someone fast to each sentence, and then to find an ending that fits, that's meaningful and perfect and mysterious and just right. I'm not sure I'm there yet, but the process has taught me to really appreciate and respect other short story writers and their work.

Last month I started a novel. I tried to do the NaNoWriMo, and I did fail, but I wrote 50 pages, and I found it really freeing. It gives you room to breathe, writing like that, trying not to self-edit, and letting the story go where it wants rather than wrestling with it. I think I might even keep at it. We'll see.

And here's a photo I took in Helsinki, the lovely copper ceiling of the Temppeliaukio Kirkko (rock church):

By the way. I got to work with Lisa Moore the first time I went to the Banff Centre. She was inspirational to me, for her energy and big laugh and great skirts and boots and how excited she was about writing and how she really listened when I read one of my stories aloud to her. She said some things about writing that meant a lot to me at the time and still do. Also she read aloud from Alligator - then a work in progress - and blew everyone away.

I like birds.

I have to, it's a family thing.

This week I proudly attended a slide show at the library, presented by my brother Malkolm, about his year-long birding by bicycle adventure. It was a great show (about an inspiring feat of typical and admirable family craziness) and I was grateful to see so many of my friends there. I won't deny several moments of cringe - did they have to sing? - but I think embarrassing my sister and I was part of the show so we were all satisfied.

www.birdyear.com if you didn't know already.

Birding started long before Malkolm in my family. Here's some shots of the famous 'birdie buffet' at my grandmother's house in Victoria:

I spent two days there last month, watching the birds feast, playing Scrabble after Scrabble, and vigorously massaging my jaw every thirty minutes. This is something a dentist has advised my grandmother to do - she carries a kitchen timer and a small notebook everywhere in order to stay on track. I joined her in support and just for the general wackiness of the whole thing.

I really love my family.

I enjoy this packaging

november / rain

My head hurts. I have some kind of throat-rasping, head-woozing, snot-producing thing.

I'm supposed to be writing a novel this month. I've only written 10 pages. Productivity - or maybe I mean quantity? - is not my strong suit. It's a good lesson for me to practice writing without editing myself as I go. That's not easy for me.

I'm happy to be home in the Yukon (especially to be with the big-eared dog) though the darkness is pulling down around my ears a little early this year. November.

Here is the view upwards as I stood in line outside the Centre Pompidou, waiting for my modern art fix:

It seems a long time ago, now.

au revoir

I leave Paris tomorrow. Finished with a jam-packed day, wherein I paid respects to the tomb of Oscar Wilde (on which is written some lines from The Ballad of Reading Gaol: "For his mourners will be outcast men, and outcasts always mourn," which stuck in my head for several hours after) and wandered around Montmartre. I ate farfalle with Gorgonzola in a small Italian place on a side street, where a kind resident dog noticed my keen lack of Bella and let me pat him while I ate.

Because a blog should have photos:

And more:

And one more, because it's so darling:

(Credit for the above photo goes to W, who's giving fine Bella-care. The others are mine.)

Paris photos will be uploaded when I get home. I just got back from dinner at my hotel, Mama Shelter, which is designed by Philippe Starck and so hip that the signs for the washrooms are written on the chalkboard ceiling above the glowing doors, thus causing me to miss them altogether and cheerfully use the men's washroom (there was even a man at the urinal) assuming it was some European unisex thing. I did laugh afterward.

it's important to have priorities

Seen today on the Paris metro, posted atop the courtesy seats (italics mine):

"These places are reserved, in order of priority, for:

• disabled war veterans
  
• the industrially disabled, the blind, people with disabilities
  
• pregnant women and people accompanying children under 4
  
• people aged 75 and over"

It suggests some fascinating disputes. Just being old doesn't get you far, especially if someone comes along with a cranky 3-year-old. A blind pregnant woman could easily be displaced by someone who has lost a limb in a horrible factory accident, but only if there's no pesky veterans nearby...

um...okay...here it is

I guess I started a blog. 

I was going to explain the title, but I think I'll be mysterious for a bit. Go ahead and guess. Hint: it's about the pitfalls of communication. And from one of my favourite books.