Shadow Runners & A Campus Tour

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
Theodore Roosevelt

Here I am approaching 34 and finally in a classroom at the University. Of course it’s only a 3 hour workshop, but it feels great, my confidence is high and I’m fully prepared to expand my skillset. It’s not he first time I’ve been on the UPEI campus, I had a short stint working at the cafeteria, I’ve played some hockey at the recently replaced rink, went to some basketball camps, and I go swimming on an almost weekly basis nowadays. But here to learn?

I walk into the classrooom and can’t help but notice that there’s only one other guy there among about 30 writer’s. It is after all about writing for kids, so it’s understandable that mostly females would be interested.

The Faces Behind the Names

So I’m sitting there laying out my paper and up walks the Writer’s Guild president Yvette Doucette, whom I’ve exchanged a few emails, with a warm welcome. I immediately felt more at ease and officially part of this fine group of people. The workshop coordinator, Deirdre Kessler enters and gives a brief description of accomplishments as an author including the lowdown on how she came up with the title for her book of poetry “Afternoon Horses“. This vibrant writer & teacher explained the unique pronounciation of her name Deirdre sounded like peartree.

She went on to explain exercises for buttering up the most troublesome of writer’s blocks. For instance listing certain things from childhood memories, 15 minute stories, rewriting them in a different tense or in 3rd person instead of 1st person, & then re-rewriting with dialogue, with a new charactor, for a different audience, or a combination of any of these elements.

How the Time Flies…

I was smashingly impressed with the info during this free-flowing session, especially after working a midnight shift and pulling off a ninety minute workout. I must admit that I was pretty tired but my interest was held throughout and I hung on every word. I was able to go back in time to my childhood and rewrite history. During the break I had a great chat with a fellow writer who had recently moved here from the US. We talked about our thoughts on ADD and Autism (something I am interested in writing about), I was realizing that being part of this group would be such a blessing. I also got the chance to play the “class clown” when Deirdre asked about how to get into a charactor. I couldn’t resist mentioning that I love impersonations and demonstrated my own proper English impression of Beatrix Potter (“…the flopsy bunnies ate the lettuce, it was superific!“). And to top it off I received a beautiful calendar featuring some well known Guild members in black & white beach photos!

The Shadow Runners

Alone in a blanket / Myth from a screen / All curled up among / These villains unseen…                                                                   I hear the earth rumble / And cover my eyes / Spread fingers a little / Can’t resist playing spy…                                      Drowning in darkness / They enter the room / A slow strolling dimness / The night has it’s truth…                                    The speed becomes fast / Light, still lifes & glass / All chills & hoping / They’ll never be back.

  The Stroll Among Spirit

That was a poem I was inspired to write and this is my reflection in a big window…

As I walked to the parking lot I got some nice snapshots of the beautiful campus and remembered my old thoughts about University being about wasting the best years of your life partying and putting yourself into debt just for the privilege of being able to look down your nose at the people who do actual “real” work. The truth is most of these students have dreams about making the world a better place & maybe I shouldn’t have taken those movies about the frat boys so literally.

Regardless, I’m happy with the path I’ve chosen and although I still don’t think being a full time student is right for me, I’m looking forward to pursuing educational experiences of this nature.

Thank you for putting these events together Writer’s Guild, you’re sharing of knowledge is beyond generosity!

Fictional Reality

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.
Mark Twain

I recently joined the PEI Writer’s Guild, so last week I received an email about upcoming events. I am planning to attend two of them. The first one is about writing books for children which is perfect because I currently have a work in progress about siblings and autism. It will resemble Robert Munsch’s style with some far out fantasy and a few valuable tips about love and acceptance between the lines. If all goes well this particular book will be looking fairly good by the fall.

