Warning – this post touches on major life themes and reveals some of the philosophy of my life so I may get boring while discussing it. Feel free to click away at any time; I’ll never know.

So, here it is in a nutshell. I was reading a blog the other day in which the writer had posted a list of “Some day” plans. For example, “Some day I will learn to play the bag pipes,” and “Some day I will travel to Nunavut,” and “Some day I will organize the kitchen drawer into which I throw miscellaneous stuff.” I made those up, but you get the drift. In the comments section other people then started revealing their “some days” and most of them were along those lines.

One, however, said “Some day I will spend more time with my kids.”

You know that ripping sound a vinyl album used to make if you stopped it mid-song (anyone? anyone?). Well, my brain did that. For those of you not aware of the above-mentioned sound I’m afraid there’s no digital equivalent so just think squealing brakes as a rather faint approximation.

Anyway, I found myself thinking – not for the first time – when are you going to start living your life?

Because, newsflash, life is happening. And not just your life. Your kids’ lives, your spouse’s life, your best-friend-from-high-school’s life. All these lives are happening and, even if you have a “some day” in mind, there’s no guarantee they have that same day in mind, nor is there much chance at all that fate is also working towards that day.

So, spend time with your kids now. Please. Start being nice to your husband today (by the way, “being nice” isn’t a euphemism; I really do mean treat him like a friend but if you also want to start “being nice” to him more regularly, I’m sure he’d appreciate it). Call up people you’ve missed – or use Facebook, whatever, you know I’m not on it.

My point is, some things you just have to do now. And I know, very often, people think they’re doing the right thing by not doing those things now. They think “if I work harder now, I’ll have more money and we can buy a cottage and the whole family will have more time together.” Yes, but when? When the kids have boyfriends and girlfriends and part-time jobs and – I’m sorry to say it, but I remember my own teen-age years – would rather work an eight-hour shift for minimum wage at Second Cup than go to the cottage with you for the weekend?

And lest you wonder what I’m going on about? and isn’t this a writing blog? and how does any of this apply to writing? I’m going to tell you now.

You won’t get any writing done if you don’t start writing. Sounds like stupid advice from a stupid person, I know, but it’s true. And not only will you get no writing done, your writing won’t get any better, you won’t make any progress and, if publishing is your aim, you won’t be any closer to that. So when are you going to start living your writing life?

Now, don’t get me wrong, the first thing I told you to do is spend time with loved ones. Please do not decide to start writing an hour a day instead of hanging out with your kids. Your kids are growing up and going somewhere; your writing isn’t (especially if you don’t use it – oh, that was mean).

However, what I am saying is re-evaluate. Organize. Prioritize. I went to this indescribably horrible presentation when I was a sales rep. where a guy stood at the front of the room and put big rocks in a jar and explained you have to make room for the big things first and then the little things will fit around them. Seriously, the presentation was awful but the concept is right.

The trick is figuring out what the big things are. For me they’d be (1) family (2) writing (3) exercise. Then I have to decide what fits into these categories. Volunteering in my son’s class goes into “family” so it’s priority 1. Riding gives me exercise and also stimulates my writing so it’s in 2 & 3. The evening wine and cheese I was recently invited to because I volunteer at my sons’ school, only tangentially touches the above and going would potentially take away from all three so it’s a no.

I’m fully aware this is enough blah, blah, blah from me (talk about preaching!), however, I guess what I’m saying is don’t put off today what you’ll no longer be able to do tomorrow.

And when it comes to writing, if it really is a big – or even medium-sized – rock in your life, just give it some time. Don’t write a novel yet but write your children a funny poem or write your cousin a long letter. Start small but start and see if, in some way, it can support the other big rocks in your life. Maybe you can be the communications rep. for your children’s school council – writing and family wrapped up together. Maybe you can write a great Christmas newsletter.

Just be careful of living for some day.

Just a quick note to let you know my “Getting Ahead Using Writing Contests” workshop is now scheduled for Winter 2012. You can get the details and find out how to register on my Workshops page.

