Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Writing Tuesday

I will share with you that I'm in a strange space right now. I guess it is the double-whammy of selling our house (yay!) and losing our house (wah!) plus I'm having a particularly bad attack of allergies which for me means asthma attacks, sinus headaches and all the fun sneezyanditchybeyondbelief thing.  I can't sleep for excitement and dread of moving so quickly (we must be out on the 27th of August - yep that would be in 28 days and we're not remotely started. Oh, we did a big purge of books, bookshelves, clothes and junk before we put the house on the market - still - we have a bit of stuff to pack.  Oh, and we don't know where we'll be until our other house has a free side. It's a duplex that we own up the hill but we're pretty sure we can't get the folks out until the first of October. We plan to move our stuff into one of those big containers and park it up at the other house. If it were just the two of us it would be easy enough but we have an elderly dog who needs to be in a safe place with us. By that I mean - he's a runaway - so if we're staying with friends who don't mind a big whoofy dog then they also have to know that they can't be casual about the door etc... especially in the city where he'd immediately get run over as he isn't at all used to traffic. Dang.

Let me tell you two things that I'm totally thrilled with. First we love the people who are moving in. We met them yesterday at the inspection. They have two small kids and a dog. They WANT our chickens which is a big relief and funny and so nice. They love our house and for all the reasons we do - which is major. This house is like one of my manuscripts - to have people want it and GET it is fantastic. It makes me think about how I will feel when I sell one of my novels - will I have an agent and then a publisher who not only wants it but gets it? We'll see.

The other thing I'm thrilled with is that I conjured these people. I set my intention the morning they were to come and I announced it to my fella - "They'll have two kids and they'll love everything about this place and want it to raise their family in. They'll love the look of the house, the colours, everything. And they'll want it quickly because they'll have kids who need to go to school." All true.  The woman even said she loved our art and the sense of culture in the place!!! And she wants us to be friends and help them understand the house, the gardens (ha! just wild) and the chickens. Okay!

And how does a writer get her home ready for selling besides the usual? The last thing I did was use the only thing left on our fridge door - a magnetic notepad. I took it down the morning we were showing the place and wrote on it something like the following:

To Do:
Get jib sail repaired
Find third paddle for other canoe
Phone grandkids and see if they want to come on a picnic to High Head
Get chickenfeed
Phone * and * (real names redacted) to see if they want to go to Herne Island for fella's birthday

So you see, a writer creates a narrative to sell her house!

Today I'm going to Gwen's office to write. I have an appt. in town so I will write with her for a few hours, do my appt., fly back out here with boxes and start packing. Then I'm going to town to meet with my Babes and we'll catch up before we all fly away again (either literally or into our busy lives).
How's your writing/living life?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jan - Oh, how absolutely cool that you "read" the family who bought your house so accurately! And I really am happy for you that the buyers "get" your place. I wish you well figuring out all the logistics and I hope you have a productive writing day.

Liza said...

Oh Jan, I LOVE this post. Do you know that twenty years later, we are still friends with the folks who bought our first house? It was such a comfort to leave it in good hands to people who would care for it as much as we did. It was like handing off a treasured member of the family...I know I would have been sick with guilt if I didn't like the new owners. Congratulations to you for moving on in your life with such joy and enthusiasm!