The late lamented singing Tilly


I lost my lovely cat, Bendicks, in the depths of the pandemic. I’m still missing him.

I’ve been hesitant to adopt a new friend. Would I be able to love a new cat, with all their foibles and activities and behavioural misunderstandings? What if they got sick? Did I want to take on that pain of loss again?

So, I decided to foster a cat. The humane society was overrun, they needed help. The gruelling procedure for evaluation of my suitability went on for months, involved vets in two provinces and most of my friends, but eventually I passed the tests. Finally I got the call to pick up my new foster, an older gal, Tilly, a short haired tortoiseshell. I happily leapt in the car to pick her up. What could possibly go wrong?

Picking her up was the first challenge. Sixteen years old and weighing about twenty pounds, lifting her in the carrier was a workout in itself. We headed home, laden with donated supplies, and after several trips I managed to get her and everything else into my apartment.

Then came the Days of Hiding. Eventually I lured her out with treats, and our adventure together began. The poor gal couldn’t be adopted until she had dental surgery, and we started out giving her pain pills twice a day – this locked her into a time clock that meant treats had to happen, 9 am and 9 pm, no matter what else was going on. She needed shots for the pain as well, so I hefted her into her carrier and took her to the humane society every month for a top up. She was stiff, couldn’t walk properly, couldn’t jump up on the furniture, moaned when I lifted her (or maybe that was me. My quads were finding her a challenge).

One day, she started acting funny, being overly affectionate, meowing. She was going into heat! I had no idea cats never ever stop going into heat, so after frantic and ultimately disappointing searches about cat menopause on the inter webs, I gave up and told the humane society they’d have to add spaying to her surgical agenda. They weren’t sure, so on one of her visits they shaved her tummy to look for a surgical scar. She was insulted, but eventually forgave me.

She didn’t have a voice, so her heat howls came out as squeaks. This still was disruptive when leading Zoom meetings and the poor girl was miserable, so I invested in good weed (catnip) and kept her stoned for much of that week. That passed, but two weeks later, she was in heat again. And again. And again. A random stranger suggested I violate her with a Q-tip to stop the heat process, but Tilly and I discussed it and we both felt that was one step too far. We struggled on.

We bonded over the need to diet, she on her almost acceptable diet food and a few treats a day, me on salads and a few more treats (I am bigger, after all).

She got more comfortable, demanding I sit where she could stomp onto my lap for cuddles. She learned to jump on the bed, landing like a bowling ball on me in the middle of the night, climbing onto my neck for pats where she would press her paws on my carotid artery and wait until I passed out before she settled in. She’d curl up and purr loudly enough I couldn’t hear anything else. It was soothing, at least when I could move her off my vital organs and breathe again.

Less soothing was when she’d try to jump up and not make it, landing with a thump and a pussycat swear on the ground, shredding my sheets as she did.

We developed a cozy pattern, hanging out together, doing our own things. One day I was sitting stitching, something she resented as it took up my lap, when I started singing along to the radio. She ran (!) over (not her usual pace), climbed into my lap and put her paw over my mouth, meanwhile singing along with me in her mini mew. I’m not sure if she was critiquing or merely wanting to take the lead…all I know is that she really enjoyed Queen’s Radio Gaga.

She started to get sick, and we made more trips to the humane society vets. Fostering a cat is a bit like leasing a car. Though you have it, it’s not really yours. Any damage involves layers of bureaucracy, and the decisions about treatment aren’t really yours to make. So back and forth we went, me thinking she didn’t look good.

She stopped eating, and when she climbed onto my lap she’d allow a few pats and then growl and hiss. She’d still run for her treats (low calorie ones) but eventually she stopped even that.

Last Saturday evening, upon advice of the society, I took her for her last ride to the emergency vet. We waited together in the car for the mandatory hours, during which time I ran down my car battery playing the radio to soothe us both. I called CAA, the vets called us in, told me the bad news. She was too high risk to do anything with, and obviously in pain.

