Sometimes Ya Just Gotta Feel The Feels

I’m not writing these days —

And I miss it.

For the first time in what seems like forever, summer passed without hours of frantic typing and a constant glance at the clock to see how many hours I had left each day to pound out a new book or screenplay.

Why?

I started the summer with Covid, which wasn’t a huge surprise since I took a chance and travelled to the Banff World Media Festival in June. A few thousand delegates hollering in each other’s ears in close quarters did the trick. I hope it was worth it — the jury’s still out. A lot of delegates went home with Covid, then got busy with projects and vacations, so I have yet to sign any new contracts. I pitched five projects and will continue to seek production partners and financing to get some made.

I spent my summer nurturing those projects and relationships and trying to find ways to create some stable income in the meantime. Film is feast or famine, in case you thought it was glamourous. And it ain’t easy to make your books visible on Amazon when yours are just a few of the seven or so million out there.

There are days

I wish I could just write. What I would give to go back to scrawling out the Drifters books. Unequalled joy and bliss, disappearing into another world with friends ‘from another town.’ These days, mired in the pandemic headspace as countries wage a war that feels not-so-distant, and friends suffer with loss, it can be hard to find joy.

I try

to keep things in perspective. Will I ever be one of my country’s best authors? Will I become a renowned and remembered figure in Canadian literature? Am I a known Prince Edward Island writer and filmmaker? Do those things matter? Nope. I’m healthy. My man is well and kind and good. My son loves spending his days studying design and practising his skills with his business, Humble Hound. My parents are doing fabulous.

But something’s amiss. I can’t find my mojo.

It went wherever the writing went. It’s hidden between the faded, discoloured keys of my old MacBook Pro. It got buried at my summer camper, where I used to write with reckless abandon, a Twin Shores Campground cinnamon roll and a grocery-store Starbucks cold brew coffee sweetened with maple latte creamer at my side. Neighbours mowing lawns nearby, cats cuddled up on chairs, their adorable fur alight with the morning sun. A bumpy bike ride to Sacred Beach to watch the fishing boats before settling down to write. Twinkling stars at night — and sometimes a falling star , a wishing star — to stir up fantasies of dreams that should come true. Campfires, sunsets, friends. A view that never quite feels real — picturesque and lovely, the sparkling water of the Darnley Basin, fishing boats dotting the waves, red sandstone cliffs and emerald green fields, a quaint white church steeple poking up in the distance. The kind of beauty that reminds me that I am but a pffft of dust in the great scheme that is the universe.

I sank a little further

into the abyss after my beloved camper flooded. It was the last straw. I was struggling to find an editor for the proof of concept I shot in May, Steve got Covid, family visited, life got derailed. Then the flood came. At first a glistening puddle on the kitchen floor, seemingly unattached to anything obvious, like a leaky fridge. A camper friend and Steve put their heads together and identified a deteriorated fitting on the hot water heater. The entire underbelly of the camper, insulation and all, was flooded. About twenty feet of it.

It didn’t take long

for the heated summer days to swell the moisture into a soaking wet mass of smelly chipboard. My lungs protested. After three weeks, a month early, I gave up and abandoned ship. We cleared out the camper and it was hauled yesterday to be poked and prodded and investigated. We’ve been told black mold will set in, that the camper should be written off.

That camper is a dream.

Its best feature was the panoramic windows I stared out of every day as I wrote, my head bent over ‘my spot’ at the kitchen table. We looked for years to find the right camper. There is no other like it. It was old (2009) but it was good.

So now

I am back home, away from our plot in the community garden that is abundant with the fresh vegetables we planted and weeded, away from dipping my toes in the warm water at the beach, away from lazy weekends of reading with my toes buried in the sand and a cool beverage at my side. My view of the outdoors is now relegated to leafy trees. That’s not so bad, I adore trees and am grateful to breathe in their healthy goodness. But I need water, and it was a shock to suddenly be forced FROM water BY water. The sun is still shining and the air outside is fresh but I am indoors. The cozy lawnmowers have been replaced by sirens and trucks and construction saws and a motorcycle a neighbour seems to run for an hour straight every morning. Noise. SO. MUCH. NOISE. I stare at a screen and have never felt so trapped.

So enclosed. So utterly, entirely enclosed.

All along I have been saying, “It’s okay, my problems are nothing. Others are TRULY suffering.” And they are, and their suffering hurts my soul because I am unable to help. I AM HELPLESS. I feel like the water that destroyed my oasis is all the unshed tears I have yet to cry while I scream to the heavens. I want to ask WHY WHY WHY — WHY the pandemic, WHY the pain my friends are going through, WHY the war, WHY the suffocation of being forced indoors when there is so much light and open sky and freshness left outside?

And WHY can’t I disappear into another story, because that was always my safe place, my place to hide, my place to disappear from the things that hurt?

But mostly — WHY am I glossing over the truth and pretending everything is okay when it isn’t?

How many of us continue along on our journeys with our truths buried — how many of us are afraid to let go? How many of us allow ourselves to truly ‘feel the feels?’

