Be nice to everyone week!

Longtime Rose-coloured readers may know that I hold the wildly unpopular position that Family Day is fascist. I'm less alarmed about Valentine's Day because it's a Hallmark initiative, not a legislative one--if the government gets involved in telling people how to woo, I'm moving to Sweden--but it's not my favourite occasion.

I am certainly very fond of the concepts of both familial and romantic love, and don't think there's anything wrong with celebrating them--I just think that since not everyone finds themselves in a situation where a celebration is possible or appropriate, maybe the government might stay out of it (especially since they're really just trying to keep Ontario businesses from inconveniencing American sister offices by being open on Presidents' Day).

But I'm not going to prevail on this one, and I've (largely) stopped ranting. As you'll see in the posts above, I'm trying to use this week for a more relevant campaign of affection--for strangers and friends and acquaintances, whoever doesn't have a socially prescribed position in my life. Taking out my earbuds at the cashier and saying "How are you?" like I care about the answer (I do!) . Giving my seat on the subway to whoever looks tired. Taking down my garbage early so it's not a hassle for the super. Tipping generously, giving to charity, baking for bakesales (Thursday!), noticing new haircuts, and carrying the heavy stuff--I'm always trying to remember to do this stuff, but this week I'm trying extra.

When I start the "Family Day/Fascism" stuff, friends always point out that I have an awesome family, and I do; I know I'm lucky. It just seems weird that we would have a day where those who are lucky celebrate that, and those who aren't so lucky get to feel extra bad about it. I think maybe my viewpoint is somewhat skewed because I volunteered for several years talking to people who didn't have anyone else to talk to, but I do feel that more people are isolated and lonely in our society than us lucky ones care to think about. And those people might not be feeling so great about the weekend o' mandated emotion coming up. A little niceness might go a long way for them right now--or anytime, really.

RR

New month's resolution

So I couldn't come up with any new year's resolutions. That makes me sad, because I love new year's resolutions. Hooray for opportunities to improve--I have lots of ways I need to improve! In past years, I have made 10 little resolutions to work on throughout the year, with a midyear review on my birthday (in case I decide some resolutions are stupid and decide to junk them).

But this year I can't think of anything I want to work on all year. In truth, that's often what's wrong with me--some resolutions get "resolved" early in the year because they are specific (ie., last year I resolved to learn one word in Japanese a week until I went there, and I did, and then I went there, and that was that) and others drag on because they are too open-ended (become braver was the other resolution--wtf was I thinking?? how?? and how will I know if I have??)

Even if they are good specific-but-long-term plans, by the time I get to the end of the year both my world and myself are usually completely different and I no longer want to do the thing I resolved to do. I think a large part of my problem with life, actually, is that I don't realize that everything changes all the time.

So this year I have resolved to resolve a new thing for each month. If it works, great, that can be part of my lifestyle, and I'll resolve something new for the next month. If it sucks, oh well, I'll junk it and have something new for the next month. I guess I could also renew a resolution for a second month if need be, but Penelope Trunk says it only takes three weeks to make a new habit, and I'm giving myself an extra week for cushion.

My January resolution is to start writing in the mornings, at least a little bit. Tonnes of writers swear by this habit, but I've always been a little brain-dead in the morning. I'm totally a morning person, I'm happy to get up and do things and even chat with you (very few people want to chat with me early in the morning, it turns out), but I don't feel I come up with great insight before 9am very often.

So what I usually do with my early mornings is go to the gym, but this winter I have been feeling that if I have to leave the house at 5:45 and walk in slush and cold and blackness to the gym every morning, I might die. Serious, this is a creaky old person sensation, and it's not good.

Thus I've been going to the gym in the evenings, which cuts into my writing time, so the logical thing would be...there you go. I tried it this morning--it was a little disorganized and not my best work by far but it's a try. Three weeks less a day to go!

Happy new year!
RR

Hearts and stars to 2009

Ok, I'm lagging behind but I am still thinking about 2009 and trying to think of an appropriate tribute. Just to be clear, this was a year I liked *very* much, but I don't think all the highlights are blog-appropriate (every cookie I ate and person I hugged and time a civil servant was extra nice to me could get dull, not to mention unwieldy). So I'm concentrating on bookish highlights--they are, after all, often the most interesting parts of my day.

Books read: 69 (ha!)

Books written: 1/2 of one (hiatus'd); 1/2 of another (promising!)