At least this time, unlike with my cat, I was able to cuddle her before they sedated her. I talked to her a bit, but she wasn’t up for singing. They took her away, and I headed out to meet the tow truck.

All the while I fostered her, I told myself and everyone else that she was just a foster, that I wasn’t going to adopt her, but despite that she purred herself into my heart and I am still heartbroken. I keep looking for her, waiting to hear her meow. I haven’t been able to take her bed out from under mine, still hear her snoring under there as she did so often.

The humane society, who have been wonderful, contacted me to tell me they hoped I’d foster again. A younger cat, they told me. One with fewer health problems. I’m not sure my heart can take it. Not when I can still hear her squeak every time I hear Queen playing on the radio.

But then again…

(Spay or neuter your pets, please! Tilly likely developed cancer from being intact all those years; it’s common. There are low cost spay/neuter clinics in many areas.)

On being patronized


studio tees Creative Commons via Flicker

I’m a 4’11” tall, aging female. EVERYONE talks down to me, necessarily. However, I am also multi-degreed, with wide and varied experience and a history of accomplishments I could brag about but probably won’t get a chance to because you will be busy telling me how to tie my shoes or wipe my nose or do anything.

Because I’m a short female with grey hair and I must, of course, know nothing.

Of course, I’ve been short all my life. I was saddened when I recently had my knees replaced. They did both at the same time and I asked the doc if he could just make me an inch taller – instead he shortened me. If I lose any more height I will qualify for a car seat. It isn’t easy being taken seriously at this height. I have trouble dressing for success, I can’t wear high heels with my MS, I’m overweight, and I try to be friendly, all things which somehow make my competence seem in doubt.

(Interestingly, wearing a push-up bra somehow adds dozens of points to my IQ when talking with men. Or at least they act that way. Honestly, were none of my age group breastfed adequately?)

After years of being patronized or ignored, I’ve gotta admit it’s a bit of a sore spot with me. People probably don’t realize this, but if you patronize me more than once, you are dead to me. Dead. Of course I won’t actually kill you, but I WILL put you in a story and make unpleasant things happen to your character. It’s only fair.

There must be something about my face. In the last little while people have offered to get Jesus to heal me (Jesus and I have talked and I told him he has bigger fish to fry), told me how to facilitate a group (something I’ve been doing for over 20 years), and offered to “help” me with all sorts of things I can perfectly do well enough myself (mainly by telling me how).

It’s frustrating. I don’t want to go around shouting about my brain being the size of the universe, like Marvin in the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy– mainly because I think everyone has a brain the size of the universe. But I am frequently tempted to have my qualifications tattooed on my body so when people helpfully explain things I’ve studied for years, I can just whip out that piece of flesh and wave it at them. (Given my overweight status, I have enough flesh for the full assortment.)

It’s bad enough that at my height I can’t use half the cupboards in my kitchen, have to drive with my chest pressed against the steering wheel, have to ask for help to reach things in the grocery store. Is it absolutely necessary to also treat me like a child, just because I’m the size of one?

Honestly. I think I’m going to have to go and pout.

Note: please don’t write and tell me how to deal with my anger. I KNOW how, ergo not in jail. I’d be perfectly calm if everyone would just stop explaining things I already know in the tones of an elementary school teacher.

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What might I expect? Every case of tuberculosis is different | The Kingston Whig Standard


A contagious lung infection, tuberculosis may also attack the brain, lymph nodes or kidneys. It may affect the spine as well.
— Read on www.thewhig.com/opinion/what-might-i-expect-every-case-of-tuberculosis-is-different

Creating a book map


https://plottr.com/features/

As a determined pantser writer, I resist the outline and prefer to thrash out a mini version of my opus in the format of the 3DayNovelContest. Then, once I get it all down, I go back and create a structure around the blathering I’ve just completed. It takes a long time, but eventually I get everything laid out.