A favourite line from an old fave film, The Horse Whisperer, came to mind the other day — “I know where he goes.” Look it up. I always thought how lucky I was to go there while I was writing. But now I know the truth.

I need to be strong — no more hiding. No more asking Jessie and the other characters in my stories to feel the feels for me. I gotta feel them myself. Not bury them. Not let the trailer’s flood be my tears.

I gotta shed my own tears.

And maybe then I’ll be able to sit down and write.

Hey Y'all, It's Been A While, Huh?

Oh Lordy, I miss these sunsets...

Darnley, Prince Edward Island, you have my heart. Drifters readers know this because more than one book in the series is set in this beautiful oasis. I'm very blessed - I live in Darnley in the summertime, in a small camper that overlooks the gorgeous, mystical Darnley Basin.

If you've been wondering what I've been up to lately, here's a clue - it's a new project partly set in the Darnley area. For the first time in a number of years, I'm not writing Drifters books this fall and winter. Although I'm excited to be moving onto something exciting and new, I have to say that I really miss Josh and Jessie and the colourful folks who live in their world. I have known no greater joy than writing the Drifters books. I was happy all the time - a false happiness in some ways, I suppose, since my moods were tied into a fictional world, yet it was a good happy. That kind of joy permeated to every area of my life. This year is different - I'm grounded in the real world, which is making me adjust to a whole new life, including going to work at an office for a change, and learning to manage the personalities of others as I learn to work in a team environment as opposed to one that was mostly solitary.

SO, what am I working on? Most of you likely already know, but here it is - a feature film. I'm a Vancouver Film School grad who started writing books about people acting in a fictional TV series because I was having a hard time trying to finance filmed entertainment of my own. Strangely, and perhaps weirdly (but definitely coolly!), the books led me to interested players who share the dream of making a feature film with me.

The film is called Still The Water - it's not one of my Drifters books yet it revolves, as do the Drifters books, around a troubled guy whose name starts with J. It's set almost entirely in my home province of Prince Edward Island.

Still The Water is about quieting the chaos in our hearts. The story revolves around brothers who are trying to reconnect after a sustained absence from each other. As children, the fellas - hockey players - spent time on the ice, their sanctuary. Now they are forced to work together in confined spaces, sometimes on a fishing boat like the ones above. It doesn't always go well. After all, it's not always easy to forgive and forget.

So most of my time these days is being spent pulling the production together. I'm not alone - I've got some terrific help. We're in a holding pattern at the present time, waiting on a final OK for funding, which we hope comes real soon as we need to shoot in April / May 2018 in order to properly tell the story. We have locations booked, music chosen, and cast chosen. And a super cozy little production office!

It's all good, as they say.

I'm adapting to the changes in my working life this year, and I love my comfy office and the amazing people on the Still The Water team. I've been mulling over more Drifters stories (actually, book two in the Dallas White series, which will feature some of the Drifters folks) and I'm gonna be excited when the day comes to get back into that world. But for now I'm trusting the universe and my angels to see me through the filming of my first feature, and I can't wait to see where that takes me!

My camper angel from Darnley! She sits on my desk at home during the winter :)

I Heard. I Hear.

So I went to a pop concert last Friday night. I couldn't help myself. I'm a music junkie. I need music in my life.

A few summers ago, I had the great pleasure of discovering one of the most entertaining, quirky bands on the planet, Walk Off The Earth (WOTE). My guy (Steve) and I had popped down to a free night of music in Charlottetown in celebration of Canada's Sesquicentennial (I'll do the math for you - that's 150 years). From the opening hum that completely energized the rambunctious crowd, til the last note died away, we were both held captive by the harmonies and on-stage antics (y'all know about the viral video featuring five band members playing one guitar). I vowed to try to see WOTE again whenever possible, so when Steve and I started planning a trip to Vancouver to visit my son, Christopher, I was happily surprised to find that Walk Off The Earth was playing in the city a few days after my birthday. The trip got booked the second we knew we could get concert tickets.

Walk Off The Earth is an incredible stage act. Their music is fun, intense - a bit poppy, I suppose. Their stage presence is choreographed the way Shakespeare focused on the use of words. Every step is weighted and sure; every movement is precise and intentional. Add the music and you've got some sweet entertainment on your hands.

Walk Off The Earth (WOTE)

The band was not the headliner. Vancouver's Marianas Trench was. Now that's a pop band, although I see they bill themselves as Emo-pop-punk (there's a handle...). I've heard many of their tunes and I like the band okay. But I was there to see Walk Off The Earth, to celebrate my birthday with music I cherish and a stage act I love; a band whose songs often inspired certain sections of my Drifters books, in fact (the Seattle concert in book eight? Rule The World. Hold On (the break)). 

Kieran Mercer

I knew what to expect from WOTE but I was humbled and surprised at the impact Marianas Trench had on me. It was unexpected and actually left me somewhat suspended.

