Ceallaigh's Blog
I've just encountered an interesting point of confusion between my writing and its reception by readers that I thought it might be useful to discuss. In a recent blog entry, I defaulted to the feminine, third-person pronoun when discussing an animal because I wasn't certain of the animal's sex and didn't want to use the gender-neutral 'it' for reasons having to do with my vegan ethics. This created some confusion in my readership, so I subsequently footnoted the relevant passage to indicate that my usage was a default preference and not a specific gender identification.
I've been thinking a great deal about what Paganism means to me and more directly about the relevance of the term 'Pagan' as a descriptor of my spiritual life. Paganism is a broad umbrella that shades a variety of budding faith paths, from Wicca to Aztec Reconstructionism (a blossom I find deeply troubling, given my recent research into Aztec religious practices). It boasts a host of non-Christian Gods and a burgeoning repository of historical, pseudo-historical, reconstructed and reinvented religious practices, including many that non-Pagans would call magical (ritual, spell-craft, tarot and the like).
I have a confession to make. I like to sew, to garden, to can and preserve food. I like to make my home a comfortable place to live in and to receive guests. Not fancy mind you; I'm not that kind of girl. But comfortable. Liveable.
Here's another confession. I like to write for the sake of the beauty of the words. Yes, I want to be commercially successful, and yes, I want for people to read what I write. But I love challenging my skill too, even when it means I spend 'too much' time on a story or poem once in awhile.
I've been thinking a lot about these things as Sean and I plan our move to Cape Breton, where we will be buying a rural home and settling down. In making this decision, I am making larger decisions about the direction of my life. I have a Master's degree, but I'm consciously deciding to be a Gaelic speaker for the sake of it, a homesteader, a writer who might or might not ever 'make it'.
On Saturday afternoon of the convention, four holes-in-the-shoes, dust-in-the-petticoats wandering minstrels offered up an hour of entertainments designed to lift the spirit and put the mind at ease. Never you mind that our minstrels were forced to move at the last minute from their assigned space to a suite on the tenth floor because NO YOU CAN'T BRING YOUR HOME-MADE COOKIES INTO THE KING ROOM (Did you know that forbidden cookies taste like unicorn giggles?) and NO YOU CAN'T HAVE SINGING EITHER (what kind of Lurch/Miss Umbrage wannabe was running that room, anyway?). Never you mind that halfway through the hour, the hand-painted backdrop slipped from its duct tape mooring and had to be violently ripped from the wall by one C.S.E. (Claire) Cooney mid-sentence. These women were professionals, and no cookie, singing or backdrop calamity was going to stand between them and the show.
I just took down a G+ post about a funny Craigslist advertisement in Virginia for a topless, female dungeon master who might be willing to run an AD&D 3.5 campaign for a bachelor party. Nerdy, strange and somewhat misogynistic all at the same time, I thought it was worth sharing. But when it passed through G+ to Twitter and Facebook, somehow the link to the actual advertisement forwarded to the Craigslist category it was posted in and not to the advertisement itself. And since I try to keep my posts fairly uniform cross-platform, I deleted all three. Then I wondered if people might think I was removing them because I believed they were inappropriate, which led me to wonder if I'd be faced with the 'she took it down' value judgement I've seen other people make when folks do this sort of thing, which led me to think about the way I view online interaction, which led me to this post.
As I've mentioned on social networking recently, I've been researching and outlining a set of short stories to write before I return to novel-length fiction. In some cases, the research has been fun (i.e. watching episodes of Dexter to learn how other writers have crafted sociopathic characters), some of it has been gruesome (i.e. reading on Aztec sacrificial practices) and now some of it has crossed a boundary for me, forcing me to reconsider the cultural backdrop of one of my stories.
Today is for planning the next six weeks of my writing life. I've been fortunate enough to sell nearly all the stories and poems in my inventory, so while I'm waiting to hear back from agents about my novel, I thought I'd take a break and create some new things to share. One of the stories came to me whole cloth in a dream, and while the dream logic of it will likely need tweaking before it works as narrative, I'm still excited to finally be giving it some attention. The title came to me in the dream as well; Sing the Crumbling City. Another story is rooted in my distaste for the pseudo-philosophical concept of metanorms and my desire to write the evolution of a female anti-hero. It might be called Chachalmeca, but I'm not sold on the title yet. I also need to unearth a few unfinished poems from the journal I jotted them down in and polish them up.
I'm preparing to reinstall my operating systems today (Dhia! What an undertaking!), and while I'm waiting for various backups to complete, I'd like to share with you something I'm learning about writing your first book.
The hardest part isn't beginning the work, or straining against the limits of your creativity to craft the most beautiful words you can, or finding the time and the wherewithal to finish what you've started.
It's trying to sell your book when you're done.
I've written before that my husband engages in vegan advocacy online by way of direct interaction with people and the issues they discuss around the topic. Often this approach works well, but as with all conversations on the Internet, sometimes it brings the bridge wardens out from underneath their charges, if you know what I mean.
I'm moving into the 'STFU and finish it' phase of my edits, which likely means less activity on social networking, however that might manifest this time. But this morning I've found myself staring out the window at the storm-gray bay and thinking not so much on the beauty of this place I live but on its transformative power.
I've stood on the rocks at Peggy's Cove the day before a hurricane while the sun baked the water into salt on my face. I've gone raspberry picking in the Annapolis Valley and stuffed my face with huge, sweet berries on a hot, summer day. I've driven infant squirrels from Bridgewater to Seaforth because every life matters. I've taken suffering raccoons to a gentle death. I've released rehabilitated owls to the wild. I've encountered cougars on the road.