With my latest book, Spit and Polish, I found I was getting mired down in the historical tidbits and varied storylines. I had my main character’s arc, but it was…thin. I needed some other story arcs to wind about it to make the plot and characters more dimensional.

So I logged in to Plottr, something I highly recommend for this sort of thing. They have a variety of templates of story structures in the program that guide where you put events, show you where you need events, indicate whereabouts crises and climaxes and resolutions and so forth should fall. It is infinitely adaptable, has separate sections for character descriptions, location descriptions (good for if you forget what that place looks like by page 50), other notes, research, images, etc. You can create timelines for each character or even local/world events, helpful when writing historical novels. It is fantastically rich, though I wish I could easily print off the timeline.

Normally I use Scrivener for all things writing related. It’s way cool, and allows for separation of your project into sections that can be easily moved about or edited, and even eventually compiles all your precious thoughts into an acceptable format for submission. But I find the timeline feature of Plottr was terrifically helpful to have open along with Scrivener so I could slot in various events (historical, for ex) and then take them down to Scrivener to write the actual section. There are note cards in Scrivener, but I wanted a timeline that wasn’t all included in the text.

In Jane Friedman’s excellent blog, she recommends creating a book map for both fiction and non-fiction. The article, and indeed everything on the blog, is worth a read. Book maps help keep you from the dreaded middle languishing, a common problem with longer works. I’d like to have a plot wall with stickies all over it as illustrated on the blog, but a. I live in an apartment with limited wall space and b. I have tiny T-Rex arms that limit my reach and don’t relish all the step-stool climbing I’d have to do to include everything. So Plottr and a second display it is.

In other software I find helpful, I am seriously in love with ProWritingAid as it finds all of the times I write the same phrase, identifies my tendency to passive voice, catches my bad typing, and tells me gently when I’ve started the past several sentences the EXACT SAME WAY. It gets pushy, sometimes, and occasionally I have to push back to maintain my voice, but it’s a good serious look at what I’ve written.

Sweetly, all of these programs can work together, though it’s best to start with Plottr, go to Scrivener, run everything through ProWritingAid, then back to Scrivener or Word for assembly. With my pantser approach, I go back from the first Scrivener round to Plottr, which can get confusing. I plan to change that approach for my next book. Maybe it will save me some time.

So why not try a book map for your next writing project, if you aren’t already? I have to admit, a book map sounds more fun than an outline. It seems more adventurous somehow…like you are heading somewhere exciting with dragons around the edges…

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Learning editing, or squeezing those little grey cells until they weep


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Photo is of course not me as I currently am perched at my desk in my bedroom, curled onto a footstool so I can reach the keyboard, dressed in my writing gear of my son’s LCVI class of 2008 sweatshirt and loose pants. I dream of being well-put-together and smiley, but instead I squint and growl alternately as I wrestle with the document I’ve been assigned for my structural editing class at Queen’s University. Occasionally I get up to walk to the printer which will no doubt be my step count for today.

Sometimes you just have to have a hard copy of a document to make any sense out of it.

It’s early days for the course and I suspect my classmates are equally wobbly as we try to figure out what is wanted from us, but the instructor is one I know and like, so I am relying on past positive experiences to get me through these early periods.

One of the things we learn in these courses is where to find resources to guide our practice. In the very second class, we’ve been directed to the very helpful website, The Book Designer. I highly recommend the site if you are looking to self-publish or working with a smaller publisher. It honestly is FULL of goodies. It’s a motherlode of useful information about all sorts of things, from how to put together a book cover to how to write out that little thing at the end of the book that talks about the font you’ve used and its history – ah yes, the colophon!

And this is where I am finding a bit of a challenge with my Multiply Sclerosed brain. I used to be able to remember things well. Of late, the little grey cells are a bit overtaxed and things keep falling off the edge of my memory table. How this is going to work with editing practice is anyone’s guess, but I have hopes that, as with all things, the more I do it, the more I will remember.

