Waxwings

I never really believed in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, though the idea of them had a certain magic for me as a child. As a parent, I have enjoyed playing out these bits of theatre to mark the turning seasons, but even the magic by proxy of sharing them with my children has faded as they have grown older. And yet when the waxwings come, it feels like the arrival of some seasonal spirit: a visitation and a benediction. I never know when they will come, or even for sure if they will. The crabapple tree stands through the winter with its dark red fruit softening in the cold, untouched. Then one day, late in the winter, when other sources of food have grown scarce, the waxwings arrive. This year the first I knew of it was a shadow darting across the bathroom curtain, then another, and another. I pulled the cloth aside and saw them all over and around the tree, and my heart lifted. Some were perched here and there on the branches, pecking at the fruit. Some were down on the snow, eating the crabapples that others had knocked loose. Waxwings are lovely, sleek birds, delicately coloured. They fly gracefully, seeming to slide on the air. They are dignified rather than noisy for the most part, although I witnessed a brief dispute over a favoured perch on one of the times that day that I came to a window to watch them. I was grateful for their visit, and took the time to enjoy it, knowing that they would soon be gone, not to return until next year.

Playwriting Update

I posted in mid-February about the 28 Plays Later challenge that I was trying out. I think part of the reason I decided to write a post about it was that I felt I was losing enthusiasm a bit and hoped that putting my reasons for taking part into words might help. Well, the fact is that it didn't really. Although the challenges that followed did take me to some interesting places, on the whole I found that my interest level continued to drop, and in the end I only got through the first 24 of the 28 challenges. I would still highly recommend 28 Plays Later: it was wonderful in a lot of ways. I might even try it again myself another year.

So, what about results? I am still writing, but not as much as while I was doing the challenge. I think it has helped a bit to get me into writing mode, but it did not magically cure all my writer's block issues. (Darn!) I haven't done any more scriptwriting since finishing, having felt more inclined to get back to fiction and poetry, so I can't say yet whether it has helped with that.

One thing I found interesting was that I ended up writing several plays that involved clowns or physical comedy of some sort. I'm not sure if this is the influence of Deadmonton lingering on, since I spent quite a few hours there last fall as various creepy clown characters. I didn't write anything I would describe as horror, though: funny that the clowning would rub off more than the creepiness.

Mentioning Deadmonton sort of leads into the other thing I wanted to mention. Another idea I had for what might help me with scriptwriting was to get involved with some more theatre projects, preferably ones with people who knew what they were doing, as opposed to things I organized myself. So, when Emily Pole, one of the other Deadmonton actors, posted that she was holding auditions for a couple one act plays that she was going to direct for St. Albert Dinner Theatre, I decided to put my name in. The result is that I have got a part in a really fun little farce set in a 1930s boarding house, called 'A Mad Breakfast'. We're just starting to rehearse, and so far I'm enjoying being a part of this group very much.

Poetry Incoming. . .

My narrative poem, 'The King in Red' is going to be a part of the upcoming 'Alice Unbound' anthology from Exile Editions. Here is a link to the announcement from the editor, Collen Anderson, who truly went above and beyond the call of duty in working with me on my submission:

https://colleenanderson.wordpress.com/2018/02/22/release-of-alice-unbound-beyond-wonderland/

I also expect my poem, "Cleft" to appear soon on the waxpoetryart website, after it was selected in their Canada Poetry Contest.

28 Plays Later - Halfway Thoughts

This month I decided to sign up for the '28 Plays Later' challenge. Essentially, this involves receiving a different challenge each day in February, writing a short play inspired by the challenge, and sending it in to the organizer within 36 hours. I took this on for several reasons. I hoped it would help me work through some general writer's block issues I was having, and build up a habit of fitting writing into my life on a daily basis. I also hoped that it would help me with some more specific issues I was having with playwriting. Most of my writing is fiction, along with some poetry and non-fiction, but I have always also had an interest in writing scripts. Lately I'd been trying to develop some ideas in that area, but found that I was really having difficulty getting the dialogue to flow. As a storyteller, I have gotten in the habit of reducing any dialogue in a story to the bare minimum: a few punchy lines tend to be effective in that context, while long conversations between characters become confusing. I found that I was feeling my scenes were done and not knowing what to add to them, even though they were obviously far too short.

I am now halfway through, with my 14th little play just waiting for a quick final edit. I managed to get through being away at an event where I had neither time to write nor internet access for most of the weekend, which meant sending in one play the Friday night and one the Sunday night within just a few hours of looking at the day's challenge. I have really liked the variety of challenges so far: the organizer does a great job of encouraging writers to try different angles and approaches from one day to another. I have found myself able to come up with a concept and put it into a reasonably complete form to submit every day. Whether I'll be able to continue the momentum with other writing after the challenge is over remains to be seen of course: I have not always been successful with that when doing other challenges such as NaNoWriMo. But at the very least I have reminded myself that I am, indeed, capable of sitting down and writing in a focused way on a daily basis.

