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.

Cheer Yourself On

A new, as of yet untitled painting I finished recently.

I took a vacation this past week and it was incredible. I listened to music. I binge-watched Supergirl. I relaxed. I did some art. I did some writing. I went to see Paw Patrol Live. It was amazing. It was like I spent time just existing and it was so, so refreshing. I also went for lunch with my husband and we spoke mostly Cayuga to one another. We also spoke Cayuga at the dinner table with the girls several times through the week.

I have to say, it was pretty amazing to know that even though it’s taken a long time—it’s happening. I’m learning language. I’m using language. We’re all using it—together, as a family. We’re filling our house with Cayuga and we can do even more if we continue to work at it. I needed to recognize this simple, good progress this week. I needed to give our family an enormous burst of love and affection for being awesome and encourage us to keep being awesome—to keep trying. We don’t do that enough. Cheer ourselves on. Encourage ourselves.

I am a busy person. Busy with work, busy with school. Busy with writing and art projects. Sometimes these different types of busyness blend together, as it did a few weeks ago when I presented at an Indigenous education conference I helped to organize. For a brief moment while I was standing there next to my PowerPoint (lol), it felt like all these different parts of myself got to exist in one space for twenty minutes or so: writer, researcher, language learner, mother, wife, artist. It felt good to feel them come together—even for a second—because it can be truly exhausting to pursue all of these different things all at once throughout the year. Hard to feel like there is enough space to be all of those things. And even though it’s hard, the truth is—I don’t want to give up any of it. It’s all connected. It all feeds each other.

This week was important then, because I got to think about how grateful I am that any of those things are in my life at all (rather than lament that I have so many interests, which I’m prone to do from time to time). I’ve worked a long, long time to have things like writing and language be in my life and moving forward from here—these are the things I am going to continue to prioritize. But the truth is, I’m going to prioritize all of it. Doing this means I need to continue to be careful with my time. Fortunately, I’ve learned some valuable lessons the last little while about what kind of space and energy I need to create for that work to flourish, and about how important it is to value my time and create boundaries around it so that I can be helpful, healthy and peaceful.

Part of this reflection and recommitment to being careful with my time comes from my ongoing reading about the concept of “deep work”. But it also comes from just living and experiencing the highs and lows of life—and the last few months have been filled with high points and low points. The high points were finding out that two proposals I worked on in May of this year were both approved. I’m excited about both of them for completely different reasons. The first project was for funding for a language immersion program for the Cayuga language. I’ve spent the better part of the last six years thinking about language and the Ogwehoweh Language Degree program, reading literature, talking with speakers and learners, hearing various kinds of feedback and then reflecting on how to improve and grow the language programming at my place of work. One of the most pressing issues I (and others) have observed is the need for an influx of highly proficient Cayuga language speakers and teachers for the degree (or any language program) to be sustainable in the years to come. Case in point—my husband was teaching three nights a week this term. My husband is an awesome speaker, but this isn’t a sustainable model for the program or my family. There is no question that adult immersion with effective teaching strategies and a well-laid out curriculum is the best and most expedient way to create new adult language speakers. And so, the proposal was written with these ideas in mind. There is a lot to say about this project, and I hope to share more about it as it moves forward, but for now, it is wonderful to have this opportunity to do this work.

The second proposal was for funding to host an Ogwehoweh Storytelling Festival. I’m excited for this one because ever since I started sharing my writing and books, a lot of people from my community have approached me with questions about writing and storytelling—many of them have writing and storytelling aspirations of their own. While I’m happy to share what I’ve learned with anyone, I thought it would be even more amazing to organize a festival where people could learn from other Indigenous writers and storytellers from Six Nations because Six Nations is a community where there are so many talented writers and storytellers working across multiple media. The planning is in the preliminary stages but the festival will happen in the fall of 2019, but in the lead up to it, there will be seven seminars focussing on a different topic (short story, poetry, script-writing, etc) that people can sign up for. I’m super excited for it and will be sharing more about it through my work.