Regrets regarding the first of those: none that I wrote it, none that I stopped (right now, at least; I'm a little moody on this subject)

Best reading experience: Tongue by Kyung-Ran Jo over the course of two days in July, while lying in the grass in various public parks in Toronto. This was very much not the best book I read in 2009--in fact I have a lot of problems with it that I'm dying to discuss (any takers?) But it certainly is suspenseful and I was very eager to find out what happened, and I had nothing to do but keep reading in the glorious sunshine, interrupted only by bathroom breaks, eating on patios and conversations with my equally bookish companion. There aren't many better weekends, I'd say.

Best CanLit in-joke that I actually got: In the novella "Gator Wrestling" in Leon Rooke's The Last Shot. This is a stellar piece, even if you never get the joke--it's just the sprinkles on already overwhelmingly delicious frosted cake. Conversely, there are likely many jokes I didn't get in books I've read this year--but how good were those books to start with?

Most hated short story: "Pain Continuum" by Harold Brodkey. I *love* a lot of Brodkey's stories--even the notorious cunnilingus story, "Innocence" but he has a slew of first-person-narrator-experiencing-torture marathon stories that make you hate the narrator, the torturers, the author, the world and yourself. I think he had an artistic ambition with this story, but I don't care: I loathe it.

Best reading (as audience): Spencer Gordon, "The Sentence," Pivot at the Press Club. I think this would be a great piece on paper (but I'm still waiting for it to published so that I can confirm that) but Gordon's voice and the audience's warm reception made this incredible to listen to.

Best reading (as reader): the Metcalf-Rooke reading in Montreal at Drawn and Quarterly. Fantastic lineup, amazing venue (when else I am going to be onstage in a graphic novel store?), all in my old town. As to my own performance, I felt more thoroughly that I didn't suck than usual, which in my self-conscious universe counts as a win!

Best book launch accessory: Amy Jones's mixed cd for her launch for What Boys Like. What a good idea (and good music!) (and a good book!)

Worst disappointment: Closing announcement of Don Mills McNallly Robinson. I'd pinned a lot of hopes on that lovely space. So sad.

Best literary reading food: Really fat and enormous dates at the launch of Marta Chudolinska's Back and Forth graphic novel.

Best conversation about writing: About 72 short stories, with Camilla Gibb and Lee Henderson as we debated and decided on the stories for The Journey Stories 21. A warm, empassioned and literate conversation that lasted all day in a big sunny room, with sushi.

I could go on and on--it was a really good year. Buy you get the gist, I'm sure--and we all have a year to get on with!

RR

Two thousand and what?

I was going to recap this past week of vacation at some point, but then I realized that I should also do a 2009-in-review post, and then people started going on about the end of the *decade* and now I am just utterly overwhelmed.

I've been reading other people's lovely 2000s retrospectives instead, happy that some people can do this right. A lot of them are fairly personal, even if they are on blogs focussed on reading or writing or whatever (my interests are pretty narrow in scope). Which only makes sense--ten years is a huge meaningful block in anyone's life, and it's hard not to get emotional thinking of what's been wrought in that time, even if a lot of good books got read in there, too.

Though I never particularly felt that the aughts had any kind of decadey tone, that might be because they were the first decade in which I was semi-functional in the world (there probably are people who are fully conscious agents in their own lives before they turn 21; to them I say, bravo). So to me the aughts are not just a decade where certain things happened--it's the decade when *everything* happened.

This was driven home to me last night when the party discussion turned to where we spent Y2K New Year's. I spent mine at the City of Hamilton's outdoor celebration, because the band featured wasHoneymoon Suite, which was a (semi-ironic) favourite band of mine and my friends. I was visiting my parents outside of Hamilton on break from my third year of university.

If present Rebecca could somehow go meet me in the past, my younger self would probably only say, "How did you get your hair like that?"

I had no idea then how my life would go, and no idea how I *wanted* it to go, so I really don't think I would have known how to ask a pertinent question. But I would have been really impressed with future self for getting my hair (mainly) under control.

And looking back, I still can't form a meaningful narrative looking at the decade as a whole. Having this blog, and doing some interviews and profiles when *Once* came out last year, really put this in perspective for me. I can make certain events and relationships seem to cohere into a logical arc by extracting them from the long silly series of events that is my life and putting them only in the context of each other.

But to me, and I think to most people in the process of living, there is no narrative--just the things that happened, and what we did about them. It's the act of writing (ah, this post has a point!) that creates a story, whether or not the events are true--the selection of what to leave in and what to omit, how to frame, what tone to take, whose point of view to honour. This blog in certain ways is the story of my life over the last 3 years, but it's highly biased since I do all the telling, and I leave most of what doesn't really pertain to reading and writing (usually) (for example, an edited version would include boring stuff like what I ate at every meal, dumb stuff like that time I got stuck in the back of the couch, and incriminating stuff like how I tried too hard to pet this cat that she went ballistic and tried to eat me).

