IWSG and the falsity of safe places

 It is the first Wednesday of the month and so that means another meeting of the IWSG or for anyone new (is there really ever anybody new?) the Insecure Writers Support Group, where those of us who use pen and keyboard gather to laugh and cry about the whole thing. If you are interested here is a link to the signup page - IWSG

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

The awesome co-hosts for the April 2 posting of the IWSG are Jennifer Lane, L Diane Wolfe, Jenni Enzor, and Natalie Aguirre!

This month's question is 

What fantasy character would you like to fight, go on a quest with, or have a beer/glass of wine with?

This question is a tough one. I think most of the characters in fiction are fantasy characters but I'm willing to play the game. So . . . I'd like to hang out with Robin Hood and his merry band. I'd like to help him figure out ways to outwit the greedy men led by Prince John and the Sherriff of Nottingham, who have taken advantage of King Richard being away on a pilgrimage to plunder the land. I'd like to live in the forest with people who understand that it is better to fight for what is right than submit to tyranny. And let us not forget his band is merry! Why are they merry? Because they are not pretending that nothing is happening - they are taking action. And they balance out their righteous quest with eating and drinking and playing music in a beautiful sylvan place. Also, I've also wanted to learn how to use a bow and arrow. I'm a Sagittarius after all.

painting by Newel Convers Wyeth

WARNING! - the following is an opinion on so-called safe places and is not under the banner of the IWSG

 I was conflicted writing this piece. Why? Because the IWSG has cautioned us to make sure our writing under their banner is about writing and not about the world burning down etc. . . Why is writing about fantasy characters okay then? What has that to do with the practice of writing? Reading yes, writing no. Don't get me wrong please. I love the IWSG - been a part of it from the beginning, but I'm most recently allergic to the notion that talking about what is happening in the world, even in a non-partisan way is unsafe. As a psychotherapist who has dealt with many people who suffer from PTSD I can tell you what feels unsafe to me - people pretending nothing is happening when something clearly is. Also, I write about what is affecting me - whether it is in my poetry, my essays or my fiction. My fiction is about issues like the environment, indigenous oppression, human trafficking and so on. These are directly related to what I'm sensing and reacting to in my environment. So, I may be cautioned to stick to some lane or another, but I'm afraid that, like Robin Hood, the Doctor, Bilbo Baggins, Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I will not.

 

Why I missed last month's meeting of the IWSG

It is the third meeting of the IWSG today. I missed the second. I really try and not miss any meetings because they are essential to my health, but my life ripped apart in January and it is slow mending. I didn't even realize I missed it for a couple of weeks. My best pal of 48 years died. It wasn't unsuspected. She'd had Alzheimer's for years, so in effect I'd lost her a long while back, but you know grief doesn't seem to care about that. I get to mourn the old her now, properly, and the weird sweet human she'd become too. 

To answer this month's question, if I could be anything for a day I'd like to be a merlin. I would like to fly, to hunt, to see the world from above. A few years ago I had a nesting pair of merlins (Earl and Pearl) in my yard, with their three kids (Hewie, Dewie and Lewie) and I was enthralled with them. I think I could learn much with a day in their wings. Then I'd come back to my own aged body and write about it. Okay? How about you?

a new year!

 It's the first session of the IWSG in 2025!

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the January 8 posting of the IWSG are Rebecca Douglass, Beth Camp, Liza @ Middle Passages, and Natalie @ Literary Rambles!

January 8 question - Describe someone you admired when you were a child. Did your opinion of that person change when you grew up?

Yes, I admired Jo March from Little Women. Before you all write to tell me she wasn't a real person, I know that and I knew it then, but why be a writer if not to have your fictional characters influence others? I liked Jo because she didn't care for the trappings of being a girl and neither did I; she loved telling stories and so do I; and she kept on until she attained her goal and so did I. My opinion of her has not changed since I've grown up. Or perhaps I haven't grown up yet.

I will say there was a trap that I know Louisa May Alcott did not intend when writing the book - and that was the trap of the romance of writing and having a book published. It has been two and a half years since my first book was published and I decided this holiday that the second book in my series (which is finished) is going to be self-published. The publishing world isn't the same as it was in Alcott's time, or indeed in my twenties, thirties, forties or even fifties. I would love to meet my publisher at the round table at the Algonquin Hotel in NYC for a nice long martini and a few cigarettes while we discuss next steps but that is not to be. Instead, this week, I've secured an editor (one who worked on The Crooked Knife), a book designer, and a plan to get Butter and Snow published by the summer. I did most of the publicizing of CK and it was during the last months of the pandemic so think I did a pretty good job. Part of that was not as ambitious as I will be this time as I politely waited for the publisher to step in. They didn't. Now I will have a plan that will suit me and I won't need to run any of it by anyone else. I am worried about distribution but I have a friend who publishes a select number of books mostly on history and architecture, who has promised to help me with that and securing a good print deal. And I have so much help online - especially with all the articles my friend, Elizabeth Spann Craig of Mystery Writing is Murder has penned. I'm excited to do this and while I'm under no delusion about the work involved, I'm also less enthralled with the traditional publishing path. Why not give a try to both? After all, I'm in my seventies - the perfect age to take risks.

And to quote Jo March:  If I were a girl in a book, this would all be so easy.

