Writers group is tonight and I'm hosting, happy to fill up my little apartment with such amazing people. I'm not sure what I will workshop tonight, but I thought I'd share a bit of a piece I wrote with you called "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear":
MARmade
Let me tell you something.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Objects in mirror are closer than they appear
Writers group is tonight and I'm hosting, happy to fill up my little apartment with such amazing people. I'm not sure what I will workshop tonight, but I thought I'd share a bit of a piece I wrote with you called "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear":
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Share BREAK YOUR TEETH
This is part of a story "Break Your Teeth" that I am going to share with my writerlies tonight. Thought I'd get back into the blog thing now that its almost winter again...
Teaser, just a little taste:
....
...
Monday, January 30, 2012
Writing Happy & Martha gets a real job
Ahhh.
I've been happy lately and of course I am not complaining. I have wonderful family and friends and I have met a lovely young man who makes me giggle and feel special. I even got a job! A real one! In publishing! As Production Editor for a small Canadian publishing company located here in Halifax, I get to keep editorial and production projects on track and in doing so get an insider's view to the entire process from idea to book in hand. I even have some of my own editorial projects, more in the upcoming season, and I am delighted to work with authors and see a story come to life. It really is delightful.
Ahhh.
And I feel like a bit of a cliche - writer can't make it as a writer so she becomes an editor?
Please pray for me that this is not my fate - please pray that I may provide guidance to wayward writers and in turn help bring my own stories to Can Lit Magazines and Anthologies - dare I dream big?
I've been missing my own stories, so caught up in the real life peace and happy and quiet of my world at the moment. I may have to do something dreadfully dramatic if only to write about it. I promise not to start fires.
Who really wants to read about happy beginnings, middles and endings?
Friday, December 9, 2011
mistletoe harlequin / Mr Darcy: the ultimate centrefold
Christmas party season: this afternoon I got to wear my new black sequine-y shirt, drink wine with nuns and archivists and get lost on Mount Saint Vincent's campus. The walk to the Sisters of Charity building is up a hill with sparse trees on one side and cookie cutter Mount residences on the other. As I walked dusk approached and all the neighbourhood crows gathered on a few dead looking trees cawing to me and each other, a true murder of crows, a council of crows, beautiful, ominous, festive?
Sure why not.
Tonight I get to work on writing a harlequin novel with new pal Jaime who has actually read romance novels and can follow the strict structure the genre requires. I will leave on party clothes for romance writing brainstorming / wine drinking / cookie eating / egg nog dunking experience.
Past writing teacher thought I should write for Harlequin. She thought I had the imagination but could use a little structure, she assumed I was a romantic (true) and that I had read romance novels (false). Most girls have I suppose, the romance genre isn't limited to Harlequin. I love Jane Austen and her books deal primarily with love and relationships, sisters, parents, lovers. An old boyfriend actually duped Jane Austen a pornographer of the written word, Mr Darcey the ultimate centrefold; surely her writing was meant to entice fantasy of true love and the effortlessness of virgin sex.
Our main character is named Finn and he's a construction worker from a broken home. Let's see where this goes...Darcy in a hard hat?
Thursday, November 17, 2011
SPEAK! / red plaid
It has been a productive writing day for me. The script TRAILER TRASH *finally* goes out tonight to all my lovely actors, I have been waiting for it to be perfect, but since we know writers can edit forever and still never be satisfied, I have decided to let my (horror) baby out into the world. It is about time. Sigh.
Babies have been quite a theme of late.
Tonight I am planning on performing "Baby Mama/ Lit" a piece I shared with my lovely writers' group The Wired Monks a month or so ago. It is silly and fun, here's a taste:
"I don't wanna be your baby mama / but that don't mean I don't wanna / be pregnant with your stories / forever/ or whenever / I feel like letting them drop / pop pop / pop goes the weasel/ to save the damsel in distress / but her hair's a mess / and she's not his type / would up too tight / anyway / I'm big with them / synonyms / of wild free sex / forbidden texts / to tell your mother / you'd never fuck her / whatever Oedipus says / you bow your head / to the power of it all / my belly to fill up to devour / pretty pictures in rhyme / it's time...
My piece "I am cigarettes and I hurt babies" may also be on the agenda for tonight. It is new and may need a few tweeks but it feels fitting anyway:
"I am cigarettes and I hurt babies
and not just the ugly ones
bloated bellies and scabies
but the perfect ones too
with all their fingers and toes
and rosy cheek glow
I hurt them too
because I can thank you
Philip Morris..."
Today also feels like a red plaid day. I have a long wool skirt and a houndstooth scarf that when worn together make me feel like a hunter or a lumberjack. Not too shabby methinks.
