Why I am writing a novel by Juniper

Why am I writing a novel? The answer is quite complex. The answer is also partially unclear and may, ultimately, depend on how it goes. I’m going to do my best to overview all of my reasons for doing so in this blog post!

I’ll start with the simplest reason. It’s someone I want to check off on my life’s ‘to do’ list. There are a lot of things I want to accomplish in my life but writing a novel has, for a long time, been near the top of that list. Simple, really. But it leads to another question: why now? Another relatively simple question to answer. Because I can! Yo and I have a lot of flexibility to explore what we want right now. Neither of us have had permanent jobs to tie us down. We don’t have kids. We aren’t wrapped up in advancing our educations. We are lucky enough to have enough money to dare not work for a short period of time. Now, all of these things could change in the near future, but for now we are in the privileged position of having time with which to do whatever we want.

I’ve chosen to use a chunk of mine to finish writing a novel.

Seriously though, why! You are probably asking. I am in full agreement with you. I ask myself why nearly every day, in many forms and ways.

Why are you writing a novel when it’s not going to earn you any money?

Chances are very high that writing will be nothing more than a hobby for me. Not working to write at the moment is a risk. I’m not deluding myself into thinking I’m going to become rich from my writing, although I wouldn’t begrudge that outcome if I’m so fortunate. I’ll likely be back to teaching in January!

Why are you writing a novel when there are more important things you can do with your time? This is one I wrestle with a lot. I know a lot of people who just aren’t that into reading. To them, there may be the odd book that will interest them and be worth their time, but in general reading isn’t as fun, or as entertaining, or as meaningful as all of the other things they do. There is also an argument to be made that in our modern world novels are becoming less and less impactful as we transition further into a world that runs on succinct and efficient information. I, however, am of the opinion that novels are incredibly important, maybe even more so as more and more of our lives are doled out in bite-sized chunks. I have read novels that have shaped who I am and who I want to be, that have lifted me out of dark times, have inspired me to become something better. I have also read plenty that were nothing more than amusing tales to pass the time!

Aren’t you a teacher? I’m pretty sure spending your time doing that will be more important and impactful than being a writer.

Probably! But not for sure. Maybe I’ll be a better writer than I am a teacher. Maybe writing for a while will help me be a better teacher when I come back to it. Maybe I can do both!

Granted, if you are an amazing writer than it’s probably a good idea to write. But are you?

No, I’m not. At least not yet. Will I be? I don’t know. But it’s very important to me to find out. And even if I’m not, there are still stories I want to tell. It would suck to tell them poorly – you’d likely be surprised if you knew how much inner turmoil I experience considering that outcome – but I think I’d rather tell them poorly than not.

That all sounds nice, but are you actually going to follow through with it?

This is the biggest challenge for me at the moment.

For most of my life, I have done well without every really dedicating myself to anything. I love learning new things, and more often than not I am quickly pretty competent at whatever I am learning. This has proven to be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that I have had opportunities and successes far more than I deserve. A curse in that I have often not had the weight of necessity driving me to improve.

A big part of me has never minded this all that much as my natural, insatiable curiosity pairs nicely with learning something competently and then quickly moving on to something else. It has also benefitted me professionally, enabling me to get teaching jobs covering all sorts of different fields when I otherwise may not have found a job at all.

I have often thought there has never been anything that I have deeply desired to master for a long period of time. I love watching hockey and would love to play at an NHL level, but knowing the amount of work it would take to become that often left me satisfied with my own capabilities. I love anything to do with space, but the thought of dedicating myself to decades of exhausting work for merely a chance at a single, short trip there helped my endeavours to become an astronaut dissipate.

I mentioned in a previous post the time about 8 years ago when I recorded in a blog my desire to write a novel. That moment was similar to many I have experienced; a sudden desire to accomplish something grand that soon faded away under the watchful gaze of practicality and realism. And yet among all of those grandiose wonderings, the desire to write a novel has resurfaced time and time again. Perhaps because it is a reasonable goal, perhaps because I interact with books a lot more than hockey players or astronauts, or perhaps, just maybe, could it be, because it is something I deeply desire to do?

I lived with and took care of my grandma in the months leading up to her death. When it was clear her time was short, every goodbye was burdened with finality, I suppose much like it would feel like to make the final edits on a transcript before sending it off to a publisher. There was something that compelled me to tell my grandma two things on what ended up being my penultimate farewell. I told her I was going to marry Yolanda and I told her I was going to become a writer.