I do find that if I focus on one thing at a time things go better. Unfortunately I have overcommitted myself in every direction and now race to catch up, holding onto errant grey cells as I dash. Feel a bit White Queen in Alice in Wonderland-y, to be honest. Definitely feeling this vibe. Even dressed a bit the same.

art by John Tenniel

Or perhaps I am more like the sheep she turns into: “The meeting ends with the Queen seeming to turn into a bespectacled sheep who sits at a counter in a shop as Alice passes into the next square on the board. The Sheep is somewhat different from the Queen in terms of personality and gets “more like a porcupine every time [Alice] looks at her” because she knits with several knitting needles all at once.” from Wikipedia.

Ah well, they say using your brain to learn new things keeps us young, refreshes the pathways in the brain, creates new side roads and byways. Perhaps all this frazzled thinking will turn out okay in the end.

After all, it did for Alice.

On writing self-help, or have you eaten your tail lately?


https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20171204-the-ancient-symbol-that-spanned-millennia

I’ve been researching the “how to write/edit your book and get it published” industry as I prepare for my editing work and it is starting to make me laugh.

It’s an ouroborus, that magical snake eating its tail. There’s a lovely article on BBC about the history of this symbol, which is used to denote the cycle of life, the never-ending story, birth and rebirth. It’s been around forever, as, I suspect, has the self-help industry.

All of it makes me think of all those people who sell books telling you to market your book before you even start writing it- to check what sells and then write to the market. Most of the books they have sold, these marketing-focused authors, are self-help in one way or another. Cheery blandishments about living for today, stress management, decluttering, how to market yourself, write that novel now!, etc etc. It goes on and on and on.

Either that or a stories about werewolves in a post-apocalyptic world where there are three suns and 14 moons.

In the writing field, it seems to be the thing to write a book telling people how to write. I’ve been fooled into purchasing several of these, having been told they were “must reads” if you want to understand the writing process. A few are good. One or two are extremely valuable. And the rest? Ummm.

I’m getting cranky now, as I get older. I’ve also bought too many of these tomes, only to open them and realize there is nothing inside but babble and dross, most of it promoting other self-help or writing books. And when I read things like the “Self-Publishing Formula” and am told these authors are cranking out a book a month, I can’t help wondering if all the things being spun out are of any worth at all. (After all, writing a book seems to take me YEARS!) But people sell them, and promote them within the community, all telling everyone that that book by their friend must be read.

And so the snake goes on, eating its tail, being reborn as yet another self-help book, forever.

One of the most visible ouroboros writers is Julia Cameron. She had a good idea, with her “The Artist’s Way” book, and she has been spinning out the morning pages and artist dates ideas into book after book after book – all with essentially the same content. I’m not sure if I am envious of her success at persuading publishers to buy in over and over again, or just irritated that so many trees are being killed to produce the same thing over and over, with a slightly different take. I mean, I know the lass has to make a living, but I do wish for fresh ideas.

It’s really tough to come up with a creative, original story line for fiction, romance, science fiction, mystery. In these areas, rehashing the exact same ideas is somewhat frowned upon. I suspect it is less tough to come out with a book on truisms and how-tos. Or involving werewolves.

I expect publishers like the non-fiction things, too, in that people keep buying them, never mind the post-purchase regret. And much of the self-help industry relies on well-written book blurbs that lead us to expect great things from the enclosed advice. So we buy, and regret.

I adore good non-fiction, the stuff that is carefully researched, that shines a light into an area I know nothing about. I’m always looking for new sources of knowledge. See: Entangled Life: How Fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures by Merlin Sheldrake (Such a glorious name for someone writing on fungi! I mean, he thanks the fungi from which he has learned in acknowledgements! I love him already.)

