Back to the Work

It’s a Friday evening as I sit down to write this post and I’ve officially been back to work for three weeks. I can’t believe how quickly that time has gone! Being on maternity leave during the pandemic has meant that for healthy and safety reasons, we’ve foregone time with family and friends we would have otherwise spent the last year with. And while I’ll probably be processing the sadness of that lost time for a little longer, I know there’s still much to be grateful for. This last year with my little family and our new baby has felt strangely insulated, but we were also able to spend a lot of time focussing on one another, and being able to focus on anything—much less something so positive—this last year feels like an absolute blessing. There’s been a lot of change and adjusting to do, and I’ve felt a need to maintain an almost continual state of acceptance about much of it. That hasn’t been easy, of course, and though I’ve done my best to manage the stress and anxiety of the times and go with the flow of things, it feels good to join the world again—to set intentions and make plans, however small.

The plans I’m making right now are primarily creative. I’ve spoken at length on this blog about how honouring creativity and telling stories fuels everything else that I do, and I’m super excited to resume my storytelling work in this next half of 2021. It was however, a definite challenge to write and edit this past year. As a result I’m more behind than I’d like to be on my book writing schedule (thank you everyone, for your patience with me). But! I am planning to release both The Fortunes of Ithaca and The Wall of Bones (the next Vampire Skeleton series title) this year, and I’m so excited about both of these books. I can’t wait to share them with the world :). I’m also really happy about the one thing that will make all this creative writing work a bit easier—this amazing little writing cabin that was a gift from my husband for our 5th wedding anniversary. I’ve been writing in it for the past few months and I’m amazed at how much it has already helped.

In the meantime, some of the smaller projects I’ve been working on over the last few years have come out into the world. I love writing speculative fiction but for sure have a special place in my heart for children’s books. This last year, I’ve been able to work on a few interesting pieces. This one is a short article for the children’s history magazine, Kayak. It appeared in their February 2021 issue and is about the Great Tree of Peace. It also features some of my art. Suffice it to say, I absolutely loved working on this project and am so grateful to the Kayak team for the opportunity. The second book that was released this last year was a Rubicon Inquiry title called The Birthday Gift. This was another really enjoyable project I worked on with my sister (who was the illustrator for the piece), and I’ll be sure to link the book once I have the chance :).

There are also some new projects in the works that I’ll be talking about in the near future, as well as a short story and poetry collection I’ve been working away at over the last few years. Some of the poems for this collection also appeared in a Hamilton Arts & Letters special edition last year, and I’m really looking forward to releasing the rest of them once the collection is ready. I’ve always wanted to write and illustrate comics and graphic novels, and have been practicing with some small form pieces that may be fun to include. We’ll see :).

Speaking of art, as many of you know, I started working on my art a lot more while I was finishing my doctorate. The art I was doing rather quickly overtook the small page I had built for it on this site, and so I’ve moved it over to a website of its own that you can now visit! Please feel free to check it out, if you’re so inclined. I’ll also be shifting some of my research articles away from this site, as those ideas also seem like they need their own place and space to grow. In some ways it feels funny to have so many different spaces, but my hope is that it will help those who are interested in a particular part of the work I do to stay connected to it in an easier way. All in all, I’m grateful and excited to move forward with my many projects and look forward to seeing the ways they’ll connect to each other.

And with that, I will end this blog. Happy May everyone! I hope you’re all finding your way in these strange times, and send my wishes for your good health and continued happiness as we move about the world. 

Happy creating,

S.

Slowing Down. Hurrying Up. A Life & Writing Update.

It’s May now and we’ve just gone through our second socially-distanced birthday party, this one for my six year-old daughter, Ione (pronounced in three syllables: i-oh-knee). My husband’s birthday followed shortly after the birth of our son, which was just over four weeks ago in April (🖤!), but Ione’s celebration was definitely the one that had me the most anxious. All in all though, I’m feeling exceptionally happy and grateful for how it all went. I won’t lie, it definitely took some effort to make sure I didn’t project my own sadness that she wasn’t going to have her usual birthday celebration onto her, but fortunately—that effort was successful. We had a wonderful day and though I didn’t hear it, my husband shared that Ione told him it was the best birthday she’s had so far, so there’s that. 

This pandemic has been reaffirming many things for us and we’re probably not alone in recognizing just how much we truly value and treasure time with our loved ones. All of us were moved by the way our family managed to reach out to Ione, responding with great enthusiasm to the call for virtual signs, songs and window visits. And I’ll be eternally grateful to our youngest daughter, Vivian (whose birthday is coming up next), for hugging Ione the moment she woke up and exclaiming how excited she was for her sister. That kind of selfless joy and sisterly love was pure magic and helped set the tone for the entire day.  

Writing and Reading Again.

Reading.

I’ve said before that writing and creative work is the thing that fuels everything else I do in my life and so it doesn’t surprise me that as I start to make my way back to a daily writing habit, my overall wellbeing has started to improve. It’s taken almost the entire last two months to get to a place where I can feel like I am able to write and read again, even as the return of these activities to my day-to-day have called for some changes. First up—I’ve had some really intense screen fatigue the last week or so, and have subsequently noticed that reading print books is much more preferable to reading things on screens. This has been both good and bad. Good because it’s forced me to read a lot of the books I’d purchased pre-COVID and bad because a lot of the newer books I want to read are hard to get right now. That aside, it just feels wonderful to read for enjoyment again. I read across most genres, but fantasy is my absolute favourite and so I’ve been reading a lot of Hugo nominations, both this year and last. I just finished reading Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars and Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver. I enjoyed them both but Spinning Silver was probably my favourite of the two. I found myself relishing every word and loved the way each viewpoint came together at the end. I’m also finishing up V.E. Schwab’s Vengeful and Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons.  But the book I’m most excited about is The 10,000 Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow. This book is STUNNING. There’s something about it that reminds me of one of my all time favourites, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It’s definitely one of the most beautifully written stories I’ve encountered in a long time. It’s also the book I’m having a hard time getting a print copy of even though the paperback just came out on May 12, and so I’ve been reading it on my Kindle app, which brings me back to the whole screen fatigue thing. (UPDATE: I wrote another post about The 10,000 Doors of January here, a day after writing this one as I stumbled across something in it that kind of unsettled me and felt like I needed to write about it).  

