Author Archives: Sharon

by | April 10, 2014 · 9:57 pm

Discovering the “Good” in Goodbye

“The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.” Ivy Baker Priest

I’ve never much liked goodbyes. I come by it honestly. Growing up, when it came to saying goodbye, my mom used to say we were born with our kidneys too close to our eyeballs because we found them sad and were easy to cry. The two of us could see total strangers bidding each other adieu at the airport and in an instant; there would be the tears.

So it comes as a bit of a surprise (mostly to me) that I initiated my own goodbye last month. After six years at the same job, I packed up to start a new opportunity. Equally as surprising (again, only to me) was that I managed to get through my departure sans tears.

While I felt sad knowing I wouldn’t see the good friends I’d made day to day, a strange thing started to happen to me in the days leading up to my last day – I started to see some actual “good” in this whole goodbye thing.

I realized goodbyes are:

Good for getting nice notes from your colleagues and other co-workers you didn’t even know cared

Good for reminding you how much stuff you’ve really accomplished over the years in your job

Good for finding a vase of bright spring tulips on your desk

Good for seeing how much better your current hairdo is than the one on your old ID badge

Good for reminding you to take a leap every once in a while

Good for pushing yourself to go for new things

Good for taking stock of and feeling grateful for all you’ve learned and the great relationships you’ve made

Good for blog post ideas, suggested by your fellow RW (Miss Beckie!)

Good for being the recipient of a heartfelt poem written by your talented and thoughtful coworker who also happens to be a RW (thank you Andrea!)

And of course, GOOD for new beginnings.

Wish me luck!

 fantasy-island1 

 

 

 

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by | October 1, 2013 · 10:19 pm

Gone Fishing

What do you get when you combine four writers, one car, six tins of assorted Pringles and a beautiful bed and breakfast located steps from Lake Huron? That’s right—it’s the second annual Restless Writers retreat! 

This past weekend the Restless Writers said good bye to partners, pets, part time jobs, looming exam studies and weekend to-do’s and headed to the sunny shores of Port Elgin, ON for two uninterrupted days of all things writing.

The weekend gave us a chance to kick it into gear on our individual projects and also provided time for us to reconnect with and reflect on our goals for our writing and the RW group over the next year.

Of course we also made time to enjoy some of this…

ImageAnd this…

Image But mostly we did this…

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And wonderful it was.

Thank you Restless Writers for a most inspiring and fun getaway. Already counting the sleeps until 2014.

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by | June 17, 2013 · 11:13 pm

Me & CBC

This Huffington Post article by Amy Wruble, 40 Effed Up Things About Being 40, is making the rounds on my Facebook feed. It made me laugh. I just turned 40 last year but found myself relating to many of Amy’s observations – the correlation between the ingestion of pancakes and my waist size in particular. May my old metabolism rest in peace.

There is one more item I would add to this list – not so much “effed up” but definitely in the category of a “new trend” for me since I turned forty. I have become a fan of CBC Radio. That’s right, I said it, I am a late bloomer to CBC Radio.

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It’s not that I didn’t know it existed, it’s just that growing up I largely considered CBC Radio to be “boring” and for “old” people. I like to think I was just wrong all these years, of course it may be that now I am old and boring but either way CBC Radio is suddenly appealing to me and often the first thing I put on the radio when I get into the car.

I’m still learning my way around the programming schedule but am super happy when I land on shows like The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers or Writers & Company hosted by Eleanor Watchel. These programs offer up a great forum for discussions with authors. I love hearing about what compels them to write and inspires their stories and characters. Studio Q with Jian Ghomeshi is also a great place to hear fantastic interviews like this one with Khaled Hosseini  (Kite Runner, And the Mountains Echoed) last week.

Turns out there’s a whole world of radio/talk shows for writers out there, just opening up to boring-old-40-year-old me. Here are just a few that I found. I’d love to hear from others about their favourites.

Talk Shows for Writers (www.freelancewriting.com)

Best Podcasts for Authors (http://www.bookbuzzr.com)

5 Must-hear Podcasts for Writers (http://www.fromthewriteangle.com)

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by | January 14, 2013 · 7:30 pm

When the going gets rough, the rough get writing

Back for the first blog post of 2013 and sadly, it’s not a happy one. I lost my sweet mom two days after Christmas. She’d experienced some health issues throughout November and rebounded for a time in December but unfortunately it was temporary.