As to improving as a script-writer, I'm also a bit uncertain. I am definitely practicing the tools of the art, and although the scripts have all been short, I have written several relatively long scenes. However, there have not been any scripts that I felt were really strongly written, and where there are longer scenes it is often simply because the characters chatter on without anything very interesting happening. I went into this challenge with the idea that I would not worry much about quality, but am suspecting that I perhaps am taking that further than I should, and am not so much avoiding perfectionism as simply doing a half-assed job. There are little bits and pieces in the scripts so far that I like, but nothing that I feel really inclined to come back to after February is over. I tend to send the scripts off with the feeling that I would be quite happy never to look at them again. I hope that I am gaining a bit of fluency with playwriting, but I suspect that part of what I need to do with the scripts I really want to develop, is to go deeper into the characters and the themes of the play, and build the dialogue up from there. Writing plays under the time constraints of this challenge does tend to mean that once the play is drafted out, I don't go back for that deeper look.

I will endeavour to post again after 28 Plays Later is finished.

Orange Shirt Day

I am wearing an orange shirt today to show my support for residential school survivors, and my sympathy for all those whose families are affected by the legacy of those schools.

The history of residential schools is certainly a reminder of the dangers of racism, and I don't want to minimize that. But to me it is also a reminder of the importance of parental rights. I firmly believe that parents should always have the right to choose whether their children take part in any sort of education, and the right to have access to their children. If the parents of the children that were taken to residential schools had not been denied these rights, a lot of the harm that took place could have been avoided.

It is easy to underestimate the importance of simply having the right to bring a child home. A parent cannot always justify or show evidence for why a child needs to be taken out of a situation. Often the child will not talk about what is happening to them, and the parent simply has a gut instinct that something is wrong. When it comes to protecting children, there is no substitute for the judgement of the parents who know and love them.

Over the years as a homeschooling parent, I have met many families for whom the decision to homeschool was a reaction to a situation in which the well-being of their child was threatened. I know that there are people striving to make our schools inclusive and positive for everybody, but the fact is that bullying and abuse will always thrive in situations where the victim is not able to simply walk away.

The arguments that are made against choice in education today are sometimes reminiscent of the arguments used to justify residential schools. I have heard it argued that parents who don't speak English are not giving their children a proper education. I have heard it argued that parents who teach their children from a religious perspective outside the mainstream are not giving them a proper education. 

It seems to me that there is plenty of time in life to learn about English grammar or evolution, but there is only one chance for a safe, loving, childhood. I hope that we will never again see children having that chance so brutally taken away as we did under the residential schools. I also hope that we will continue to progress toward a world where families are valued and given the freedom to seek out the way of life that is best for them.

Story in NeoOpsis (and WWC/Chatauqua)

NeoOpsis 28 is now available to order, and it includes my story 'Broken Dishes'. Here's the link:

http://www.neo-opsis.ca/Twenty-Eight.htm

When Words Collide was wonderful as usual. Lots of inspiration and good company, and I also got some practical advice about self publishing. I am leaning more and more towards going that route with my current novel. I just need to find time for a few final revisions and figuring out how to format it and making a cover and all the other stuff that I'm sure I'll discover needs doing. . .

The Chatauqua event also went well, and gave me an excuse to explore some really interesting areas of history. Dawn Blue was great to work with: it was one of those cases where we were very much in tune with our ideas of what sort of stories to tell, and the set just naturally came together.

Read 'By Hadrian's Wall' online! Also Pure Spec

I decided to try submitting a story to Vocal Media / Omni. This is a platform that, as far as I understand it, works sort of like youtube for writing in that if you get enough views on the things you post, it is monetized. I am hoping to get more stories and poems up and see whether I can build a presence there. In any case my first story is up now. It called 'By Hadrian's Wall' and is a sort of quirky future fantasy piece about glaciers advancing and about fairies and about the importance of heritage and the ties between people, land, and livestock.

Here is the link to my author page, from which you can view (and hopefully read!) the story:

https://futurism.media/authors/jyt-kennedy

While I'm posting, I also wanted to mention that I had a terrific time at Pure Speculation this year. I am so grateful to all the friends who helped me bring Overtime - The Musical to life, and also the people who came out on a Saturday morning to support us. The whole event just had a wonderful, positive community feel to it, and the programming was great. I was also introduced to the work of Zenna Henderson, who I need to read more of! (Inner grammar nazi: that should be 'of whom I need to read more' I think in correct old fashioned Standard English. . .but I just would feel like a Jane Austen character or something putting it that way. . .)