Words With Friends

I have no idea what I’m walking into, but I stride forward, into my favourite place: the library.

Of course it would be my favourite place. It is a building full of books. I would live there if I could, but I don’t think those in charge would really appreciate that.

I don’t know what took me this long. Why did I take this long to check this out? There had to be others around me who loved to write and I wanted to gather with them. And so I have.

I am always apprehensive going into a new situation, but this is stacked with a whole new set of expectations. This time, I’m supposed to share my writing, to open up that part of me.

Oh, of course I do it all the time here, now, and I don’t know what took me so long to do that either, but here I am.

This, however, is something entirely different. This time, I am not hiding behind a computer, waiting for the comments or likes to trickle in. This time, I am face-to-face with those who also love to write, or else they wouldn’t be here. This time I can’t hide.

I approach the checkout desk where people are taking out library books and I ask for directions to the room where the writer’s group meets.

I have been in this building many times before, for years and ever since the library from the old church of my childhood became the new location. This, though, is new to me. I was not aware of this room, just off the main area.

I find it with little problem, even with signs and people in my path. The room is to the left and they are inside, waiting for me, or new members like me.

I made sure to come on time, but I like the room almost immediately.

Someone shows me to a chair. I can’t remember who it was now. It’s all a blur of frazzled nerves. I’m doing this and I hope it is everything I’ve ever imagined a writing group would be. How unfair to put oh so many expectations on these poor fellow lovers of the written word.

There is someone across the table and people sitting over to my right. They appear to be engaged in some casual conversations when I appear on the scene, but they welcome me warmly. I can be one of them if I put my best foot forward.

My best foot is my coming-out-of-my-shyness-shell foot. I will put it out alright. If not here, where?

This is the time to drop that silly shyness and give it my all. They seem to agree.

There is someone on the other side of the room, bustling around and making tea. The guy to my right speaks with an English accent, which I can make out through a cracked voice, the ends of a sore throat. He still talks enthusiastically and seems to be one of the first members of the group. He is friendly and has a sense of humour, which I notice right then and there.

I hear my name. Someone recognizes me. She works at the library and runs the group, but she does not stay for the whole thing, instead overseeing it and taking hot drink orders. She speaks with a soft voice, the perfect library voice I suppose. She has met me through my sister, my brother-in-law, and I strain to remember when, although I knew she worked here.

The guy sitting across the way appears to be a new comer like I am. This makes me relate to him then and there. He has come from out of town.

I am still taking time to get an idea of who is here. I wasn’t sure what the cross section of people at a writer’s group could be. Age. Male or female ratio. From different backgrounds.

As people take their seats and we push tables together, I try not to shuffle and fidget more than is necessary, but in new situations I tend to do both to excess. I try to focus on the cues I can get from the people now sitting around me.

National Novel Writing month is discussed. I think I should speak up and say that I did it once, but not this year. I was sure showing up here for the first time in the month of November would mean NaNoWriMo would be a common topic of discussion, but I had no idea if everyone else would be doing it, as a writer’s group would be the place to bring it up.

I have come equipped with my laptop and earphones. Oh, how I wish I could go the old fashion route and write with a pencil or pen and a notebook. I would have picked out a special notebook for the occasion. It would have been red and the pages would have smelled like books, like paper smells.

I wonder how this is all going to work. I can’t write by hand and so how will I join in and share my writing at the end?

Do we even share?

Do we just bring in writing we do at home, for it to be shared and commented on?

So…many…questions.

Something is happening. I am talking and speaking up and out. Finally, it’s a whole room and its full of those who only want to talk about the writing they love, like I do. There is nothing else I’d rather talk about.

There is tea for the one with the lost voice and ginger cookies from a local bakery being passed around the table.

I decline, hopefully in a polite manner, a cup of anything hot. I even offer up the story of my disgrace from last spring and the ensuing events leading up to me, using a generously provided laptop in a pinch. I am new here and the nerves still could cause a problem. I wouldn’t want to knock my cup over, in a move to open my laptop, as I hear the guy sitting beside me has a laptop too and I seem to have the worst luck. I would hate for that to “spill” over to anybody else.