This hot on the heels of discovering I’ve reached the shortlist of the Creative Keyboards Short Fiction Contest. Yay!

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Mrs. D is my son’s English teacher. In fact, because he’s in the French Immersion program in the Ottawa Carleton District School Board, and they don’t get any English instruction until Grade 2, Mrs. D is the first English teacher my son has ever had.

And she’s great.

I have to admit – not that I’m proud of this – that I didn’t pay so much attention to the English instruction my first son got in Grade 2. This is partly because I wasn’t at all worried about him (his middle name should be “bookworm”) and partly because his teacher basically faded into the wallpaper. I couldn’t tell you one single thing she did with those kids; we never got any work sent home and the only marks we ever saw were on the report cards. And they were good marks so, you know, why worry?

However, it’s a night and day situation with Mrs. D. She’s present. She’s active. She wants to teach these kids. She has a plan. She’s stimulating my son who, by the way, is also an excellent reader but is a little less passionate about literature than his brother.

Mrs. D has my son writing poems, acing spelling tests, etc. I asked him what they’re working on now and he said “telling stories”.

“Writing stories?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “That comes later. First we’re learning what you need to make a story.”

My ears perked up. I won’t lie. I was very, very excited. You see, during my  latest round of revisions on my current manuscript, I’ve decided my mantra – for now, anyway; until I can juggle more – is to Keep it Simple Stupid (the Stupid is me, btw).

Who better than to give me KISS advice than a Grade 2 English teacher?

Well, I’m pleased to tell you Mrs. D did not disappoint.

So, for the rest of you who may not have had such a great Grade 2 English teacher, here are the things you need to make a story:

1. A problem or goal.
2. A solution.
3. Characters.
4. A setting.

I can do that! You can do that too, can’t you? After discussing this fantastic summary, we then went through several of the boys’ favourite books figuring out what the problems are and solutions were.

A most satisfactory dinnertime conversation.

Picking up from where we left off in Part One, I had now learned something. Quite a few things. I had realized I wasn’t going to be an overnight success.

And I had a manuscript.

What to do with it though? Because, let’s face it, there are very few contests out there with the exact parameters of the one I entered. Planning to get your YA novel published by entering only contests aimed at YA novels is like basing your entire retirement plan on winning Lotto 649. Or, possibly, a little less likely.

Well, fortunately by this time I knew about Brian Henry. I had already taken a great weekend course at Ryerson (they have a fantastic Continuing Ed program, by the way) and had been eyeing up a weekend workshop taught by Brian for quite some time. The timing had never been right but in the spring of 2008 I was able to attend Brian’s “How to Get Published” workshop on a Saturday afternoon at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Talk about eye-opening. And motivating. A little overwhelming too.

It gave me next steps. Too many at first but the main one was that I had to let somebody else read my work.

This was hard for me. My husband will tell you I’m not a team player. The people I played Ultimate Frisbee with for a couple of years will tell you I’m not a team player. There’s a reason I ski and horseback ride and run and write (individual pursuits anyone?). There’s a reason I super-detested summer camp as a kid and will never send my own kids there unless they ask me pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top.

I like people. A lot. I even like working with other people. I especially like working with people one-on-one. But I sometimes have trouble in a team / group sort of setting (totally my own fault and likely to do with competitiveness and patience issues). As such I don’t belong to a book club or a running group or a writing circle.

Now Brian and the other incredibly smart and connected people at his workshop were telling me I had to let somebody else read my work. And I believed them.

Fortunately, I also knew just who to turn to. This was before we had a blog together but I already knew Peggy Trendell-Jensen was the perfect person to read my manuscript. She knows writing (check). She’s polite and kind (check). She’s professional (check). I trusted her; I knew she wouldn’t trample on me or my story but she also wouldn’t let me submit it all messed up and full of issues.

Peggy agreed to do a critical read for me and off went the first novel-length story I had ever completed and I think that does it for this instalment of The Long and Winding Road but it does also make me think I should maybe plan a post on “having your work read”.