Why did I tell her those things? Upon much reflection I think I have an answer. Part of it had to with the fact that she taught me to read and write, and I wanted to honor her with the thought that her efforts would amount to something meaningful in my life. But it was more than that, for I had yet to write anything of real import by then. It had to do with my failings.

Committing myself to another person for life was a daunting thought – still is, really. Yet I knew I had found the person I wanted to make that commitment with. I have skirted true commitment most of my life, perhaps most evidently in how often I jump around in what I am learning and practicing at any given time. I think I told my grandma I was going to marry Yo to, in a way, bind myself to my intentions to propose through that promise. Then, even if I succumbed to my own struggles with commitment, I would be unable to fail to do what, deep down, I knew was right because of what I told my grandma that day.

I think I did the same thing with writing. I am immensely hard on myself, quick to criticize and slow to accept self-praise. In most avenues I find it has helped me maintain my character, work ethic and humility. In writing, that nature is a proven adversary. For a long time, my own criticisms and doubts were impregnable, insurmountable barriers between my desire to write and actually writing. Thus, my statement to my grandma will prove to be one of two things: a broken promise foolishly spoken, or a pristine moment of intuition and wisdom whose promise helped propel me beyond my own insecurities to actually accomplish a dream.

Inspirational! So, uh, why are you writing this blog post and not your novel right now?

Ughhhh I know! If I’m honest, there are a number of reasons…

-I lack discipline

-I am still overly critical and doubt myself constantly

-I have unreasonable expectations for how much I can write or how well I can write at this point in time

-I have deeply ingrained habits of taking little breaks far too often that derail my momentum

-I really lack discipline

I don’t know if it’s coincidence or providence or something in between, but the lessons I feel I need to learn at this juncture of my life line up perfectly with my goal to write a novel. I need to be more disciplined. I need to learn to let go of the expectations that hinder me and start to accomplish my goals. I need to build new, healthier, more productive habits and get them to stick. Writing a novel challenges all of those things and, if I’m successful, may do more than any other activity to accomplish those goals in me.

So why am I writing a novel? Because I desperately need to. Will it be great? Will it be readable? Will it be published? Will it satisfy me? Will it lead me on a different path? Will it fulfill my promise?

Right now, it really doesn’t matter. I just know I need to do it.

Scott

The five senses of home

Sight: After basement suites and city apartments, my eyes are feasting on a bounty of sights. Our bedroom looks onto a coffee field bordered by trees and our kitchen looks onto a field of lambs with lush mountains behind them. All around us are stunning vistas of mountains and valleys, green fields and cities and we have a beautiful sunset delivered every night.

The view of our front yard (from the roof)

                                                      

Touch: Touch is a pretty dominant sense for me (as anyone who has ever gone shopping with me knows) but the most familiar, the one that transports me back in time, is the feel of cement and tile under my feet.Growing up in this communal property, there was no need to put on shoes to run over to the neighbourhood friends and family and the idea of shoes was constricting and annoying. So in the summers and any breaks, I was allowed to run wild and barefooted. However, please don't assume that this a quaint tradition of Costa Rican natives. In fact, Tica grandmothers always looked askance whenever they saw my barefeet and I bore a lot of scoffing, horror, and dark predictions of warts, strokes and much more to befall me if I didn't put on some shoes and socks immediately. I did become quite an expert at getting rid of warts (a necessary evil when frolicking barefoot around frogs and other animals) but my feet are otherwise still intact and my favourite thing about my body!

Taste: Naturally, the cornucopia of fruit, Canadian-Tico-Mennnonite feasts laid out by my family and all my childhood favorites create many tastes that make me feel at home. There are two that stand out.
One is manzanas de agua. Literally translated as water apples, this fruit has yet to make the journey north to my knowledge but I miss it constantly. Part pear, part apple and part dragon fruit, this fruit is shaped like an avocado with a snowy white centre and a beautiful, tender fuchsia skin (the only skin of a fruit I will happily eat). It is ever-so-juicy and sweet. One of the earliest memories is picking an enormous pile and stashing them in my playhouse to eat at my leisure.