He asks me if I spend a lot of time in Waterloo. I hesitate and ask for confirmation that he is, indeed, speaking to me and not someone else. I am bad for that because I have gotten it wrong before and I hate that sensation of embarrassment, even though the feeling of discomfort is one I still end up feeling either way.

I tell him he must be thinking of someone else, but it is a strange, deja vu sort of moment. I liked that it happened here. I seem to get mistaken for someone else, in the most interesting moments and in the strangest situations. I wonder who that other girl is that I keep getting mistaken for. Could make a cool story sometime.

Next there’s talk of a mystery object. This, I hadn’t expected, but I like where this is going.

A model of a dragon is being passed around, painted by the one with barely a voice, when he was a teenager.

People compliment him on the painting he did of the creature and it is passed to me.

I take it in hand, ever so cautiously, and I feel the wings and the head. I ask for a physical description of it, mostly its colour. It is small and intricately detailed. I try hard to detect every bump and groove with my fingertips.

The maker or someone else mentions Lord of the Rings. He painted models, or meant to, from LOTR, the sort of thing you might expect a teen boy to do after school.

I like to be developing a picture of everyone here, even if it’s bits at a time. We could give rambling explanations of ourselves, going around the table, but instead we simply state our names.

It is hard it first, taking me a while to learn which name belongs to each and every one of these lovers of words, but I will get there.

NAme tags are made, the spelling of my name is wrongly guessed at, but this isn’t uncommon. I like to have this discussion. How long will people require a glance at another’s tag, before the name to the face will come right to mind?

This is a group of barely ten. I like this number. It’s not such a large group that I feel lost in a crowd, but not so small as I imagined, making a writing group less a group and more a few people.

So I guess we are writing now, or after much of the conversation dwindles. Our group leader brings up dialogue and character development in a story. I announce, perhaps over confidently that I have specifically been complimented on my dialogue, by a trusted friend whom I gave my NaNo project to when I’d finished the month. This speaking up thing I seem to be doing feels good, although still rather foreign to me.

Now the pressure is mounting. The talk grows quieter and less frequent and it’s time to write, right?

So I need to write about a dragon?

Okay. Here goes nothing.

I like the noise of the guy’s fingers: click click click. He is writing, then pausing to think, I suppose. I do the same.

I try not to fear him being able to glance over and read the few words I’ve managed to write. I guess I have some self absorption that writers are prone to. We are all hoping to produce something we can share when time’s up. We all likely think about sharing of ideas vs stealing them.

I take in the smell of ginger and the sound of keyboard keys clicking and I just write.

It slowly dawns on me again. Oh yeah, dragon, dragon, dragon. Don’t forget to write about the dragon.

I don’t write fantasy. I can’t write like Tolkien. That’s not my thing. Or is it?

I pick a locale and two characters and I write a scene for them. The dragon is coming up.

…

Time is up. The silence is broken by people’s uncertainty at what they’ve just put down, on paper or on screen. Will it be good enough?

Well, that’s what I am thinking, but maybe they aren’t. But wait…how will I participate?

I volunteer to just let my VoiceOver speak my story to the room, as a joke. I don’t want to be different, and I’m glad I didn’t not bring my laptop, or I would have been sitting there and twiddling my thumbs while everyone else wrote, but now how do I read what I’ve written for comments and reactions?

Others read their stories. They are all fantasy themed. They all involve real live dragons, but I did not go that direction. Maybe I should have, but instead I enjoy their little tales of discovery, intrigue, and adventure.

I listen to their reading styles and the inflections they place in the words. I try again not to move around, if possible, as this is a sign of boredom. I want to respect all these people who share, as I want to learn from them and to earn their attention when it’s my turn to share.

When it comes to me I don’t want to miss out entirely, so I go ahead and describe what I wrote. I receive a few comments and nods of approval at my subject matter, as I’d chosen to write more modern and contemporary, about an antique shop, one of my favourite settings for a story.

I talk about my one character not knowing what he’s exactly looking for, when his girlfriend asks, but his declaring that he’ll know it when he sees it.