The second workshop is going to be about short fiction. Now fiction is something that I haven’t dabbled in for quite a while. I’ve had a few ideas that have played out in my head about 5 years ago about basing characters on coworkers for an Elmore Leonard style novel, with adventure, goofiness, and suspense that gets quickly resolved while an underlying sense of mystery lingers. With that particular idea I jotted down some scenerios in my journal but since I had little confidence in myself as a writer back then, I couldn’t be bothered to take it any further. Since then, nothing…

Something In The Way…

See, I’ve been plagued by negativity about writing since I was a child. I learned in school that everything creative had to be critiqued and my audience was basically picked for me. I wanted to be thought of as a bit of a joker by the kids in my class, so for me to explore anything emotionally-charged or serious would be to shatter my persona and force me to stop acting and be a more mature version of myself. Now that I think about it, that would have saved me a lot of effort in the quest to find myself, but I honestly believe that I wouldn’t be who I am today without making the silly “mistakes” I’ve made throughout my life.

Another vivid memory that has worked against my choice of writing as a possible career path was a guest author in my school library. I was in grade 3, I think, and an author (whom I cannot remember by name) had pointed out in no uncertain terms that writing books is going to leave you a very poorly paid person. At that point in my life, I was very scared of the “real world” and had this vision of finishing school, taking the first job that became available to me, and keeping it until I retire.

I can’t guarantee that I’ll ever be able to cash in on any of my work, but I feel richer knowing that I’m making a connection with an audience that appreciates the things I write about, (at least I get that impression) and gives me feedback that helps me understand my feelings about life a little better.

Stranger than Fiction?

I am more comfortable at the moment writing about how to get the most out of life and have a blast doing it. To me the “Blog” is like a shared journal, some folks like to write about things they do, some about their feelings, and some give advice. What most bloggers all have in common is that to the best of their knowledge it’s truth, I haven’t read any blogs that were exclusively fictional, and I don’t think I’d want to unless I were lucky enough to stumble upon it shortly after conception and the posts weren’t super long.

The fact is that in the space of the average blog being under 500 words with 1000 words probably being a safe maximum there is very little time to develop more than one character and get to a climax with a bit of an epilogue to make the story end on the right “note”. But maybe I’ll learn to perfect that in this workshop I’ll be attending. As you might have guessed, I don’t have any kind of University degree in writing so I have a lot to learn.

To Be or Not To Be (Full of It)?

I came up with an idea after watching E.T. when I was a kid to tell everybody that a spaceship landed in my yard, luckily I ran it by my father before going through with it and he said that if I did, I’d lose everybody’s trust and be thought of as a liar (or full of it). So I assure you that I don’t plan to start firing off tall tales if I don’t have anything interesting to write about, but in the tradition of using Wish I Were There7 to prepare myself for upcoming challenges, there could very well be a “Fiction” page showing up below the header.

This workshop isn’t until May 20^th and there are a few other things I have on the go right now so whenever I feel the time is right it will be the time to write (fiction that is).

Is there anything you might like to read about in short fiction?

Dream Inside a Dream pt.2. The Waking Dream

All of our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. Walt Disney

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I just opened a twitter account today and I’m pretty sure I’ll never possibly run out of things to write about. My typing speed is not bad, but man, to keep up with all the cool ideas from the tweets, not to mention the great blog posts from my blogroll, and the other websites I’ve found. Wow.

On to the dream stuff. So I mentioned in my last post the book “Life as a Waking Dream” and I’m just gonna throw out some ideas:

The problems we encounter with money might be thought of as an outer manifestation of ourselves. I can imagine that most readers would be wondering “what??? Money is just money, paper, coins, or numbers in a bank account.” Well, honestly up until last year I never really thought much about what money actually means to me, I just kinda used it like a necessary element to get what I need in my life, try to pretend that living “paycheck to paycheck” doesn’t bother me and coming up with the philosophy that money was created to entitle a select few who didn’t have what it takes to perform manual labor the right to buy other people’s time and energy.

Nowadays I’m starting to realize that money can be put to better use and although still having debts I can actually feel like I’m doing OK financially just by shifting my attitude a little bit. I now even feel that I’m on track to earn enough to feel like I’m one of the folks that I used to feel so much envy for.