But the ouroboros of retelling the same mundane details and self-help advice that is written in poetic smarm – that I can do without.

Thank heavens for libraries that allow you to dip in without financial commitment – and yet the authors get a bit of a payback nonetheless, enough to compensate for the work they’ve done reworking concepts. I always buy the ones I find useful. I suspect Mr. Sheldrake will gain a spot on my bookshelf.

The enduring prejudice


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The other day, while idly wandering cookie recipes online, I came across one for oatmeal chocolate chip ones and scrolled down (I couldn’t remember my usual go to and had some chocolate chips looking lonely). The writer started off, as many do, with a little introductory blather, in which she said something to the effect of:

My grandmother lived to age 94, surprisingly, given her love for cookies and sweets and things like this recipe.

Now I’m a certified cookie-lover, and I couldn’t help but take umbrage. Why is it surprising that her grandmother lived while still loving cookies? Maybe it was the cookies that gave her the will to live! I know that on some of these grey winter days, when getting out of bed seems an unworthy struggle, the thought of a fresh cookie with my morning coffee can be the difference between loitering under the covers and springing into action.

And these were HOME MADE cookies she was talking about, lacking the usual death-dealing chemicals found in the store-bought kind that the author was probably secretly scarfing while looking all judgey-judgey at her poor grandmother toiling over a hot oven to bring deliciousness to her family (and/or herself, and there’s nothing wrong with that).

You never see anyone talking about their grandmother expressing surprise that she lived to an extended age despite her persistent love for kale, do you?

Well, that’s because people who live on kale die young, realizing early on that life has no purpose, no joy, no raison d’être. There’s only so much bitter green stuff a person can chew through before the pointlessness of it all becomes apparent.

But it’s okay to shame the cookie-eaters. Of all the prejudices, the ones against the plump, or even the sweet lover, the eater of fat, well, those remain and are endlessly reinforced.

Heard a comic the other day talking about how the best marriages are when the man’s ability to see drops as his wife ages. Yeah. The wife that births the children, manages the everything, and maybe, maybe, resorts to the occasional cookie in desperation. The wife whose eyes see fine and realizes the husband has turned into a smelly hairy hulk with bad teeth, but she’s the one with the problem with sinking attractiveness, of course. Grr.

So I say, huzzah for the cookie. It’s a small bundle of pure joy, perched in the palm of your hand like a precious gift, ready to bring delight. Eat on, grandmothers and others who cherish cookies. Life is too short to fill with gritty greens, no matter how long you live. Munch on, wallow in the brown sugar and butter goodness. Then, when you live long, you might actually enjoy it.

Write what you know, they told me.


Every time I listen to a famous writer, I find myself wondering what I would tell people in an interview to explain what I write about. Or, more importantly, what part of my life could be used to make my writing more interesting? Deeper? More moving? What do I actually KNOW?

Truthfully, after a life of boring middle class white privilege, the cupboard seems pretty bare.

I could write about what it’s like living with MS (like everyone else with MS), or about being under 5 feet tall, or about surviving being beaten up every time after my Catholic education classes… but really, how interesting is that?

I suppose I could write about my scarred body- multiple surgeries, marks from pregnancies, my almost complete set of limb scars (only my left arm is untouched and now I am developing a twisted arthritic finger there). As a nurse I’ve found most of them fascinating; as a body, I suspect I’ve had enough.

Or I could write about relationships I’ve had. Maybe not. Most of those people are still living.

Or then there’s all the places I’ve lived, many of them odd. And then I think, as my son told me once, every time you move you bring you with you. Which makes me wonder if it’s me that’s odd, as vs the places.

What about you, readers? What would you write/talk about if interviewed? What would you highlight? What would you dig into for story ideas? What do you try to keep hidden that keeps creeping out into your work?

For me, I’m bad at intimacy, at even being a bosom buddy. Maybe it’s time to mine some of that, my awkwardness, the way I use humour to push everyone just a little bit away. While that may not be fascinating, it’s perhaps relatable… and I do know it, unfortunately, very well.