Stay tuned for that…

(By the way, here’s what I was writing about last November at Two Writers Talking)

If you love horses, or if you love excitement or if you love a good story, then there’s a little something missing from the world today.

As horses go, they didn’t get much smarter, faster, better, brighter, awe-inspiring or, let’s face it, valuable than Hickstead.

As excitement went, there was nothing to touch watching Eric Lamaze and Hickstead power around a course; holding your breath thinking “no one can do it this fast and this well and leave everything up” but knowing, in your heart, they would because that’s how they operated.

As stories went – take your pick. Eric Lamaze’s very public rise, fall and rise again. An Olympic gold medal. Winning the biggest classes in the world. Winning some of the biggest classes in the world with a broken foot. Sadly, dying, under the eyes of the world; turning in a great round then just lying down and dying.

Fifteen was too early. There were many more stories in that great horse. But it’s true what many people are saying; we won’t forget him.

And we were lucky to have him while we did.

The idea for this post swam into my head as I was listening to a new CD from an artist I’d admired in the past.

I patiently listened to song after song but none of them were doing it for me. None of them were really hitting home. I felt kind of distant from all of them. Why?

Well I realized the entire CD was more or less one big preach. It was all “we do bad things to the environment” and “the earth is our friend” and “we shouldn’t eat anything grown more than 100 miles away or not fertilized with organic manure” and, eventually, I found myself thinking blah, blah, blah.

Which is so not nice and I probably should be preached at to be a nicer, more tolerant person but there it is. I can’t help it. I don’t like being preached at and I especially don’t like it when the preaching comes thinly veiled in the pretense of entertainment.

And of course, this leads to a question. Because, us artisty types; what do we have other than our medium? We write, or sing, or paint and if something is important to us, shouldn’t we write or sing or paint about it?

Yes, no, maybe so.

My answer(s) to that question go something like this:

(1) Yes, by all means, have a message in your work. But make it woven in. Have it seamless. Show us what you believe; don’t tell us. Make us feel it through your characters or your plotlines. Don’t hit us over the head with a hammer.

(2) No, don’t assume everyone feels the same way as you. And don’t assume you’re completely right. Of course, if you’re prepared to only appeal to (sell your work to) the segment of the population that exactly and 100 per cent agrees with you, then go ahead, narrow your audience that way but be aware you risk alienating many, many readers. On a related note, I recently read quite a good YA book about a girl learning life is more complex than she at first thought, and that telling people what they should believe doesn’t always work that well. It was called Boys, Bears and a Serious Pair of Hiking Boots and it’s well worth finding at the library.

(3) Maybe so. Of course, we all have beliefs and causes that are dear to our hearts. So how do we use the power we have to advance them? Well, I guess my first instinct would be to do the absolute best you can in your artistic endeavours such that you get recognized and have a voice and then use that voice for good. Here I’m thinking Bono. Guy goes out, makes a gazillion, bijillion dollars, gets a pretty huge presence and then, separately, sets about shaming the world in general into doing more for Africa. I like that Bono has an aim. I also like that he keeps it separate from his music. And I realize many people would just say I’ve made a huge contradiction because Bono also sings “Sunday Bloody Sunday“. Which is quite the statement song. However, I’d argue it’s not preachy. “Sunday Bloody Sunday” doesn’t tell me what to feel. It shows me the horror of war, terrorism, prejudice, whatever you want to call it.

Bottom line, like so many other things in life and writing, there’s no black and white answer. No “this is preaching” but “this is art” border. I’ll give you another example of a song I like very much purely for its tune and the cleverness of its lyrics and that’s Sarah Harmer’s Escarpment Blues. To me it’s great writing and execution. To somebody else (a developer on the Escarpment?) it might be preaching gone wild.

I think it goes back to my well-worn refrain; that if your craft is good and your talent strong – if you can captivate your audience –  you can get away with just about anything.

So captivate away and if you preach along the way just make sure your readers don’t notice it.