I found a really interesting little section in the journal Ars Medica about how to write about real life:

"...[In reading fiction] we sometimes encounter unprocessed details...that have specific, charged meaning for the teller but are unclear to the reader. These pieces in many ways resemble journalling or therapeutic writing. The author is too close to the events or uses personal code and shorthand, which leave gaps. As a result, we are not fully invited into the experience. Stories of trauma and loss are often fragmented, because they remain so for the writer and have not yet been crafted through the personal and creative steps that render them coherent and universal.

"Writing personal narratives may indeed be healing, but to be literary there needs to be distance, and "observer's eye" that allows us to to see the full picture."

So that's what I lack, I think--the observer's eye that allows be to see my life from beyond my own headspace, to really think in terms of my own fictional self as living a story. And this is why I don't write much autobiographical fiction--I'm bad at it. I know the details and their import so I leave them out, I get stuck on a particular "truth" and thus can't make the story truly resonant with people other than myself.

The blog is an opportunity to try to craft mini-narratives that still sorta stick to the truth, but you might have noticed that I don't often do that--Rose-coloured consists much more of essay/opinion/rant-type writing, or else snatches of contextless dialogue, rather than actual beginning-middle-end type stories from my own life. Those are just too hard--how to find an "ending" to my anecdote when I'm still alive.

So I find it weird to be looking at my life in a ten-year chunk--no narrative seems available. 10 years ago I had a roommate, I lived in Montreal, I was writing a weird novella, and my favourite food was probably chocolate macaroons. Are those the salient details of me at that point? Who knows? I don't even know the salient details of my life now, and I certainly don't know how to take the relatively simple but to me wonderful, baffling, sad, exciting, and scary events of the last ten years and make it seem like I had a plan, an arc, or even a clue.

How does anyone ever write their autobiography?

And thus, to begin 2010, apparently this is a post about why I write fiction.

I hope your next 10 years, and mine, are wonderful and baffling.

RR

En vacances

I thought that I might not have the time or internet connection to blog during vacation, but here I am with both of those. What I lack is anything to blog in regard to. It is funny to get through a day without writing or editing or talking to people about writing, or even eavesdropping on people on the bus (somehow, I consider that part of my work). As it turns out, this vacation thing is very pleasant. There is currently a blizzard going on where I am (Charlottetown, if you are curious), which limits activities to reading, eating, talking, and playing cards. Also, napping, which is not really an activity but does fill gaps in the day quite nicely.

Lulled on sleep and sugar, I am unable to come up with much that's interesting to say. I have learned that PEIslanders are very friendly and call Gin Rummy "Queens" but it's still fun, that I probably have some kind of chronic sinus issue that I need a professional to look into and if possible destroy, that I like lobster as much as I suspected I would, and that the innovators issue of the New Yorker is pretty good but they still shouldn't have done away with the winter fiction issue.

I swear to you, that's all I've got. I...uh...I'm gonna go work on a story now. And then maybe commute to nowhere, just feel a bit more like myself. Either that or take a nice midmorning nap.

RR

Still festive, mainly

I had an awesome Christmas, and I hope anyone else celebrating did likewise. I was given a new watch to replace the one that broke a month ago, so everyone I normally hang out with will now stop being plagued by me reaching for their wrists every (approximately) five minutes. I also got a zillion awesome books, peanut-butter bonbons, pickled carrots, a scratch-n-win Bingo that won me $3 (which I immediately blew on a second card, which won me nothing), slippers, a cloche hat (just like Virginia Woolf!), a tiny table, and dozens of hugs.

I also got another sinus infection!! This was not a gift but rather, I suppose, just payback for so much awesomeness. I still resent that I spent most of *Sherlock Holmes* yesterday a) sleeping or b) trying not to vomit (I didn't--win!), and thus have no idea what happened. But I still think it was a very good movie anyway. And the more I consider it, the more I actually think that this incident was the result of my over-the-counter sinus medication, because as soon as I stopped taking it the desire to puke and lose consciousness went away. So now I'm medication-free and largely functional, and if I can just get on a plane and travel across the country, I am pretty much guaranteed more hugs, plus naniamo bars. So that is today's goal.

So I gotta go pack, instead of writing a year's end list of best somethings or worst somethings, but I was likely not going to get around to doing that anyway. Thank goodness Maisonneuve did one of books and let me contribute.

I hope you guys have a great fake-boxing day tomorrow, and who knows--if I have a little downtime in my travels, I may yet get you a list of best/worst somethings, or possibly a picture of me in a cloche hat.