Liminal Grey


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This liminal time between the overhyped Christmas and the resumption of workaday life is always a gentle grey. Fluffy, like fog, but warmer. Enclosing.

In amongst the vaguely smothering feelings caused by way too much chocolate and loneliness, I’m struggling to pull myself forward, knowing full well the sun will come out and life will resume in all its busyness and glory, laughter and foolishness.

But for now, I wallow, in full goblin-mode, hair unwashed, teeth brushed but without my usual enthusiasm, waiting to feel the rumblings of my self restarting. I do things that are restful to the little grey cells (as Poirot would have called them), watching movies and stitching, saving my creativity for another time, when the rootlets I am feeling stirring push their way towards the light.

Because I can feel them. Much like the lengthening of the days past midwinter, I can feel creative things returning to bright. They are nascent as yet, tender, at risk of being flattened by too much enthusiasm. Baby steps, I tell myself. They need gentle encouragement. Any more and I will frighten them away.

Even now, thinking about things, I find myself wondering what it’s all FOR, really. Why bother to write, to try new things, to care? Who will even notice?

This way darkness lies. Bad darkness, the kind with gnashing teeth and despair. I’ve spent some time there and I DON’T LIKE IT. In truth, we all live with the deception that what we do matters. It’s the only way we can get up in the morning and go on. To do this we need to mend the little rips that occur, when we are let down, when we fail, when we are alone. Stitch them over with colourful threads, make any injuries part of the pattern, livening it up with each hurt. So I pull at the rough edges of my self, bring out the bright coloured ribbons, weave myself together. We can all do this. But slowly, gently. We have to fool ourselves into it, turn the mirrors to the wall while we reassemble, stop judging every movement.

I start slowly, planning, holding myself to my magic of ten minute increments. I learned years ago that the only way I can make myself do anything is to tell myself I will only promise to do it for ten minutes. I don’t frighten away the creative gods if I tell them I won’t ask them for much, not this time. Let’s just play for a moment, I tell them. And they agree.

Gradually, the grey recedes, a bird sings, a song on the radio speaks to me, my feet remember how to dance. And my fingers find the keyboard and words fly about. Most of them will need honing, adjusting, but for now, I let them blow by, rejoicing in their return.

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The year of reading podcastingly, or an alternative to the Book Riot’s Read Harder challenge


My darling cousin referred me to an excellent podcast, Backlisted, described thus: “Giving New Life to Old Books. The literary podcast presented by John Mitchinson and Andy Miller. Brought to you by Unbound. Visit www.backlisted.fm“

My current to be read list…

Suffice to say my life has been forever changed. Who knew there was a book called “The Victorian Chaise longue“? It’s a horror story, by the way. And I want to read it after listening to the people on the podcast discussing it. They discuss books like “Diary of a Nobody” and another must read for me, “Silence”, by Shusaku Endo. A quote from there via Goodreads:

“Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.” 

Doesn’t that sound like a mind exercise? A thought expander?

In the podcast, the speakers start off with telling the audience what they are reading that week. They read the most enticing things. So so many books I haven’t yet read, a few already on my TBR list, lots of authors of whom I haven’t even heard. So astonishing.

So, for this upcoming year, I plan to surf through this podcast’s recommendations and try to read as many of them as I can. One of the presenters is the developer of the year of reading dangerously, so how could he lead me astray?

I highly recommend the podcast, thought the intro music is the most annoying stuff I’ve ever heard. That said, they incorporate music in the rest of their presentation that add a lot to the discussion. All of the presenters seem to be having such a jolly time, all really enjoying the books they read and talking about them. It’s terribly inspiring.

So off I go, today listening to “The Complete Molesworth” with a view to reading that pretty quickly. Another for the TBR list.

Anyone game to join me in reading from this list?