Of course, where there are highs, there are lows. I don’t have as much to say about these, because I am fortunate that they pass with time, sleep, art, and music. I always find that for me, the lows are much more internal than external. Self-doubt. Self-criticism. Feeling like you aren’t doing enough or doing things the way other people think you need to do them. It’s times like these that I’m most happy to be a writer and an artist. Because I can watch something like Neil Gaiman’s “Make Good Art” speech and remember that I’m not here solely to please anyone or live up to anyone’s expectations of who I am. And when those kinds of thoughts creep in—I can let them go, let those people go, and focus on making the art that only I can make. Being the best version of myself that I can be. And celebrate that in myself and others. It’s a good place to land, I think. And land I did.

Anyways—these are some of the projects that I’m about to dive into as I return from the break, along with more books, writing, teaching, revising of dissertations, and language learning. It is a full life. A happy life. And even though it feels crazy and overwhelming at times—I’m grateful for all of it.

Anyways, I am jumping back in now. There are so many writing projects and books coming. It’s going to be fabulous. So happy creating everyone! And don’t forget to cheer yourself on every once in awhile :).

S.

An Author Visit to An Awesome Class

Today I made my first author visit to a school in my community, and it was absolutely amazing. For those of you who don’t know, I live in Six Nations of the Grand River, a First Nation community on Turtle Island (what is also referred to as North America). My community is one of the largest First Nation communities in Canada, and like all First Nation communities—it has a systemically underfunded education system and is recovering from the assimilation policies of the federal government. There’s all kinds of nuance and complexity in just this paragraph alone, but suffice it to say that I grew up in Six Nations and have since built my family home here, and my love for my community and the schools in my community runs deep. (I also work at an Indigenous post-secondary education institute located at Six Nations). 

The school I visited today is one that places high value on the transmission of language and culture, having programs in both Cayuga language immersion and English. I was grateful to be invited to the school, and more than a little overwhelmed by the response of the students to the book they had read as a class, The School That Ate Children. The students were welcoming, energetic, curious, and engaged. Some of them were kind enough to share their stories with me, which were so creative and really made apparent the vibrant, natural capacity for storytelling that kids have. 

Since I’ve started sharing my books, I’ve received some of the most amazing messages from readers in my community, and I’m never quite sure how to talk about them. It means more than I can say that younger readers get excited about my books and the characters in my books, and that it makes them want to write their own stories. And one of my favourite stories ever is of a teacher reading my story The Fortune Teller’s Daughter and reviewing it on her radio show and giving it ten scones (a comparison I think may only be fully appreciated if one is from my or another Haudenosaunee community, but for the purposes of this post is a kind of fried biscuit that is super popular and delicious). And three weeks ago, I received a lovely gift of story pictures, student cover renderings, and summaries from a teacher who was the first to read one of my books to her class last year (and has since read it again with her class this year)—which was amazing and so, so kind. I'm not great at promoting my work—I tend to keep a ridiculously low profile, but this—this I want to share and talk about. This beautiful work that these students did, letters, and pictures, and stories of their own. It is too awesome to not share. 

The students decorated the door like the cover of the book!

The students and their teacher made cut-outs of their favourite characters!

A picture of me posing in front of the awesome door!

For so many reasons—these messages of support and enjoyment mean the world to me. I will never stop being grateful that my books are finding readers who enjoy them, and I am especially happy that some of those readers are from my home community. This, more than anything, makes me want to keep writing, to write with even greater care, and fun, and imagination, and love.

On that note, gwahs oweh nya:weh to all of you who have read my books and shared your enjoyment of them with me. It brings me more joy and happiness that I can possibly convey. Until next time, happy creating!

S.

P.S. One of my favourite moments was this little exchange:

A student saying. "I think I'm going to cry."

Student sitting across from them: "Again?"

Me: "Did you cry?"

First Student nodding: "I teared up at the end. It was so beautiful!" 