RR

Festive farewell

I just wanted to send a quick Merry Everything to y'all out there in blog land. I'm mainly dependent on the kindness of others for internet this holiday season (I am currently stealing wireless from somewhere to write this post) so likely there won't be much action on Rose-coloured for the next week or so, although I can never really keep away from the interwebs entirely. But certainly, I wanted to wish all who care to celebrate a merry Christmas tomorrow, and to those who don't, a very nice day!

I don't know if any of you would have run into this, but my short story, "Christmas with My Mother" just got released as an audio download from Rattling Books Earlit Shorts 4. It was very weird to hear my work in another's voice--brilliant, because Janet Russell gives the story a gentle and nuanced interpretation--but very strange since the only place I'd heard those words before was inside my own head. Add to that the fact that I wrote the story over a year ago and hadn't even looked at in six months and the whole thing was something of a shock. I actually squirmed at the awkward moments in the story as I listened and once laughed aloud at a funny part (immodest? sure, but I also think that writers who don't find their own funny parts funny should stop writing them.

That story is also included in this year's Best Canadian Short Stories, which also came in the mail yesterday--merry Christmas to me! So there's two ways to get that story, should you care to. I would like to point out that, despite the title seeming to perfectly coincide with the season, this is very much not a Christmas story, and might not be ideal reading for those of you cuddling down to read in the glow of treelights (or it might be exactly appropriate--depends on how you like your glow). But just FYI.

Other than that, there is very little literary going on around here, but lots that is good--family, old friends, a cake made almost entirely out of pudding, that ornament of a stocking I made in grade 2, 90s nostalgia music, and many hugs. That's how I like my glow--I hope yours is however you want it to be.

Merrily,
RR

Happy Holidays--all of them

Some years I don't feel a need to explain, some years I do. This year I do, so: I am a Jew who celebrates Christmas. No intermarriage in my family, just long-time residence in--and affection for--a very Christian community. There were no other Jews in my grade-school classes ever (my younger brother also went to the school, and there was a much older girl somewhere in the system who was also Jewis, so I wasn't completely alone). It was either figure out how to draw a Star of David on my own, or draw a Christmas tree with everyone else. And the others were so happy drawing the tree.

I don't think I would have been ostracized if I'd refused the tree. There were no other Jews, but there was a boy who was a Jehovah's Witness in the class, and he went and stood in the hall not only during any sort of holiday festivity but also during the national anthem and Lord's Prayer (it was a very small old-fashioned country school) every morning. No one ever teased him, and he was actually a well-liked kid, but it couldn't have been easy to miss out on all the festive stuff.

Christmas has a lot of good things that go with it. This year I've been involved in a couple different charity drives, for children both in this community and overseas. I've been to beautiful parties and received cards covered with glitter and eaten delicious food, and am happy to think there's more to come.

I am sad to think that anyone would ever feel I was being disrespectful to my Jewish identity by enjoying other people's traditions. And I would be sad also to think that anyone would think I was disrespectful of Christianity because I take only bits and pieces from that tradition.

And I would also be upset to be held as an example for why the Christmas-observant don't need to be sensitive to the non-observant. "Rebecca likes Christmas and she's *Jewish*, so I don't know why I need to say 'Happy holidays' or take down this giant public creche..."

I'm easygoing, fairly secular, and deeply festive--I am non-extrapolatable, though there may well be others like me. Every year I gear up for Christmas with a tiny bit of trepidation over these misunderstandings, but mainly joy that I'm going to hear Barenaked Ladies sing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and eat eggnog flavoured candy canes again. And put tinsel in my hair.

And of course I wish you whatever your heart desires this December, of whatever denomination your wishes fall into.

This picture is hard to make out, but that's my little fourth-night menorah in the front, and my little overlit tree in the back. I guess it is appropriate that this pic, like so much of what is written above, is all blurry.

RR

First night

Happy




!

RR

This week in review

Of course, this week is not technically over yet, but rather a lot has already happened. I think it was enough to occupy an entire week if it was spread out, and I am rather hoping nothing further will happen until next. Thus, I dare to pre-emptively summarize:

Tuesday: I attended the Writers' Trust Awards. It is a pretty glitzy event, with roaming waiters and lots of excited chat before the ceremony. At the ceremony, the Journey Prize was the first to be awarded, which meant co-presenter Anita Chong and I could get our moment of stress out of the way early and enjoy the show! I had perhaps 200 words to say, and really people just wanted to know who won, but I was very worried about flubbing it, or not even making it to the podium because I had spotted a gap between the top of stairs and the stage where I could easily wedge my foot.

