I’m delighted to announce that my story “Ghost Coat” appears in The New Quarterly‘s spring issue “The Trickery of Spring.”
I started this story in Nancy Zafris‘ workshop at the Kenyon Review Writers’ Summer Workshop. And finished it three years later while working with mentor Caroline Adderson during the Wired Writers Workshop at the Banff Arts Centre.
I feel so lucky to have worked with two phenomenal mentors.
How many drafts? Oh, the variations this story has been through!
The highlight of a recent trip to “Investigating Agatha Christie,” a temporary exhibition at the Point-à-Callière Museum in Montréal, was Agatha Christie’s notebooks.
Point-à-Callière is a museum of archaeology and history – so what was Agatha Christie doing there?
Turns out her husband, Sir Max Mallowan, was an eminent archaeologist who worked on sites in Iraq and Syria.
When her husband was on a dig, Agatha Christie wasn’t holed up in a local hotel, busily writing her novels, she was Continue reading
Thin, almost transparent airmail paper, aerogrammes, thick pale blue Basildon Bond paper, birthday cards, Christmas cards, cards of sympathy, of congratulations.
Old blotched typeface (my father’s big typewriter), elegant penmanship (my grandfather and my godmother), easy-to-read rounded script (teacher aunt). Upright but fast-flowing writing (my mother). Indecipherable squiggles (my father). Letters of the alphabet slanting forward, slanting back, flattened, rounded…
A bundle of letters written in code by Continue reading
Towards the end of 2015 I went for three days to Quebec City.
When I go away I like to write a story a day but I knew I wouldn’t have time to write much in Quebec City. There were simply too many interesting things to do there in too short a time.
So I decided to write ‘blurts’ – five or so minute writing sprints whenever I had the opportunity. While waiting in a line or for a coffee, or for my husband to finish the crossword…
I had such a great time with these blurts – so many surprises and rewards – that I decided I wanted to keep them part of my regular writing life.
A huge plus is that they provide me with much needed zaps of creative energy as I continue to work on a longer manuscript, re-writing and editing work that I’ve re-written and edited over a fairly long period of time.
The problem? Even though I know there are plenty of five/ten minute periods when I could easily sit down and write, back home in my regular routine they seem to slide past without me picking up a pen.
How to keep myself writing blurts? Continue reading
On my way to a Christmas market in Montreal, I passed a band of musicians, all made up as Nutcrackers. Some festive 
event for Bentley Montreal.
When I arrived at the market, I was surrounded by Nutcrackers, both ornaments and real-people-as-nutcrackers.
I’ve never understood the attraction of the Nutcracker image for Christmas. (Yes, I do know about the Nutcracker Ballet!)
A soldier with teeth bared in a grimace – what’s so seasonal and joyous about that?
I actually find it (sorry) quite ugly. Very ugly.
What on earth do others find so irresistible about the image?
I Googled ‘Nutcracker’ to try and find out.
And discovered, first of all, that the original Nutcrackers were… actual nutcrackers! The nut goes between the teeth of these real nutcrackers, a lever in the back is pressed down et voilà!
The first nutcrackers, from Germany, were whittled from wood.
When I read that, I immediately remembered being surprised by my father’s delight in Austrian folk art carvings of odd little faces suggested by strange knots and knuckles and grain in the wood. Such weird, ugly faces, I’d thought as a kid. I didn’t like the way the eyes in those faces looked at me. I refused to look back at them or touch them.
But the joke is on me. Now, when I’m walking in the woods, I’m always seeing other-world faces in tree trunks and branches.
The decorative Nutcrackers, which started in late 1400s and early 1500s, were considered good luck:
The legend says that a nutcracker represents power and strength and serves like a trusty watch dog guarding your family from evil spirits and danger. A fierce protector, the nutcracker bares its teeth to the evil spirits and serves as the traditional messenger of good luck and goodwill. History of Nutcrackers
Ah! A protector, baring teeth to scare away evil spirits.
Now the teeth make sense! Even if they no longer actually crack nuts.
I particularly like the idea of the Nutcrackers being a way to laugh at figures of authority, a form of social satire:
People enjoyed using the German nutcrackers that were shaped like the ruling and authoritative classes because it reduced them to the position of mere crackers of nuts rather than possessing any power over their individual Christkindl Markt
Why don’t we create some contemporary Nutcrackers with this idea in mind?
