For me, the biggest stumbling block to writing is that I am slow and need large blocks of time. For instance, I spent most of Sunday glued to the computer fiddling with edits. As it was pouring outside, distractions were reduced. This was a good thing because—outside of an hour or so for phone call and lunch—I was at my desk from 10:00 am until about 6:00 pm. Such a marathon is great, but not possible during the week when I’m expected to show up at the office. It’s after dinner writing or nothing.

IMO, the secret to getting a chunk o’ time during a weekday evening is to cook as little as possible. What I mean is that, on the weekend, I lay in survival supplies, chop veg in advance, and usually make a large pot of soup or a casserole so that lunches are ready to go (and cheap). It’s not a perfect system, but it helps me get to the computer before I’m starting to think about bed.

Of course, when it comes to lunches, I’m only worrying about myself. It’s harder if you’re dealing with family. I recall my working/student mom introducing me to the task of brown bagging food when I was in junior high school. I think it was a smart idea: if I didn’t like what I packed, I had no one to blame but myself. Alas, she never did successfully train my dad to fend for himself. He definitely needed a keeper.

Anyway, this is my latest soup invention, for anyone else trying to prepare ahead:

• In a large soup pot, fry 1 ½ c chopped onion in olive oil. Add about a ½ teaspoon of salt.
• Chop a bundle of asparagus and add that. Cook until onions are clear (about six minutes).
• Sprinkle with 3 heaping teaspoons of flour to make a roux and cook for about a minute. Then slowly add six cups of stock (or water, but stock is better). At this point, feel free to add, say, leftover chicken, turkey, or ham and herbs to taste. Mushrooms are also an option. I used a tsp of dried dill and a half tsp of pepper. Cook until asparagus bits are tender.
• Put everything through the blender or (much easier) use a hand blender wand until the soup is a smooth texture. Add a large dash of tamari sauce. At the last minute, stir in a cup of milk or cream.
• This recipe reheats extremely well.

One thing I’ve always wanted to do is get a bunch of friends together and start one of those deals where everyone cooks a bunch of food and swaps homemade frozen dinners. Has anyone tried that?

In my nuclear family, it was expected that one would be an artist of some sort. Maybe of several sorts. That was cool. I never had to go through the awkward talk about having unwanted artistic ambitions. It was assumed I would write, paint, dance, whatever and maybe all at the same time.

However, I also had to have a practical career—so there were no awkward talks about ONLY being an artist. It was a given that I had to put food on the table and a centrally-heated roof over my head. No starry-eyed visions of Bohemian garrets. After all, we lived on the prairies where freezing to death was a literal hazard. Plus, my parents were both involved in the arts. They knew what their daughter was facing. So I learned to type in Grade 10 and went to university to become a teacher (which I never did, but that’s another story).

Sensible? Not everyone thinks so. Some assume that artists aren’t for real until they quit their day jobs. Well, I believe in my talent, but I don’t believe that I will be automatically rewarded for it in monetary terms.

Do I think I SHOULD be able to live by my writing? Sure, but at the same time that popular conception says we aren’t legitimate unless we’re an economic success, there are plenty of people who claim artists should work for love alone and stick everything on their websites for free.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that our society has conflicting ideas about the cash value of creativity. Nobody questions whether or not a plumber, nurse, or flagman should get their wages, but when a school budget gets cut, the arts are the first to go. Unfortunately, in our society money = worth. We might feel warm and fuzzy about culture, but we don’t make it a priority. When it comes down to brass tacks, it’s just not that important.

With messaging like that, it’s a wonder anyone still values their own creative vision. Sadly, many do not and we’ll never know what those people had to say.

The point is, I never had a problem telling my family I wanted to be a paperback writer, but the big bad world at large was another matter. I might have said that I was planning to be a flea wrangler with the same results—something between benign indifference and outright scorn.

If 2011 brings nothing else, I hope it brings a sea change in how it regards writers and painters and dancers. I hope it gets more people into galleries, concerts, and bookstores. And, I hope it gets more people into art supply stores and music schools and writing classes. It’s the Tinkerbelle principle. We need to honour our collective creativity, or it wastes away. Starving artists eventually starve or give up.

If we all do something to participate in or support the creative life, it WILL become possible for more and better art and artists to thrive. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I’ll take what I can get. What creative thing are you going to do this year?

My family was never big on vacations. They were busy and didn’t have a lot of spare money, so travel fell to the bottom of the priority pile and, when it did happen, was often accomplished by bus. Sometimes at seventy-two hour stretches. I get bus sick. I developed an early aversion to travel.