But nothing happened like that, and I was able to present the winner, Yatsuko Thanh, for her story Floating Like the Dead with no trouble. What an honour to do so, and what an incredible story. I was charmed by how sincerely stunned Ms. Thanh seemed, and was really glad I got a chance to meet her. And the other two incredible finalists, Dave Margoshes for "The Wisdom of Solomon" and Daniel Griffin for "The Last Great Works of Alvin Cale." An evening like this one really makes me feel alive to all the wonder and diversity of wonders in CanLit.

I was also happy to see that Annabel Lyon took the fiction prize though I have not read the celebrated book, *The Golden Mean*. But if my intense love of her first book, Oxygen is any indication, I should. And I was pleased to hear that, though Ms. Lyon was also pretty stunned by the win, she remembered to mention in her speech all those smaller literary magazines where she got her start, and to please for no further cuts to arts funding in Canada.

Wednesday: On Wednesday morning I went out to University of Toronto Scarborogh to do a guest lecture in my fellow UofT Creative Writing alumni Daniel Tysdal's short story class. I did, as promised read the end of a story, "Massacre Day." When I told the students that I would read the last three pages of that piece, I had the extraordinary experience of watching a roomful of students pull out copies of my book and prepare to follow along.

But that extraordinariness did not all compare with the level discussion after my reading and (very brief) talk. The students were reading intently and speaking insightfully, not just about my work (although I appreciated that very much) but about everything they laid their eyes and minds on. What a fantastic way to spend a morning.

That evening, was the Biblioasis fall poetry party, featuring Zachariah Wells, Shane Neilson and Robyn Sarah. The non-present presence of a 4th poet was Wayne Clifford, whose work was read by all three of the others to make up for his absense. It was really cool to get three interpretations of one voice.

Also last night, I got to meet London, Ontario, novelist A.J. Somerset who just won the Metcalf-Rooke Award. There's a lot of literary winning going on this week!

Today, is the real American Thanksgiving, I'm pretty sure, so I am wishing you all a happy one of those--I remain as Thankful I was last week, on fake Thanksgiving. Also today, due to a minor incident, I was without tights for a portion of the day, and it was actually warm enough that I didn't mind dreadfully, temperature-wise. The upside of global warming. What was strange is that I felt like a total scandal, bare knees and nothing under my dress but panties, when of course that is how I spent the entire summer. I think winter makes me puritanical.

I also spent part of today talking books with Kerry Clare while I lay on the floor eating scones and playing with her baby daughter. That was, as you might imagine, delightful.

To continued, low-impact delight.
RR

Thanks again

So, um, er, I thought yesterday was American Thanksgiving. All day I walked around being thankful for stuff, and it turns out--that's next week. Too late, I'm already thankful, and I'm doing the Thanksgiving post today. Of course, I was already grateful last month for Canadian Thanksgiving, so I'm going to limit this list to gratitude-worthy things that have happened since early October. Ok, go!

1) Medieval Times. I liked the dancing horses, the bright emblems, the evil green night and his worthy foes, but it was not so any one aspect of the spectacle that I loved so much as getting to go, at the age of 31, with a group of happy friends that wanted to cheer for the blue knight and eat enormous amounts of chicken just as much as I did. I have to admit, I was nervous about what happens when you grow up; I am so glad to find it is this.

2) Canada! In the past couple months, I've been in the following cities: Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener, Ottawa, Montreal, Edmonton, and Jasper. And everywhere has been fun and fascinating and full of friendly people and unimaginable discoveries. So *this* is why people travel. I'm starting to get it now.

3) Biblioasis! Obviously, I'm pretty grateful for Biblioasis publishing my book a year ago, and supporting so wonderfully. But right specifically now, I'm grateful for it being a year on and still getting to do readings for Bilblioasis, not to mention being driven to Montreal by Dan Wells. Again, I didn't know what being a published author would be like, but I am so glad it turns out to involve parties and sushi and road trips.

4) Not getting swine flu (yet).

5) Mavis Gallant's short stories. SHE'S SO GOOD!! I always knew that, but now my head is bursting with it. More on this situation as it develops.

6) Making my holiday card list (yes, I do this in November; what?) and thinking about all the lovely people I know.

7) Hugs.

So, yeah, thanks for all that. And remember that this list is effective for the next week, until the actual American Thanksgiving has come and gone, after which, I suppose I'll have to find some new things to be grateful for.
RR

Edmonton: the first 30 hours

Since arriving in Edmonton, I have done many things. I rode in a cab for half an hour without anyone except the driver (I have a taxi thing), I stayed up really late, I ran windsprints, I bought sweaters, I ate little tiny tacos, and mainly, I got to hang with AMT for enough time to talk about nonsense (my favourite sport). When I call someone long distance, I feel I have to have A+ material; when we are in the same room, I feel comfortable enough to blather.