Another thing touched upon in the book is that our tolerance for pain and drive to attain pleasure are what shapes our personalities. I can agree with that as well, and the great thing about it is with a little work we can change the amounts of both by just taking stock. I know that my threshold for pain is nowhere near a Navy SEAL or anything but over the years I’ve been trying to push myself a little harder. As for the drive for pleasure, it may just be a matter of changing habits. I used to eat fast food, smoke and drink more than I should have and slowly I’ve been introducing more healthy habits into my life. I think that blogging is a great habit; it’s expressive, there’s a community that provides support, and it seems to make me smarter. I get a lot of pleasure from it, but I sometimes spend more time then I wish I did on it. I guess a good cure for that is just being happy with shorter posts and better pre-planning.

Where Are We?

It’s my opinion that we are exactly where we need to be right now, whether things are going well or not, whether there is still mystery in life or not, or whether or not the world seems to be going in the right direction. The whole fact of the matter for me is that when I look back at any decision whether it was good or bad, there was a lesson involved and it seems that the more I pay attention to these “lessons” the less I have to “relearn” them.

Is there a situation in life that seems to be a problem and it keeps reappearing?

Dream inside a Dream Pt.1… Winning(just kidding)

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception. Aldous Huxley

I remember the song “Row Your Boat” from childhood and how it ends with the line… “merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”I never really though much of it at the time, but over the years the topic has popped up again a couple of times.

Again I just brushed off the idea as possibly a metaphor at best, but lately I’m letting myself be more open to the fact that it’s a possibility. Of course it isn’t easy to fathom life being a dream, personally I really just look at it like the idea of it doesn’t have to be a reality and I don’t need to have actual evidence, but just, I guess pretending makes life have more meaning.

I’ve read a few books about dream interpretation and my ultimate feeling runs along the lines of a C.G. Jung quote, which I can’t recall where I found, but it basically states that since we all come from different backgrounds the symbols reveal themselves differently. I don’t know if he was just knocking Sigmund Freud’s book or not, but anyways, when interpreting our dreams I believe it’s important to take the initiative to just decipher the symbols intuitively.

But the waking dream?

So I’m reading a book right now called “Life as a Waking Dream” by Dianne Kennedy Pike, it basically states that we’re dreaming life’s events and by studying the meaning behind these events we can “awaken” ourselves. I was reluctant to buy it but I thought “why not?”, after all it was only $3.00 and I had store credit after selling some books. Ever since I’ve made a commitment to myself about 8 years ago to be more fearless about the types of books I read, I’ve been able to learn about things that I never would have believed were possible, and to try to look inside myself as apposed to outside for answers.

In an Aldous Huxley essay I once read he proposed that we’re either primarily  introverted or extroverted (it turns out that C.G. Jung popularized the theory). I have bought into the idea that an extroverted lifestyle was my only option for most of my life up until that point, but learning to embrace looking inward and have come to the conclusion that exclusively looking outwards for answers seems akin to being up the creek without a paddle where the only hope of reaching your chosen destination is perfect weather conditions.

Last night, for the first time in years I was at a Major Junior League hockey game (PEI Rocket vs. Lewiston Maineiacs). It was a crowd of around 2,000 and I had a great time. I couldn’t help but notice that the crowd had 4 basic moods, suspense, disappointment, ecstasy, and indifference. They all depended on the events of the game, of course and when the visiting Maineiacs won the game at the last second of the overtime period, which is as dramatic as it gets the 20 or 30 fans from Maine were obviously the only people who appeared to care. Everyone just got up and made their way out as if nothing happened, I know it sounds absurd, but imagine how the winning team must’ve felt. I used to play and I know that the “us and them” mentality is an essential element.

Either way, if this life is a waking dream and most of us are all getting our basic provisions and more (TV’s, cars, cell phones, computers, food, clothing, and shelter, etc.) why would we want to “wake up” anyway?

The Title…

I chose the title “Winning” as a joke because I think Charlie Sheen is the perfect example of the “waking dream”. He’s got it all, or had it all at least and yet he seems to get dragged through the mud by life routinely. I know that being the son of a famous actor has it’s perks which lead to unlimited excesses and that the drug and alcohol problems make people do things that seem foolish, but in my life I sometimes feel that way too(on a much, much smaller scale). Instead of having the media pointing out my mistakes, I just have myself to look to and ask could I have done better if I had just paid more attention.

Winning? If life has a scoreboard would we really want to know the score?