Although I’m a Kobo fan through and through, (I’ve probably had just about every Kobo that ever came out) I’ve been reading a ton of Kindle ebooks lately, and so I decided to go ahead and purchase my first ever Kindle. I got the Kindle PaperWhite and a nifty little case. I didn’t need or particularly want another e-reader, to be honest. I’ve been comfortably reading books on my iPad mini apps for ages but ever since the screen fatigue set in, I find I can barely look at a screen much less read whole books on it. Plus, I like to read in “night mode” which I can’t get on my current e-readers. And, with all the news I’ve been consuming, I really wanted to be able to read without getting the urge to hop online to see what was going on. So I took the plunge and bought the Kindle and am looking forward to trying it out. Fingers crossed, it will help ease my eyes and overall support my mental health somewhat. 

Writing

So I’m doing lots of reading. I’m also doing a little bit of writing, easing back into what I hope will be a productive year where I can finish the majority of projects I have in progress. Screen fatigue is slowing me down a bit here as well though. I do most of my writing on my Macbook and while I have Dragon for Mac, I rarely use dictation. I’m going to try using transcription and dictation more a little later this year once I’ve been cleared to exercise. For the time being though, I might try working longhand to give my eyes a chance to rest. I have some really great notebooks I bought for just such a purpose and while it will make assessing my word counts really challenging (I’m aiming for a meagre 300 words a day at present to redevelop that daily writing habit), at least I will be getting some words on the page. 

Art 

I’ve also continued to work on my art, which has had it’s own set of challenges. I had set an intention to do a lot more practice drawing and sketching this year, and had picked out some online courses to guide me along. And while I’ve had these great subscriptions to a few illustration services for the past two years, in truth, I’m barely able to use any of them living where we do, in the middle of a forested area, in a First Nation community at a time when the networks are strained with the considerable increases in use. A lot of disparities have become more apparent in the time of COVID-19, and internet access is definitely one of them (a less vital one, perhaps, but one nonetheless). The struggle with accessing workable internet has made me look at online learning in remote areas quite differently than I did before, and I honestly don’t think online learning would be feasible or desirable for learning in my community for the foreseeable future. While I am deeply grateful to all of the educators who continue to show up for our children, there has been something sad about watching the girls try to connect to their friends and family over screens. It doesn’t light them up in the same way. Sometimes, it even seems to make them more sad or distant, and so I find myself reluctant to engage with it (or using a lot of care when we do). Regarding my art then, I’ve decided to not worry about all the classes I had wanted to take. Instead, I’m going to find a few sketchbook challenges and have a rough goal of trying to fill at least one sketchbook over the rest of the year. That should get me into a fairly regular drawing habit while keeping me off screens and not being frustrated by slow internet speeds.  

Language 

Finally—we are about to start an intensive language effort again. I’ve been reluctant to set specific goals for my language learning over the last little while. Instead, I’ve just been consciously using a lot more language around the house. But as always, I’m hitting a point where I need more guidance, immersion and focussed practice of particularly concepts to expand what I’m able to say in day-to-day life. I’ll be writing notes/updates about my language learning as I go, but for now, it feels like a good idea to at least mention it because writing this blog has helped me envision what the next few months could look like for me, and articulate some simple and achievable goals (300 words a day/one sketchbook/reading/speaking more language). Writing this blog has made me realize that I need these goals right now, in part, to help give shape to what can feel like a never-ending day at times.

Slowing Down.

All in all though, I know I’m fortunate to be able to work on any of these things during such a challenging time. The year we are having is not the year we thought we would be having, and trying to let go of that while managing all of the other change that has swept over us can feel overwhelming on the best of days. I am letting go of a year I thought would be filled with me and the baby doing lots of solo bonding, art, writing, and piano playing. I was excited for that year, but I’m also really grateful to be able to share this time and those same activities with the girls too, even though it’s much more challenging to do so. And even though it seems like being together and home should be easier to do because things have slowed down around us, it still feels like our days are so packed and like we are bustling around from activity to activity trying to meet all of our work, play and wellness needs. It is a lot.  Slowing down. Hurrying up. Sometimes it feels like we are trying to do both at the same time, lol.

Anyways—this blog has been far longer than I intended it to be! You’ll have to forgive me :). It has been a strange, wondrous, and stressful time for us and we are doing our best to make the most of it. There is no denying that our family is lucky—lucky to be together, to be in a forest, to be close enough to our extended family for window visits, to be in a community that is doing its best to prioritize the health of our people. There is much to be thankful for, and I hope some of that gratitude will come through in the creative work I do over the next year. Until next time, I hope all is well and happy creating!  

S. 

P.S. The Hamilton Arts & Letters editions that features some of my art and poetry is now available online! There’s a ton of lovely work in there by many other talented Indigenous writers & artists, so do check it out if you can 🖤.