A room of her own

 It's December 1st as I write this - to be posted on December 4th for 

The Insecure Writer's Support Group

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

The awesome co-hosts for the December 4 posting of the IWSG are Ronel, Deniz, Pat Garcia, Olga Godim, and Cathrina Constantine!

Warning : I will be writing about the responsibility of a writer during trying times. And by trying I mean when every woman, refugee, LGBTQIA2S, BIPOC, thinker, reader, and child's freedoms and rights are in peril. If this is not your cup of tea - then head to one of the other bloggers. No hard feelings. 

I have been dealing with an accelerated level of stress of late. My best friend since 1976 is in the hospital. She is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's and will not be coming home again. This is not a new thing in my life but no matter that they call it the long goodbye - every part of it is torturous. I have another very close friend who is in physical peril (not my story to share). I have been spending time with each of them and trying to work with my grief around it all. Under that pain is the fear and grief that arose after the election down south. The casual regard people seem to hold for freedom, for democracy, is truly horrendous. Do not think this is a Canadian academically regarding another country's folly. It is the folly gaining ascendency in the world right now. Canada is poised to elect our own mobster soon. 

So what is my role as a writer in any of this? First of all - I think it is to not be flattened, to continue to be a witness to what is really occurring and not give up in hopelessness. The journalists will be and are being shut up now. If the regime follows the usual procedure, which was laid out for all by the sock puppet himself, then after the press will come the quashing of the intelligentsia. Education will suffer. Books are and will continue to be burned. Populations will be fed what the mobsters think if good for us (ie - good for them) to consume. And so I think as someone who uses words it is important to keep writing what I witness and what I think and feel about it.  

Secondly - writing is how I find out what I'm thinking and feeling. It is how I make sense of the world the best I can. I write to heal as well. I write to show others how they might consider what is happening. Yes, I write fiction, plays and poetry - but that is what they are made of. And more and more I'm turning to other forms of writing - this kind right here - the small personal essay. I write weekly on Substack - my newsletter is called Dispatches and in it I write about the personal and political - which are one taste to me. 

I've heard some 'content providers' - bloggers, substackers, youtube channel folk - say that they don't write about what is happening because they want their space (which might be about making miniature houses, crocheting tea cosies, writing poetry, learning how to salsa and so on) to be a safe place, free from contention. That's a choice people have to make for themselves, but if I go to my regular places - food writers or artists or makers - and they have failed to make even one statement about what has happened - even if it is just "I'm worried" or "I'm gutted" or whatever, then I'm quietly closing down my subscription or stopping my status as 'follower' because I do not feel 'safe' with people who fiddle while Rome burns. I feel like that is madness. 

My published novel The Crooked Knife was born of rage and frustration with our government and its implication in the environmental disaster in Labrador, and the continued discounting of our First Nation's peoples. My second one in the same series is about the rise of human trafficking, and the co-opting of the police force to support corporate interests over citizens. I use the medium of the mystery novel because it is an effective one to showcase the sort of issues that consume my interest. They aren't heavily didactic but they do involve real current ethics or lack of. I think I write with a good measure of equanimity and humour but they aren't books for people who want to cocoon in their own safe nests. 

Elie Wiesel

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented"

Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

"The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people"

Benjamin Franklin

"Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are".

Cross-training and the IWSG

November! Who could have thought it would show up. I write this on the first so don't know how I'll be feeling on the morning of the sixth. I hope all is well and good in the world. It is another meeting of the IWSG - my favourite day of the month! So pour a cup of coffee, tea or scotch and let's have our meeting. 

Insecure Writer's Support Group

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

The awesome co-hosts for the November 6 posting of the IWSG are Diedre Knight, Lisa Buie Collard , Kim Lajevardi, and JQ Rose!

The optional question for this month: - What creative activity do you engage in when you're not writing?

Wowza! What a great question. I think of all the creative activities I get up to as a form of cross-training. I think I wrote a post on that many many years ago - I'll see if I can find it. My card says Writer & Artist on it. So I guess that means my main other outlet is my oil painting. I've just dived into to it big time in the last two years (although I've played with it forever) and am now starting to actually sell the odd painting. A friend of mine is an established painter who wants to be an author and as I'm an author who wants to be an established painter we have been working with each other. It is wonderful and one of the best things about it is seeing how we can find translatable practices in each. For instance if you are working on a novel and spend an inordinate amount of time on one section (usually the opening) your novel as a whole will be unbalanced. Likewise when painting you must move around the canvas, not just focusing on one aspect. In all artistic endeavors we try to find our voice or style, and must trust that it will emerge, like our signature it cannot be imposed. Something we can see clearly in one discipline will help us with another - we develop different muscles and all add up to being as authentic and free as possible. I'm quite excited as I will be taking a three-day painting workshop this month in a town a few hours away. I will stay there (in a motel probably) and be able to immerse myself fully in the world of painting. I'm hoping as well to get into a two week residence for playwrights in the spring. Nurturing the artist within is essential for my well being.

Besides the writing and painting I quilt, make dolls, direct plays, cook elaborate dishes, garden, and knit. In this time of intense social media I want to be a creator not a consumer. All of them speak to a part of me that adds up to the whole of me.

I think that I do not consider creativity as separate from my life as a whole. I think we were made to be makers all of us - whether it is the art of parenting, negotiating a truce, drawing a flower, or singing a song - we were born to express ourselves - to see beauty and delight and bring it to the attention of others.