This part seems to get people’s attention. I am happy they believe that I wrote what I’m saying I wrote and that my relaying of that writing is coherent.

Now that I know what actually goes on during one of these things, I must revise my plan and go with my braille display, as long as there is a plug nearby and I can bring a cord long enough to reach. I can write my stories in there and be able to read them back in the moment, along with the rest. My first idea to bring what I’d written from last time falls flat in my own estimation because I don’t want to be always behind a week. I want to be in the moment with this room and these people.

The guy beside me informs me there is an available spot to plug in my device and that he too may require it at some point. My laptop has held up this time, but I know its battery life is limited.

My laptop’s voice was an interesting bit of discussion this time. It has resulted in talk of a Gilbert Gottfried reading of Fifty Shades of Grey somewhere out there online. I had never before compared VoiceOver to Gilbert, but it makes sense.

I wonder what they will think when I walk in next time, with my Braille Sense over my shoulder, like a purse. I’m already looking forward to next time. I love this. I’ve found my tribe. I did not want to get my hopes up about this whole thing, but the real thing did actually surpass my expectations, in unexpected and interesting ways, some of which I’ve mentioned here.

I feared they wouldn’t like me, that I would feel out of place, as I do in a lot of places, but here I have this one thing in common with these people.

I don’t play Words With Friends, but I like the name of the game.

I don’t know what might come of being a member of a writer’s group, whether we become friends or not, but I like to hold back on any expectations I may harbour and just be in the moment, in that room, with those who love words as much as I do.

Paperback Writer

TToT: Don’t Count Your Owls Before They Are Delivered – Now and Then, #10Thankful

ISn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive-it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t be half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it? There’d be no scope for imagination then, would there?

–From “Anne of Green Gables”

Ten Things of Thankful

So, once more, a lot has changed in a week.

Canada now has a new majority government, with Justin Trudeau as the chosen one. Our twenty-third Prime Minister.

🙂

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver: Canadian Election

And our Toronto Blue Jays are finished for the season.

😦

Ah well. Can’t have everything.

Two stories, big in my newsfeed this week anyway, were the 20th anniversary of the movie “Now and Then” and the date (October 21st, 2015) which Marty and Doc arrived at in Back to the Future II.

I am pretty sure I saw the first in theatres, with my friends. I’m not certain though. Funny how even twenty years can feel like a long time now. It was the perfect coming-of-age movie for young girls.

Now and Then

Then, the big deal made about Back to the Future. I personally disliked the second of the trilogy, most of all, preferring the first or the third.

Back In Time

I’m not sure if I’d want to have the ability to go backward or forward in time, but as everyone around here have been remembering Toronto’s two World Series wins, back to back, over twenty years ago and then people are comparing what BTTF predicted the world would be like in 2015, back in the late eighties, I don’t quite know where to look. I guess I will focus on the present, or I guess the immediate past, in the week that just was.

Ten Things of Thankful:

For my right, my chance, my freedom to vote.

I wasn’t sure of this, still, as I made my way into my old high school, to the voting station set up in the gymnasium. I wondered if anything I did could really make a difference. I thought how silly it all seemed, with the ads and the fighting between parties, the lies and the broken promises, not to mention the unknown of it all.

Then I voted and I felt empowered. I felt blessed to be a Canadian. I felt satisfied with the contribution I’d just made.

When I’d learned of Justin’s win, on the same night that the Blue Jays won fabulously, I was thrilled for both, for Canada.

I guess, when the person you did not want to win comes out on top, you feel like your vote didn’t matter, but suddenly, when the winner turns out not to be that guy, that’s when you feel as if your vote just might have made a difference.

For the change that’s finally returned to Canada.

For those of us who still aren’t sure, this letter makes it clear.

Justin Trudeau is part of a political dynasty, a little like the Kennedy family, the Clinton family, or the Bush clan. Justin was born in our version of The White House, 24 Sussex Dr, but I discovered that the use of the home for the prime minister is quite recent. Pierre Trudeau was one of the first to live there as Prime Minister of Canada. I did not even know this. I was not far from this place, last winter, yet I knew little about it.