Because the flight was in the middle of the night, I did not get the customary amount of reading done, though I did read a couple excellent essays in an ancient issue of Arc (2008, seriously, I'm behind). I was basically catatonic for the entire flight--not quite asleep, not quite awake. But again, no real jetlag, though I was pretty excited to go to sleep last night.

Today I am bright-eyed and ready to go meet AMT at her class. I get charge of the house keys and am determined to live up to the responsibility. Already, it's not going so well, as I can't figure out how to turn off several of her lamps, and being the person I am (a person who fears leaving lamps turned on all day will result in fire) I wound up unplugging them. Go, me!!

Ok, I'm to the streets of Edmonton, where it is bright and sunny and reasonably warm, but there is a wind warning in effect. Also, here they sell sandwiches at the Shoppers' Drug Mart. It's a whole other world.

RR

In very brief

1) Montreal est magnificique! J'etais la pour un presentation des livres a Librairie Drawn & Quarterly avec Kathleen Winter et Amy Jones (on peut voir leurs perspectives sur notre presentations si on lit ses blogs. Notre publie Dan Wells a conduit son minivan, beaucoup des livres, Amy et moi (je pense qu'il y a un probleme de verb avec cette phrase, et peut-etre la plupart de cette paragraphe) et c'etait un adventure magnifique.

2) I was the Inconstant Muse for Hallowe'en! It was was awesome. Like most of my highly conceptual [confusing] costumes, this one requires some explanation: I picture the Muse a bit coquettish/flirty/slutty--she is all eager to hook up and give writers great ideas, but then she takes off and leaves you to execute the idea all alone. So my costume was a brief toga, some laurel leaves, and great first lines of books written in Sharpie all over my arms and legs. Conceptual, I tell you.

3) This hydro-metre thingy is the best: a way to be environmentally friendly in a vaguely competitive, entirely trackable way: you get to see your hour-to-hour, day-to-day energy use, and pinpoint where you are over-indulging in "peak" (ie., most expensive) energy. I don't have most of the big appliances (dishwasher, laundry/drier, air conditioner) so even at optimal efficiency my savings would still be minimal, but it is so attractive to see it all laid out in colourful drafts. I hope I don't get obsessed.

4) My post about TTC seating etiquette got picked up on the Maisonneuve blog. This is a silly thing to post here, as if you are a regular Rose-coloured reader, you've likely already read that piece, but I am chuffed the Maisonneuve-sters thought it was worth reposting, and Rose-coloured is for all things I'm chuffed about (except the post in question, actually, which is rather snarky).

5) Tomorrow night, I head for the hills, by which I mean Edmonton and the mountains beyond, as well as my incredible friend AMT. I'll only be gone 5 days, and likely there can be some remote posting, but whenever I leave my comfortable internet orbit, there is a risk of non-access, so you may not hear from me until next week. I'm sure you'll be just fine without me!

RR

Reminder

that Amy Jones, Kathleen Winter and I are reading tomorrow at the Drawn & Quarterly store in Montreal, 211 rue Bernard West, at 7pm. And that it's going to be awesome. And...yay!

I'm inarticulate because of being really really tired from Hallowe'en, which was also awesome, but went on an extra hour due to Daylight Savings, and then some, because my friends are cool and I try to keep up. I'm planning to sleep...now, pretty much, so I should be in better form by the time I'm in front of any audience tomorrow.

See you there?
RR

C'est l'Hallowe'en!!

Oh, I love this holiday. Perhaps most fictions writers are, as we are so dedicated to that which isn't. There are not enough days on the calander when one is encouraged to go out in costume!

I love making costumes, though unlike with writing, I have little interest in audience for my costumes. Nobody every understands what I am, and the explanation required is often quite long. I am happy to explain, and also happy to remain a mystery for those who don't care about the explanation. The best question I've been asked in a long time was the recent query, "So, Rebecca, what abstract concept are you being for Hallowe'en this year?"

So costume highlights from say 1996 onward (when I was a whippersnapper and costumed by my parents, I wore mainly standard superhero/witch/alien/hula girl costumes, which enevitably disappeared beneath a parka and sometimes snowpants. I did not, overall, fare terribly well during the years I was being dressed by my parents):

1)Bunch of grapes
2) Chalk outline
3) Carrot (something of a produce theme emerges)
4) The Universe
5) Fire
6) Evil Toothfairy (she takes teeth that aren't even loose)
7) Dryad
8) Television test pattern

There were (gasp) a few years in there that I didn't dress up, as well as a few in which I was my standard fallback costume, a butterfly.

But this year is going to be the best ever! Or I'm going to get ink poisoning!! Whatever, I don't care, I love Hallowe'en so much and I've already had SO MUCH SUGAR!!

