Oh, the silence

The house next door is almost completed. The sidewalks are replaced. There’s still lots of construction in the neighbourhood, including a project we can see from our driveway, but none of it’s right here. The silence is amazing.

It’s frustrating, too – it’s quiet enough now to write in the garden, but most days it’s too cold.

I may find ways to play in the garden – hanging lights, putting up the bird feeder. I’m coveting a woodpecker feeder, with nuts held in place – that should drive the squirrels wild. Perhaps after Christmas I’ll stick the tree in the back garden, and decorate it with treats, although I know it’s the squirrels who’ll take most of them.

Anything to enjoy the garden again, after the noise, the allergens, the dirt and garbage, the damage – oh, the damage!

Next summer will be quiet, right?

Maureen

My Favourite Fall Flowers

I have two favorite fall flowers. The first is echineacea ­– purple cornflower – because it always makes me laugh, with its orange cone and pinky-red petals. It limps along in my garden, needing yearly replacement. I wish I could figure out how to help it thrive. I’d love a couple of really big bunches, loaded with blooms, loud and absurd.

My other favorite is the opposite – quiet and delicate. My Japanese Anemone took years to become established and settled enough to bloom. Now, the spring-delicate pink flowers enchant me.

Maureen

Staying In The Story

I want stories that pull me in and hold me until the very end when I cry, “Oh, I don’t want it to be over.” So how do I write that way?

That’s an essential question for writers, and I haven’t seen it discussed much (perhaps it’s so essential it’s assumed to be the basis of all writing advice).

This is a great way to explain to young writers why editing is important. As readers, we don’t want to be pulled out of the story by writing errors. We don’t want to be aware of the writer at all. The writer needs to vanish, as the story inhabits us.

How do we become invisible as writers? Here are a few pieces of that puzzle that I’ve found:

Clean, carefully edited, smooth writing. Skilled, with enough of both action and emotional involvement to keep us enthralled. Nothing awkward or bumpy or annoying or just plain wrong. Nothing that pops us out of the story. There’s enough going on around us that will, like doorbells and barking dogs, laundry and dishes and, god forbid, work and school.

Let the story pull us in and hold us until the very last word.

Maureen