The tree

                                              

 The second is Tronaditas, a corn chip covered in salt and lemon. By ten I'd perfected the method of eating them which I still do to this day. Step 1: lick all the salt and lemon off and set aside. Step 2: after stacking all the pre-licked chips, place in palm of your hand and mash between both palms. Step 3, eat all the broken bits. Step 4; bite into the dense middle of the stack. Repeat alternating with unlicked chips for variety.
    My obsession is so well known that when I arrive in Costa Rica, my nieces, Calisha and Danica, always have a stash waiting for me (along with adorable handwritten notes). This time, I found them in drawers, behind curtains, in the shower and taped to the ceiling.

                                          

Smell: Smell is probably my least developed sense and the one with the least amount of memories but my favourite smell is eucalyptus and it might be because our property here is riddled with eucaplyptus trees. As a child, I'd pick leaves, tear them and rub them on me to mimic perfume. A few years ago I found a eucalyptus perfume and I will rarely wear another scent.

Hearing: This one is easy. We live on the mountains and are blessed with beautiful winds! The trees close to my parents house sound likes waves. So much so, that I used to have beach or tidal wave nightmares only to wake up realizing it was the trees. I still loved the sound and would always sleep with my window open. On especially wild nights (or, a few doors down where we are living now in a more exposed knoll, EVERY night) the wind howls loudly and fiercely and it is glorious! I can't wait till rainy seasons hits hard and the howling is combined with thunder!

Costa Rica Impressions by Juniper

We have been in Costa Rica for almost a week now. It has, for the most part, been an easier transition that I had thought.

Other than relaxing, our days have been filled with family hang-outs. Somehow we skirted an intimidating gathering of every local family member (what would have been well over 20 people if my math is correct) and settled for almost every family member (it went well). My go-to at family gatherings over the years has been to quickly get wrapped up playing with the kids. This accomplished three things. One, it removes me from the responsibility of having to make small talk with adults for long stretches of time. Two, it buys me big points with the parents for spending so much time with their kids. Three, it’s usually the most fun thing to do! To my chagrin, the children grew up a bit since I last saw them! That, coupled with there simply being so many of them in one place, means playing with an uncle is much further down the totem pole of interesting activities.

And thus, I’ve spent what may well be an order of magnitude more time with my sisters and brothers in law than I have in the past.

But it’s been really great! I feel very comfortable around Yo’s family and they have made me feel exceptionally welcome. I may even go so far as to say I have enjoyed being very social so far. Those of you who know me well may desire to underline, italicize or bold (or, perhaps, all three) the ‘so far’ part of that sentence, but I digress!

My favorite thing about Costa Rica so far is the food. Man have we been spoiled. We have only eaten one dinner at home so far – tonight, in fact – but we ordered in pizza because we had a guest over and weren’t quite ready to host someone for a meal. The majority of our lunches have been with family, but those we’ve had at home have been comprised of fresh mango, papaya, pineapple, banana and oranges thrown together in different combinations. We haven’t yet gone out for breakfast with anyone, mostly due to the fact that we typically get up 3-4 hours after everyone else.

Every meal out has been delicious, although my personal favorite was a couple of nights ago when we joined our landlords (Yo’s sister and brother in law) and some other family for dinner. We had massive, juicy steaks for dinner, quite a number of glasses of wine for dessert, and then another steak for a late night snack. Yep, two steaks in one evening. I didn’t even know that was legal.

My efforts at learning Spanish have not yet arrived. I think they fell out of my luggage somewhere between our 2^nd and 3^rd flights. Hopefully they get here soon, because Luna is getting on my case about not understanding much of anything when we’re out and about.

The biggest challenge of the trip so far is meeting the goals I have placed on myself. My next post will be about said goals and also about how and why I am miserably failing at them.

For now, I am going to enjoy the last of my 5$ box of wine, perhaps pop out and play with the cute puppies that live in our backyard, attempt to understand a few words of what Yo and her friend are chattering away in Spanish about in the next room over and, hopefully, write a few hundred more words in my novel.

~Juniper~

Scott's First Post - In a Nutshell

I haven’t consistently written a blog since 2007. I joined a site called ‘Live Journal’ with some friends back in grade 12 and proceeded to chronicle the awkward struggles of my adolescent mind online for all to see. When I look back and try to reread my posts, I find I can never read more than a dozen or so. It gets uncomfortable and I have to stop. I wrote with a special kind of honesty back then – a desperate, soul searching honesty – that reflected the helplessness and confusion that came with trying to figure out who I was at the time.