Whatever you are going as (and if you choose not to wear a costume, I choose to pretend you are going as a plain-clothes cop) I wish you a very happy Hallowe'en! Try not to egg any houses tonight!
RR

Break

If you count the week as Saturday to Friday, I attended four literary events this week, and spent a similar number of evenings up after midnight. I also did some work, two readings, saw a bunch of awesome people and took some fair-to-middling pictures. And now am so very very tired.

And now, though of course have blogged *The New Quarterly*'s fall launch for you despite any exhaustion, I have a delightful break, because Alex James, who provided the musical accompaniment to the evening, is also a profession blogger, and has a wonderful (and flattering!) post about the event. Hooray! It really was a terribly fun night, with so many friendly writers and delicious food only one jack-knifed tractor-trailer (my publisher, Dan Wells spent only five or so hours on the highway to be there and bring us books!)

So that's it--I can concentrate on small, easy, non-exhausting tasks for the rest of the weekend--Hallowe'en shopping at Zellers, getting the DVD player to work long enough to play the last two episodes of season one of Slings and Arrows (the first tv show in a long time that I've been willing to argue with the DVD player for), maybe a nap in there somewhere.

Weekends are nice, and I hope you enjoy yours! Seeya Monday!
RR

Gratitude

Ok, so on Friday I went on about the historical meaning of Thanksgiving being tied to food, the action on the day being centred around food, and the fact that the holiday is really about food, full stop. But of course its cultural relevance today is tied up in gratitude, that it is a day of blessing-counting, appreciation, hugs, and acknowledgement. And still food. I'm going to try to put my money where my mouth is (ha!) and make this year's list of thanks as food-oriented as possible.

I am grateful for:

1) The ability to bite and chew. About six years ago, I went to the dentist with a pain in my jaw that I thought was stress-related and found out that the bones in my jaw were totally out of whack (that's what you get for not seeing a dentist for three years, and, er, going to really loser one as a kid). After retainers to braces and finally very scary surgery and a long recovery period, I could eat whatever I wanted without pain, and food almost never falls out of my mouth while I do (unless someone makes me laugh). It was weird to be, as an adult, forbidden certain foods, and the experience certainly makes me appreciate walking down the street eating an apple, as I did this afternoon.

2) Dining companions. Food is often the social glue, the ostensible cause for a gathering, but really it's the cooks' presence, much more than the food they offer, that makes the meal special. In recent weeks, I've been invited into people's homes for paella, chili, two Thanksgiving dinners and an ice-cream social. On all occasions, the food was delicious but far more so was the warmth with which it was offered, and the conversation with which it was enjoyed.

3) The infinite variety of breakfast cereals. No matter how many I try, there will always be more on the shelves, and new ones every day. The upside of capitalism.

4) The ability to feed myself. I like using the economic crisis as an excuse for my inability to get my laundry folded or show up at the movies on time, but the fact is, things are not excellent in the world of employment right now (the downside of capitalism). The fact that I still have a job that keeps me in breakfast cereal and veggie burgers is no small victory and I am grateful for it. I am also grateful for the fact that I get to eat my (brown-bag, natch) work lunch with awesome humans everyday, even if they make fun of me for my addiction to canned tuna.

5) Books. Sorry, I couldn't make this one fit (though J. M. Coetzee did profoundly warp my relationship with meat, a testament to the power of prose if there ever was one) but writing, reading, and thinking about books fills up all the time that I have that isn't taken up by the above (or grocery shopping), and I feel lucky indeed to have that.

6) Hey, while I'm already off the theme, thanks for reading Rose-coloured. I really appreciate it.

RR

Thanks for the eats

Canadian Thanksgiving, for those from elsewhere or just confused, is a harvest celebration. There's some murky bits of American tradition in there, but we have no silly mythology around the holiday (other than Tom Turkey, I suppose)--we're just glad there is stuff to eat.

This used to make a good deal more sense to me when I actually experience the harvest. Where I grew up, Thanksgiving was the last weekend of county fair season (after that were only the big fairs, like The Royal Winter Fair). All through fall, we'd be bringing in tomatoes, peppers, corn, beans, pumpkins and squash, the prettiest of which were entered in some fair or other (I would like you to know that I won a ribbon for my butternut squash in grade 3; not sure if it was a first-place ribbon, but I choose to believe it was).

In short, at this point in the year, we'd be coming to the culmination of a harvest that began in May and June with lettuce and strawberries, and it would make perfect sense to be sitting down to a meal that both featured and celebrated the fruits of that harvest.