The second surprise of the evening was a young artist by the name of Kieran Mercer. To my knowledge he wasn't on the bill when we booked the tix but I enjoyed his music and was happy to hear some new tunes by an up and comer, as a sort-of added bonus, I guess you could say. My son's comment about Kieran's act was that he liked his voice. As a drummer, Christopher speculated that the guy behind the skins likely had some serious jazz training, which was evident in some cool riff the guy played near the end.

"That guy has talent," Christopher said. 

There was some real musicianship on the stage that night. WOTE blew us away. Marianas Trench actually left us speechless at times. MT lead singer (and writer) Josh Ramsay even left Steve humbled. Josh gave everything he had to give. And by this I mean a raw energy that I know everyone in attendance appreciated on a surface level, but I'm not sure the young girls in the crowd (yep, lotsa those) had a clue that what they were witnessing on stage was some guy pretty much bleeding on stage. 

Think about it - pop music is, in many cases, swept under the rug as superficial fluff. Surely Josh Ramsay (and Kieran Mercer and Gianni and Sarah and the rest of WOTE) are not putting the poetry of Leonard Cohen on stage. Hallelujah? Don't kid yourself. I can't compare the three acts I saw Friday night to Cohen or to any other artists. But I don't need to. Each was its own special act. Everyone poured their soul onto the stage and shared, with an arena full of appreciative fans, what hurt the most. What made them tick, what made them bleed, what made them suffer.

What gave them hope.

WOTE's Home We'll Go ("You've seen the darkest skies I know") breaks my heart every time I hear it. ("Let your soul shine bright like diamonds in the sky"). If you've read my books, you can guess that when I hear this song I think of Jessie singing to Josh. I can see her reaching a hand out to him, begging him to trust her, to let her care for him. To give in, to just let himself be loved by her. So...I can't help but wonder who WOTE is singing about. Who wrote the lyrics? Who are these poignant words meant for?

I want to reach into the heart of the song and spread light and hope to whoever needs it.

Marianas Trench

Marianas Trench...well. Personally, I don't know a lot of artists who pour such angst into their music. And by this, I mean the lead singer, Josh Ramsay. Apparently he's the main writer - the other guys in the band add the icing and trim to the music Josh sends their way. And it's Josh who bleeds all over the stage. So...at the concert I sat back and soaked up the 'pop' songs I knew, but as MT continued to perform tune after tune, I found myself squinting in curiosity. And cocking my head to better hear the lyrics (no easy feat in a big open arena like Pacific Coliseum). A wave of energy swept over me when I was finally able to settle down enough to realize that Josh (and the band) were more than your average pop band. Disguised (?) in their lyrics were depths of pain and angst communicated via music that, on some levels, actually had me concerned for the singer. Sure, he was all over the stage putting on a show that included more than a few F-bombs (I cringed - my characters swear, I occasionally curse, but there were young kids present), and he did that whole 'take off his shirt and run around in leather pants' thing.

But he was revealing a nakedness that went beyond merely removing clothing. 

The thing is, we need to pay attention to art, no matter how it's disguised or communicated to us. In a painting, in a book, in music. We expect to see pain in art, in the lyrics of artists who make no pretense about sharing a deeply seeded angst in their music. But we don't always look at popular music in quite that light. We bring our thirteen-year-old daughters to these pop concerts and watch them sing along. They know every word to every song. But do they get what they're seeing and hearing? Do they know this guy - the lead singer in MT - was on his knees in the dark in a Downtown Vancouver apartment for two months because his mother got sick and his mood decayed and his wedding got called off and, well, he hurt so deeply he couldn't even find the wherewithal to write songs for a while? Which, by the way, are his salvation? His creative outlet? His way of releasing his pain? 

Josh Ramsay

I'm not romanticizing the music of a band I didn't expect to touch me on any deep level. I'm just telling you to pay attention. Don't discount music you might think is fluff until you consider what may be behind it. Don't allow your children to listen to lyrics without teaching them to think about what they are hearing.

I get that I see and feel things on a very deep level, especially when it comes to music. As I said, I'm a music junkie, and I'm a sucker for pain. Maybe I look for it, I don't know. But I left that concert Friday night feeling suspended, changed. Concerned. Worried for an artist who, it's clear, suffers, and yet has the guts to open himself up to arenas filled with fans who love the tunes but likely rarely think beyond surface level about what's behind them. What fuels them. It brings to mind The Beatles. John Lennon apparently wanted to stop performing in large venues because 'nobody was really listening.' 

Go forth. Go to concerts, big and small. But do me a favour. Pay attention. Listen. 

To Kieran Mercer, Walk Off The Earth, and Marianas Trench...Thank you for having the guts to share your hurts with us. You're letting us know it's okay to hurt too, and that we don't always have to keep our pain inside. You're teaching us that our 'art' is valuable far beyond its creation. That our vulnerabilities are real, can be acknowledged through our chosen art without fear of rejection, criticism or reprisal, and that no matter which medium, genre or discipline in which we choose to create, it's okay to just be authentic.

It's up to us to choose to listen to others. To look beyond the outermost layers. If we don't, it's our loss. I was humbled by the show the other night. So let me just give you musicians a great big hug, and let you know that I heard.

I hear.

Vancouver, April 9th, 2016