I now quite enjoy seeing the Nutcrackers around town!
Amazing how a little understanding has helped me find pleasure in something I actively disliked!
To watch how a Nutcracker is made
For the history of Nutcrackers
‘Lovers and Others’ is a delightful December gathering of writers (and one drummer), hosted by Ilona Martonfi at Yellow Door in Montreal.
As the evening came to an end, visual artist and writer Verona Sorensen held out a bowl full of tiny scrolls tied with glittery gold ribbon.
They looked good enough to eat.
On each scroll was printed a haiku that had been embedded in the poem she’d read that evening.
A bowlful of haiku!
What a great idea! The perfect gift to end an evening of readings and to send one on one’s way into the dark December night!
I’ve been doing a massive spring clean (yes, I know it’s November!) and have just found a very dusty and faded blue folder crammed with old letters.
These are my own letters that I wrote to my parents through the early ’70s as I worked my way around the world. Bogotà, back home, then to Durban, across Australia, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Kathmandu, Delhi, Lahore, Peshawar, Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Tehran, Istanbul…
My mother gave me the folder when I moved to Canada. “In case you want to write a book,” she’d said.
The letter I pull out describes how my travel-buddies and I hardly spoke above a whisper as we drove through the recently opened Khyber Pass under the – to us – menacing gaze of clusters of men with rifles, how we pushed on without stopping in order to get through before sundown. Under no circumstances, we’d been told, were we to Continue reading
I live in a place with a communal garden. It’s a lovely garden. A bit disheveled maybe, but for me, that’s part of the charm. There’s always something to delight in – violets springing up in the lawn, the crabapple blossom in spring, the turtleheads in fall, a cardinal singing in the blue spruce, a piliated woodpecker (if we’re lucky) at the back, any number of little brown birds, a rose that manages a glorious bloom despite the best efforts of invading ivy from the car park behind the fence to strangle it.
After years of adding a little something here, a little something there in a rather haphazard fashion, it’s been decided the garden needs an overhaul. A major spruce up. A total redesign.
Lucky you? Is that what you’re saying?
The trouble is, being a communal garden means Continue reading
I often feel like Goldilocks when I sit down. I so rarely find a comfortable chair! The seat of this one is too deep and sinks too far back where the chair back meets the seat. That one’s too high and has no support for my back. And that other one’s too low and the headrest forces my head forward.
Where’s my ‘just right’ chair?
When I gave up my dance life and chose a sit-and-write life, I tried any number of chairs to use at my laptop. I’d get one thing right (for example, position of the keyboard) and everything else would be wrong (my feet didn’t touch the floor; I had to look down at the screen).
“Get a desk chair,” my husband said.
Nah! They were too expensive and so very ugly.
But I needed to find something I could sit on that would be at least not too uncomfortable for fairly long stretches of time.
Exercise balls? No. Kneeling stool? Nope. Australian saddle seat? My dentist swore by it. Maybe I would have too, if Continue reading
Finally I gave in. My neck pain was so bad that I booked an appointment with a massage therapist.
The therapist told me that my body was out of kilter. My right side was dominating all my movements. The left side was doing nothing.
I checked it out.
I couldn’t even open my locker at the gym (one of those simple three to the right, two to the left, one to the right dial locks) with my left hand. And once my left hand finally found the right numbers, my fingers didn’t have the strength to pull the locker door open. The lock popped out of my fingers and I’d have to start all over again.
As I was making myself work the lock with my left hand, I remembered right-left brain theory: that each side of the brain works with the opposite side of the body, i.e., right brain and left side of the body and vice versa.
So if I concentrated on using my left hand/side, would that act like a vitamin booster for my right brain?
The right side of the brain is the creative side (left is more linear and logical and analytical).
The right brain is the creative brain and is responsible for rhythm, spatial awareness, colour, imagination, daydreaming, holistic awareness and dimension. It controls the left side of your body. The Thinking Business
My right brain could do with a little pepping up, so now I’m using my left hand as much as possible – stirring the soup (OKish), opening doors, chopping and peeling veggies (awkward). combing my hair and brushing my teeth (improving), painting screen doors (bad idea)….
Just wait! You’ll see! Any moment now I’ll be swept up in an amazing creative splurge!
Susi Lovell 