Now that I get most of my food from Metro (though my folks are constantly thinking of reasons to come visit with quart baskets in the trunk), the celebration makes slightly less sense. But I like it very much, not only because of the nostalgia, nor yet the enforced grade-school grace-saying (yes, it was a public school, but in a *very* small town) that makes it seem logical to me to owe my supper to someone greater. I like to cook and I like to eat, and when I was younger I liked to garden to. The harvest has always been a good time.

Food is a fraught business in 2009: between genetically modified tomatoes, body-image dismorphia, peanut allergies and gluten intolerances, sometimes there's no one at the table that has a purely peaceful relationship with their plate. But it's the stuff that makes us live, and whatever role we play in the food chain (gardener, chef, shopper, restaurant-orderer) can be a lot of fun. I like that, though most holidays are celebrated with food, this one *is* food.

May you eat well this weekend.

RR

To the semi-colon, a respectful love note

The Rose-coloured Mafia has become aware (thank you, Mark!) that today is National Punctuation Day! When asked what my favourite punctuation is (yes, this is what authors talk about...some authors), I would have to say nervously, the semi-colon.

"Nervously" because the semi-c is a notoriously "advanced" bit of punctuation, one I've only learned to use properly (I hope) in the past few years. It's got subtly and gradations, nuance and force. Let me explain.

Usage 1: to divide items in a list when there are commas (or conjunctions) within the individual list items. Confused already? I understand. Ok:

As we all know, if you have more than two simple things you are listing in a sentence, you mark them off with commas (eg., "The period, exclamation point, and question mark are all terminal punctuation.") [Note: the comma before the "and" is optional, but that's another post.] But if they are items that themselves contain lists, a reader might get confused, so you use commas for the lists internal to the items, and semi-colons for the larger list (eg., "My favourite suppers are mac and cheese; tomato, ham, and swiss omelettes; and turkey, bacon, and avocado sandwiches).

Usage 2: to link two independent clauses and imply the relationship between them. Independent clauses are clauses that *could* stand alone as sentences, but they don't have to. For example, "Philip is married to Nina. I hate Nina." is just an enumeration of facts, some of them unhappy. But, "Philip is married to Nina; I hate Nina," implies that their is a causal link between these two facts--perhaps I hate Nina because she is married to Philip. Perhaps I love Philip. Perhaps inherent in this grammatical example is a great novel.

The relationship has to be pretty obvious and self-contained for the semi-colon to make sense. You can't just match up any two sentences and sometime later explain the link: "Philip is married to Nina; I like pie" is a bad semi-colon use, even if it comes out 30 pages later that I am planning to murder Nina with a poison pie...

Usage 3: to link two independent clauses if a transition is used between them. Transition words--properly called "conjunctive adverbs" for reasons that are a little confusing--are ones like however, therefore, moreover. These words make the link between clauses explicit, yet because they are not conjunctions we still need that semi-c. For example, "Nina is devouring the pie; therefore, she'll soon be dead."

***

Something I tried and tried to tell the first-year Effective Writing students I TA'd for is that a full life--and deathless prose--can be lived WITHOUT the semicolon. Yes, it adds nuance to a sentence, but only if you use it properly; otherwise, it looks stupid, same as any other error. This is higher-end punctuation, but only in the sense that unlike the comma and the period, you don't *have* to use it, and probably will only really need it for complicated ideas. But it doesn't *make* an idea complicated. There no such thing, really as a 50-cent word, or 50-cent punctuation: there's just 50-cent ideas and the best way for an individual author to express them. But my students kept sticking semi-colons in after "and" anyway.

Up in the club
RR

Planning for Tokyo

I have now read the first 50 pages of the Rough Guide: Tokyo (I have the version prior to the current one here, but you get the idea) and I have learned *much*! Thanks so to SKS for lending me the book!

First, the word of the week, which is "onna"=female. Not that I will have cause to say it aloud; I think if anyone is talking to me, my gender should be as apparent as it needs to be. But the guide tells me I'll need to learn the written Japanese for my gender if I have hope of using the appropriate bathroom. Hence, my first kanji!



Other things I've learned:
--I want to ride in a boat designed by a cartoonist
--I will be in Tokyo for the portable shrine festival (Kanda Matsuri) and another festival (Sanja Matsuri) that also features portable shrines, but seems to focus more on an ancient tale of fishermen finding a statue. I'm sure I have this all wrong, but I'm looking forward to it.
--you have to take your shoes off indoors and put on slippers, which I am fine with and in fact always do at home, because I a) don't like wearing shoes but b) get cold easily. However, even when you are indoors, you have to change out of your normal slippers and into toilet slippers when you go to the bathroom, and that seems *exactly* like the sort of thing I'd forget to do. Worrying.

More soon, I'm sure.

I craved / I ate hearts
RR