Poetry is not dead but rather vocal and maybe a bit angry or angsty. Amen.
Do something nice today. While doing research on cigarettes and of all things gang rape (don't ask, a long story, I need some horrible graphic research for a piece I am working on), I found too many atrocities on the Internet. Surprise, surprise. So hug a stranger, maybe wear pink instead of sombre black and grey and think how lucky you are not to be imprisoned for political and spiritual beliefs, all that Occupy stuff aside, you are alive and I am pretty sure you got to eat today.
Love each other.
Mar
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Digging through the garbage for returnables/ worth the effort
Writing is also terrifying, uplifting, hilarious, insightful, mood-altering, vulnerable, deletable, lasting, and relentless.
Some of my writer friends lament the existence of their old journals, unpolished stories, teenage poetry and B- papers on the origins of the species as though they were physical sign post failures of mind and spirit. I wrote this, this was true once, what did I know? They have promises from loved ones to burn and destroy upon death, the only words left the publishable ones and the epitaph. The writer is both extrovert and hermit - read my words but only when they are perfect and know I had something *important* to say. It is so easy to paralyze oneself for fear that words and images will be taken out of context, will mark the writer as illegamate, as ignorant, as foolish.
I have allowed myself to be paralyzed. But just for a little while.
I quit writing every few years as though that will somehow make things better, as though writing is an addiction to seek therapy for - I've done it, sought therapy, burned poetry, stopped buying pens and pencils, tried to shut off the stories that come and come and come, relentless beasts! Story will not go away no matter how hard I try, no matter how I try to demote her as some sort of mental deficiency - Doctor I have these voices in my head...
My beautiful creative writing teacher at U of T, Elizabeth Ruth, made it clear to me, how dysfunctional the writers internal world can be. It is a gift and a curse and there is nothing more satisfying than getting down on paper what has been puttering inside one's head for minutes, hours, days.
There has been a piece that has been particularly dominant the past little while and I don't want to write it but I know I must because it will torture me otherwise. It leaves me feeling dark and vulnerable but maybe when it hits the light and the page it will become something else something multi-faceted and not at all as scary as I imagine; this is the truth for most things, fear of the unknown.
There is a soft spoken man in my neighbourhood who gathers returnable bottles for exchange. My roomie and I leave a bag outside for him. I met him for the first time today while I sparred with a crossword puzzle. He said, "Lady, you've got to know what you are looking for, digging through the garbage, well you know it's worth the effort."
I couldn't agree more. I want to share something with you...
Mar
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Zine-tastic / Mine (found)
Coming home after eight years away, I have rediscovered shoe boxes and shopping bags full of bad poetry and lame short stories and drafts of my first novel called Mine in which nothing really happens but the narrator can't sleep and likes to watch ants and hates happy people. \
Excerpt: "Mine" / Martha Tuff c2000 This is where the main character has a job interview and I try my hand at dialogue, oh dear.
“References?”
“Bachelor degree”
“In what?”
“Does it really matter?”
“Do they all cost the same nowadays?”
“Yes”
“No, I guess not”
“Temperament?”
“Neutral, fairly agreeable”
“Sparky?”
“Sparky? Like a flame?”
“Sure”
“Like the fire dog?”
“No... funny. I like that. Why do you wanna work here?”
“Nice architecture”
“Anything else?”
“I need to get out of the house”
“And?”
“I want to learn more about this town.”
“And why is that?”
“Because it is my town. I grew up here and I know nothing of it.”
“Oh really?”
“Sure, why not?”
“And you think it is important to know about the town where you grew up?”
“Yeah, how else are you going to know who you are, if you don’t even know where you came from, what geography is in your blood?”
“Good a reason as any. I’ve heard better but I’ve also heard worse.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, can you type?”
“Yep.”
“Well?”
“I guess so.”
“What do you mean you guess so?”
“Is 90 words per minute good?”
“Ummm yeah sure. With or without mistakes?”
“Without.”
Look of forced approval.
“Ok, yes I can type.”
“I’ll see you Monday morning. Nineish”
“Nineish?”
“Punctuality isn’t worth much anymore as long as you get your work done I don’t really care. And if you could do it from home, I’d say good for you. Monday morning.”
“Sure, thanks”
“What the hell are you thanking me for?”
How delightful. I have also rediscovered handmade button jewellery, my collection of rocks *not* found on a beach and rusted metal anything. I used to wear rusty metal on necklaces that would turn my skin green and I thought it awesome.
So zines. Yes. I will make again. And it will be special. And maybe I'll share them this time.
You should make one too:
http://www.instructables.com/id/how-to-make-a-zine/
Hug a stranger! Make a friend!
Mar