History of 24 Sussex

I am learning a lot about Canada since Justin was voted in. I guess I feel a renewed sense of pride in my country and am curious about things that are going to make a difference, as is the hope of so many fellow Canadians I believe.

For crepes with friends.

It’s a little like Words With Friends. Okay, well actually it’s not, but there were a lot of words exchanged.

🙂

I met a friend I’d made online, for the first time, in person. We went to a little restaurant in Toronto, one she’d recommended, called Crepes Club.

At first I wondered if you needed a membership or something, but turns out it was just a place with a lot of crepes, both of the first course and dessert varieties.

Here’s the interview I did with Lorraine last year.

For a delicious latte.

Nothing goes better with crepes than a latte, I think. I was told it looked pretty, with a design made with the chocolate and whipped cream on top, but all I noticed was the taste.

For a chance to tour the new Toronto location of Ronald McDonald House.

“The oldest and the most devastating pain there is: not the pain of childhood, but the remembrance of it.”

–Toni Morrison

I’d stayed in the old one, with my family, back in the late nineties. I admit, I was a little sad when I’d heard about the move, as I loved that place when we’d stayed at the old one. It made me remember those days wistfully, but things must change and the improvement was undeniable.

For the existence of just such a place, for so many families with sick children.

These families don’t need to be worrying about things like lodging and meals, when they are dealing with fear and pain, life and death.

Everything is there for them. Groups and organizations volunteer to come to the house and make meals for the families, multiple times a week, so that parents can have a break.

This is something relatively new, not available when we stayed there, but I see what a difference it makes.

For the little touches that make Ronald McDonald House feel like a home, temporary maybe, but still a home.

I liked the library, of course, but there was a giant moose on the main floor, a fireplace, big fish tank, and a colourful painting on the wall.

I could not see this painting, but it was raised and I felt the lines and the bumps. I immediately thought of that famous Bobby Ferrin song from the eighties. It’s hard to be happy and to just put on a smile, when you are feeling sick and/or scared. It’s hard to be a child and to be ill, but there is plenty to be happy about if you’ve got your family around you, nurses and doctors who care, and a place like Ronald McDonald to depend on.

For another box of my books.

After the Scars: A Second Chances Anthology

We sent for more. I’ve given a few to people and I’m waiting, still for mine, but it should be arriving, with a bunch of bookmarks.

As exciting as this still is and as thrilled as I still am about my words being in print for the first time, in published form, I want to continue to grow with my writing.

For the discovery of a local writing group in my area.

I don’t know why I waited this long to look into its existence, but it meets at the library in my town, every first and third Wednesday evening of each month.

I will go and check it out in a few weeks. I am excited to see what it is all about, what sort of people, from what age group, it is made up of.

Speaking of libraries:

Twitter battel alert: Toronto and Kansis libraries face off over Jays/Royals series

For the graceful and winning way the Toronto Blue Jays went out, with a rain delay, a bang, and in glory.

They played a great bunch of games, coming back from where they’d been during the summer, to give Toronto and all of Canada something to hope for and cheer for, all the way into OCtober.

Sure, there was disappointment, the to-be-expected claims of tampering and fixing of the game, conspiracies, outcries, but for the most part, we accepted our loss with pride and resignation, with renewed hope for next year.

It was just nice to see us all being proud of our team, our players, ourselves and the coming together of so many, big sports fans and regular fans, like me I would say. I felt the disappointment, going to bed before the final score came down, so I can only imagine how one of the die hard fans took the news.

Geez! I really hope my going off to bed didn’t jinx them or something. Imagine if the whole loss was all down to me and something I did or did not do?

We still handled it well and it was a great few weeks we had there.

Bobby McFerrin – Don’t Worry Be Happy

Success is not final, Failure is not fatal: it’s the courage to continue that counts.

Winston Churchill

The TToT is brought to you by: The Internet – all those wires running at the bottom of the ocean

Would you go back in time, or ahead, into the future, if you had the chance?

Now and then: I can get just as drawn into what once was as the next person, I often can’t stop thinking and worrying about the future, but I am trying to zoom in more on what’s going on in the here and now.

Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.

–Doris Lessing