My mom, me in the plaid and my big sister.

My mom, me in the plaid and my big sister.

I’m not in a place where I have any kind of perspective or insights to share about this whole experience but I did volunteer to write this blog post because in the days since my mom’s death I have found that writing has become a lifeline. In the first few days after she died, I couldn’t sleep. I’d get up in the wee hours of the morning and was drawn to my laptop. I began writing my eulogy for her service, madly trying to commit every detail I’d miss and every memory I’d cherish to the page. I talked with my sister who said she was struggling to write something but for me it was the only thing that offered some sort of solace.

I did a little bit of investigating and turns out there really is something to this idea of writing through the grief of losing someone you love. Author Louise Desalvo explores writing as a way to heal the emotional and physical wounds of life in her book Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives. There are grief writing workshops, like this one, offered by hospices and community support groups. Grief even has its own genre, the literature of loss as explored recently by the New York Times.

So I must be on to something.

One final note—I hope none of our readers ever find themselves in a similar situation with losing a loved one but if you do, may you have the good fortune to experience the exceptional support and love I’ve received from my fellow restless writers in the last few weeks. Their emails, hugs and thoughtful gifts have all helped to hold me up and I am eternally grateful to them. xo

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by | October 5, 2012 · 6:07 pm

Confession Time

I dumped the entire contents of my purse on the floor of my doctor’s waiting room this week. Embarrassing? Yes. But there was a silver lining. While I was crawling on the ground (in a skirt!) gathering up the little pieces of my life, I made a few choice discoveries, including a $50 gift card for The Bay that was MIA since last Christmas and the head of my son’s much-coveted Darth Vader Lego figurine. Better than this though, I also found my ideas—long-forgotten writing ideas for book plots and characters that I’d jotted down on the back of receipts and sticky notes.

I have a habit of doing this. If you came to my house, you would find more of the same random notes on my bedside table, my phone, my laptop and in the back of my agenda for work.

This system for organizing my writing ideas is about as effective as it sounds – chaotic and unreliable. My notes, if I even remember that I’ve made them, are never where I think they should be when I want them. In fact, right now I am leafing through my agenda in search of a bright yellow sticky note that had some great ideas on it for this blog post. Ah, actually found it—crumpled at the bottom of the bag I cart back and forth to work every day.

Clearly, I am in need of some sort of system to help organize my writing. 

I turned to my fellow Restless Writers to see how they keep track of their projects.

Maria wondered if a binder qualifies as a system—I say yes. In her binder Maria says she keeps hard copies organized according to the working title of the piece, including previous versions, all dated.  Beckie relies on file folders, storing notes and papers in folders, one for each writing project.

A quick Internet search tells me there is a myriad of stuff out there for people just like me. Programs like Evernote, Mindjet, and an eBook The Oraganized Writer that promises 30 days to more time, money and less frustration. There is even a mobile app Werdsmith, created for writers to help them keep track of ideas whenever inspiration strikes.

Do others have organizing systems they’d be willing to share? What works for you?

 

 

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by | April 24, 2012 · 8:02 pm

The New Girl

Here I am. Reporting for my first blog post, fresh from my inaugural Restless Writers meeting. The meeting was everything I hoped it would be – a great opportunity to get to know these awesome ladies better and to take in some of their honest feedback on the pages I submitted. While I survived their critiques (this was managed largely through consumption of wine and baked brie), as the newbie to the Restless Writers, I have to admit I am struggling with a dash of self doubt about whether or not I have the writing chops to be a part of this group.

Beckie has an agent—a real agent. And I didn’t even know what an em dash was until  Maria told me. Heck, I thought em dash was spelled “m” dash until I just looked it up online two minutes ago.

The good news in all of this is? I’m fairly sure I am not the first new want-to-be writer to feel this way. In 2010, The Guardian ran a two-part feature where they asked famous writers to share their Ten Rules of Writing Fiction. I was particularly drawn to the cheery wisdom imparted by British novelist and journalist Will Self. Will says:

“You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.”

If this is true, I guess I am well on my way to becoming a writer.

Thank you Restless Writers for the warm welcome. With your mad grammar skills I’ll be mastering the in’s and out’s of em vs. en dashes in no time. And if not, I’ll fake it.

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