When I was one my own (and possessed a car) prospects improved. True, I took the “dream” vacation with the boyfriend of the day (vile mistake, but good diagnostic tool for future un/happiness), but that’s not the main reason I find travel stressful. Wherever I went for many years, there was usually a disaster of some sort. Bombing. Snipers. Flood. Riots. I was just about to start blackmailing tourist spots so they’d pay me to stay home, but that era appears to have ended with my trek to San Francisco a few years ago. It was AOK, which must have signalled the lifting of the curse. Though there was that flood in Nashville right after I reserved my hotel for the RWA National conference this summer. That’s just a coincidence, right?

Yes, it’s possible that I do read too much paranormal fiction. On the other hand, perhaps I will never take a “normal” vacation, because my perception is different.

Travel is too important to an author for me to hide on my safe little island. My two trips to England (one plagued by the IRA, the other by poll tax riots, mad cow disease, and a storm that washed out the bridge to Wales) have provided a wealth of historical imagery. All of those ghastly bus rides as a kid showed me the prairies in a way an airplane just can’t (there is a giant bronze Viking AND a giant corn cob somewhere in Minnesota). And there’s nothing like waking up to your first up-close view of the northern Rocky Mountains at sunrise. The imagery, down to every last bus stop and greasy spoon, is stored in my mental treasure room. I found seeds of stories in all of those places. (And sitting on my grandma’s porch watching the creek waters creep across the lawn toward me, half-distracted by the itch-worthy fact that I’d stupidly moved straw bales all afternoon wearing shorts and a midriff).

Authors aren’t all that different from those wildly irritating tourists who snap pictures and videos every three steps. You know the ones I mean—those people who seem to experience more with the camera lens than with their eyeballs. Storytellers are also recording every last detail for future use, even if we’re not conscious of it at the time.

What’s one mental holiday snapshot you’ve always kept with you?

Productive weekend on the Christmas front, with wrapping and decorating happening. Went minimal on the decorating, given that it took exactly 5 minutes for the Evil Kitty to de-garland the window, followed by extravagant garland murder scene in the hallway. Garland removed before it could be ingested, and decorations reconsidered.

Staff lunch today. Very nice.

On the writing front, I’m waiting for editorial feedback on Unchained and/or Book IV proposal. I should appreciate the break, but I have a hard time enjoying the respite. There’s “driven” and “workaholic” and I think I’m edging toward the latter.

Does anyone else get stationery envy? I don’t want to go back to school, but I want all that cool stuff. It hits me like a disease every fall—I’m tantalized by the smell of new pencils, the pristine promise of scribblers, the glory of the clean eraser.

I’m sure some of my nostalgia is remembering the September state of grace. On Day One of a fresh school year, it’s possible to achieve all A grades, with no detentions, and no talking in class. We are all newly remade as the first bell rings. Our good intentions gleam as snowy-white as our new gym shoes.

Or maybe I want to make up for all the nifty junk I never had as a kid. Schoolyard grievances cut deep. I never had a funky lunch box, just a stupid paper bag. I might be looking to my adult self to remedy the situation, knowing I’m more of a push-over than my parents.

I was cleaning out my desk the other day and came across a trove of paper I’d saved from junior high. It was a just a few sheets, lime green with pink lines. Coloured notebook paper had been cooler than cool back then; pink, purple, green, and yellow replaced hum-drum white until the teachers protested the eye strain. My friends and I had traded back and forth to have some of each shade. I’d apparently treasured the rare treat so much I’d kept the last few pieces as a keepsake.

It still tickles my fancy. Is it any wonder that I’m boggled when confronted with an entire big box store stuffed with gel pens, sparkly binders and a veritable rainbow of sticky notes? It’s like grade school nirvana. It’s better than having both the gold and silver crayons. Unfortunately, most of it’s largely useless in an adult world and there’s no excuse to buy it.

Or maybe usefulness isn’t the point. Perhaps it’s indulging that urge for a fresh start—we would be so productive if only we just had that new, unblemished notebook/cell phone/netbook/PDA. We would be so smart. So organized. So on time. I bet my cheque book would balance if I had a pen that writes in turquoise gel.

Perhaps back-to-school is really the time of talismans. Maybe it’s not new stationery I crave, but the charm that will see me through another time of growth and testing.

In that case, I’d better buy a whole box of new pens.