As I type this, Canadian thanksgiving is well in the past, and the leaves are fully changing colour, and there was even a frosting of snow on the ground this morning. Another summer season of bicycling is behind me now. I would normally switch to my indoor & online cycling set-up at this point, but wow, a switch has really flicked in my mind this fall, and my enthusiasm for cycling and exercise in general has gone "poof" and disappeared in a way that I'm almost astounded by. I feel like my brain - in the course of a few weeks - has flipped back 20 / 25 years to the "me" of my late 20s, who was living in basement apartments in Toronto and spending all my free time writing novels. The desire to be active and kayak and bike has really given way to the desire to put words on paper again. Contemplating a re-commitment to writing is quite honestly a melancholy feeling.
While almost every bike ride or kayak trip that I do... I do solo... there are still ways to make all those activities very social - primarily by sharing them with your social network on Strava... where you get instant "kudos" and comments and congrats and jokes from friends around the world when they see the map and photos from the 100km bike ride you just did. To give that up, and move to you alone in the darkness, morning after morning, writing words that you delete within 5 minutes ... well, it's not easy. Autumn always brings the urge to write, for several reasons. The month of November represents NaNoWriMo in my brain (although I don't always officially "do" Nanowrimo and am not doing it this year). But national novel writing month obviously encourages a person to write. As well, Within This Darkness (up until recently titled Within These Trees) is set in the fall... and as I move through autumn forests in my real life, I think of my characters moving through autumn forests, and that makes me want to write as well. And then probably the shift in weather all by itself encourages a person to write - the cold Canadian weather making you want to buckle down with your manuscripts rather than don spandex and go for a bike ride. And, I've been flipping through notebooks this fall, and seeing dates that I scribbled in the margins... for example Nov 2019 beside notes from two years ago about Breslau in January 1945 when German citizens fled the city under Russian bombardment. I've been working on this book and this trilogy for too long now. Heck - the genesis of it dates back to around 2000. But... the modern version... I need to finally finish this thing and get it out of my mental landscape... and move on. Perhaps it's finally time to buckle down, and bring this story fully to life, and then shake my thoughts clear, and move along.
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We were at Mikisew Provincial Park a few weeks ago, which is on Eagle Lake, south of North Bay.
We took the kayak and on the Sunday morning I got out for a paddle at sunrise. Exploring a new lake was a lot of fun, especially with these spots that Eagle Lake has, where large rocks and boulders sit in shallow water and shoulder their way up above the water line. It is late June 2020, four months into pandemic 2020 (at least by my counting), and I'm basically surviving the pandemic by cycling, kayaking, and painting rocks. And taking pictures apparently. Book One of the young adult trilogy is finished. And while I've plotted out Book Two, and know what the climax will be in Book Three, I haven't actually put pen to paper for a long time. Any free time I've had has been spent on the bike rides and kayaking. The rock painting has come out of nowhere. At first it seemed like a good thing to do with the kids, with all of us house-bound together. And they had a go at it for a while, but then they lost interest, while I've just kept going with it. I can't actually draw to save my soul, nor am I actually very crafty with my hands, so the rocks are usually just whimsical things like Beatles song titles, and smiley faces. Working from home, with little "thinking" time, I've found it pretty impossible to write. But, painting rocks is interesting - it's numerous little 5 minute "bursts" of work... that can be fit in at any time during the day - cleaning/washing the rock; putting a base coat of paint on; putting a first few bits of design on; putting the finishing touches on; putting on the sealer spray. All of these things take only about 5 minutes, but require a few hours or more of drying time in between each stage. So it's been quite easy to do a little bit here, do a little bit there, during the course of the "work and parent and help with schoolwork" from home process. And this has been pandemic 2020 - early mornings have been occupied primarily with cycling, and a bit of kayaking, and then the rest of the day, wow, just a blur of "life". And then... night comes, and someone somewhere presses the "repeat" button.
It's autumn 2019, and there have been several days of lovely fall weather here. If I were to guess, my methods of transportation generally fall into these percentages: cycling 50% ; car 30% ; walk/bus (usually in combination) 20%. Although there are numerous reasons why I enjoy traveling by foot / bicycle, one of the reasons is simply the joy of being outdoors and being PART of nature. And, I generally take a lot of photographs on my commutes, like these ones below from the last week or so. Within These Trees, book one, is finished. The book has been through a crazy number of revisions, dating back to around 2001. I actually have an Ontario Arts Council grant from about that time, for this book. I still have the paperwork for the grant! So, this current version honestly feels like "the one". It's the best this book has ever been. And after some back and forth, the storyline will need a three part trilogy to finish. Book Two has required some reading about World War II and the aftermath of the war. Savage Continent by Keith Lowe has been really useful as an overview of the chaos of the immediate post-war months. I had been wondering about utilizing some time-travel in this book, but time-travel is messy and in my case with this book, unnecessary. There will be two time-lines in the book though, events that happen around WWII which then have to be rectified in the modern day storyline. I haven't yet signed up, but I'll be doing NaNoWriMo again this November. The main impetus for writing, with NaNoWriMo, is to hit a certain word-count target with your writing, during the month of November. I'm not sure what I'll do for a target - I guess hours of thought might be a good one! I'm not ready to start laying down lots of writing yet, for book two. But I do need to do some more reading and note-taking. So... some early morning hours of coffee, a lamp, and a notebook and pen lay before me over the coming weeks.
It's winter 2019. In my area in central Ontario, the never-ending winter of 2019. The pictures below are from Tuesday March 19, when fog was rolling over the local lake despite the lake still being covered in ice and snow. Crossed my mind today to transform this blog and site from what was intended to purely be a writing site, to a writing and cycling and photographs site. I'm in transit, on foot or bike, almost every day, and it's a large part of my life. For many years I blogged about bicycle commuting, and I think I'll move that sort of content to this site. As it stands right now, I'm in a bit of a lull with my cycling (my indoor cycling on a trainer). Riding in my basement beside the dryer and the kitty litter is wearing pretty thin, and I'm desperate to get outside on the streets bike commuting again.
But, as mentioned above... winter 2019 seems reluctant to loosen it's grip! |
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May 2023
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