At that point in my life I was completely incompetent at forming relationships. I had discovered creative writing earlier that year and had already written a number of poems. Most often, the poems were words and phrases that attempted to describe what I was feeling at the time. What blew my mind then – and still does now, really – was how I often only understood what I was feeling after I had written it down. The advent of online journals/blogs was portentous for me. I thought all I had to do was take these chronicled feelings, paste them to a site and relationships would blossom.

Turns out it worked, although the process was often painful.

My posts were often misinterpreted or misunderstood (both outcomes being completely frustrating at the time, but rereading my posts now were absolutely fair and logical). Fortunately for all teenagers, your peers tend to be roughly as incompetent as you are and thus a community of abstract, esoteric, and desperately reflective bloggers were born! In short, some of those classmates who also used the site became – and still are – some of my best friends, and we have all forgiven each other for what we put each other through in those glorious, awkward days of old.

As relationships began to form and I slowly learned how to communicate in person, my blogging became much more readable and, ironically, gradually dwindled away. I suppose history has shown that much of art (not to imply my blogging was art) comes out of times of extreme emotion, so perhaps that had something to do with it. Or perhaps the ending of my blogging coincided with my friends also stopping; I can’t really remember. What is really important to me is this: I don’t remember what prompted me to write this, but one of my final entries – dated July 29^th, 2006 – was “I think I’m going to write a novel”.  I made a couple more posts after that, mostly to keep my account active, but for all intents and purposes that was my final blog post.

I’m going to cover my motivations behind writing a novel in another post. For now, I simply wish to remember my blogging past and celebrate the fact that the goal I set when I was entirely ignorant of the challenge it would pose may soon be accomplished.

If you’re an old friend reading this, thanks for putting up with me on livejournal! I hope this blog is much more sensible, although I would accept just as meaningful.

If you’re a newer friend reading this, welcome. I hope you find meaning and/or entertainment in what it contains.

I would like to begin this new blogging endeavour with a simple, but personally profound statement.

I think I’m going to finish writing a novel.

#19

I don't read a lot of health books. I have lots of websites that I go to and get most of my nutritional information online but Must Have Been Something I Ate by Peggy Kotsopoulous was a great quick read. Health and lifestyle books are probably the only kinds that the "hey girlfriend" style wouldn't be annoying and it was nicely bullet-pointed and well-organized. She divides the book into various health topics and explains how different vitamins and supplements and nutrients affect that area. Kotsopoulos provides practical tips, points out many common vegetables to use for that particular health issue and explains some lesser known supplements that can be healthful. Her recipes are pretty mediocre but the rest of her information seems well researched and relevant and not as expensive or niche as some health books are. I'm pretty sure none of her recommended foods or supplements require a trek into the Amazon or has a 200$/oz price tag.

My co-worker lent me the book after I complained how much more energy she had than me! The energy chapter had lots of useful advice, some of which I followed. I am now hooked on chlorella, an algae supplement more common in Japan but making headways here. Cancer-fighting and energy and immune system boosting are only a few of its benefits. I can also testify to its efficacy for fighting hangovers when taken before your night out!

Thanks for the recommendation, Katie! May you always be bouncing off walls!

#18

If you are completely antagonistic to organized religion, this may not be the book for you. However, I hope that, even if you disagree with the tenants of Christianity, you could agree that there needs to be a shift towards equality and empowerment of women in Christian (and other religions) relationships and settings. A Year of Biblical Womanhood is a passionate advocate of Christian feminism which I really appreciated. She highlights strong women throughout the Bible who did not fit in the stereotypical roles of their society, who were outcasts or unconventional and who did powerful, society-changing deeds.

The premise of Rachel Held Evans' book is that she will take the commands of "Biblical Womanhood" literally and try to follow the rules as much as possible. This is the part where I feel she falls a little short. She picks and chooses which rules she will follow and it's not entirely cohesive. A.J. Jacobs The Year of Living Biblically is a lot more cohesive, detailed, comprehensive and funny. However, Held-Evans strengths lie in debunking myths about the roles of women in the Bible, passionately championing social justice, exhorting women to support and raise each other up, and mourning the tragedies that have befallen women simply for being women since the dawn of time all the while maintaining respect for the Bible and the love of Jesus and exploring ways to deepen that relationship in a more authentic way.

In short, this book is not for people who want reasons to eschew Christianity but for those who are looking for a more egalitarian, loving, just way of living through the lens of Jesus' teachings.




One wonderful year with this loving, just, patient, egalitarian man. Love you Juniper!