The happy book cry. One of the best of all possible cries :). 

Maintaining a Writing Routine After a Maternity Leave

Illustrated by Sara General

So it happened. I returned to work last week after being on maternity leave for a year. My work is exciting to me in that it’s an area I’m quite passionate about—Indigenous education and Indigenous language revitalization. And while I’m excited, I’m also trying to figure out how all of the pieces fit together. How do I keep writing, making art and contributing to my community in the best way that I can? How do I continue to make progress with my language learning and honestly have time to send good energy back out into the world? This is really important to me. Especially because I think the world needs good energy right about now. Needs to be reminded that peace is important and that it is possible for us all to have enough. Anyways, here are some of the things that are working for me at the moment—bearing in mind that none of this is really advice, just me sharing how things are going :). 

1. Make a schedule. Whatever schedule works for you.

Right now, my schedule includes waking up early to write from 6-7 a.m. Then get ready with the rest of my little family and be out the door by 8:10 a.m. We are fortunate that the daycare and our place of work are within five minutes of each other so we don't have to leave at a super early time. I have a nice day working on projects that are important to me and hopefully, will be good for our community as well. Then we pick up the girls and are usually home, have exercised and eaten by 5:30, which leaves us a few hours before the girls have their baths and go to sleep. My big goal next week is to be in bed every night by 10. We’ll see how that goes. (UPDATE: It's not going well, lol).  

2. Plan evening activities the whole family can do 

This past week, I did the majority of my art work in the evening, painting sketches as a way of relaxing and disconnecting from the office. My oldest daughter likes to paint as well, so it gives us time we can spend together doing something fun and creative. This is good, but also challenging in its own way. It feels like to fit everything in—we're having to use every bit of time that we have. I'm okay with this approach for now, though I have to admit, I was exhausted by the weekend and felt super grateful that it was a short one, work-wise. 

3. Protect your creative time by making it a priority

I used to be something of a workaholic, but that changed when I became a mother. Now I know to take time and make sure that I’m living well. I’m grateful—beyond grateful that things can be that way. I also know that I have to keep doing creative things. 

Now that I’ve had a few days to reflect on the first week and how it went, I can think more carefully about how to make sure I don’t lose track of my writing. That I continue to work at finishing stories, bit by bit. Writing and creating is the thing that fuels all the other things that I do and doing it makes me a much happier person to be around. So it has to be a part of the daily routine. 

4. Write the project you're most passionate about (even if it wasn't the one that was next on your production schedule!)

This past week, I wasn’t sure exactly which project to start writing. I have at least two completely brand new projects that I want to tackle this year and that are written into my production schedule. I also have four books at various stages of completion—some more complete than others. I surprised myself by taking a lot of joy working on a book that hadn’t even been on my radar. to work on and that I actually wrote more than a year and a half ago. But i chose to work on it because something about it was really rejuvenating for me and as I go through it, I’m reminded of why I like it so much. It's also making me really enjoy the process of revising and editing. The book is about Indigenous women, language, empowerment, artwork and funnily enough—it’s a romance. I can't wait to share it with you! Now of course, I agree that production schedules are important, but wow. This little deviation from mine was exactly what I needed. 

In the meantime, I've added some of the new paintings I did to my Art page. Have a peek!

I hope you like them & that your own creative endeavours are going well!

Til next time,

S. 

Lights in the Dark

Last week I had my first ever author visit to the wonderful Braemar House School, where my niece attends. I presented to the Junior and Intermediate classes (grades 5-8) on my experiences being a writer, a creator of books and an aspiring language learner. I also read aloud from one of my books. It was awesome to share about how writing has helped me connect with, learn and share about my culture and our history as Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island. It was also nice to realize that I'm really and truly living my dream of being a writer. To be able to look back and see that what I’m doing now—telling stories and starting to make comics—is something I’ve been working toward for thirty years. So yeah. It was an awesome experience and I’m grateful to have had it.  

And of course, the students themselves were nothing short of amazing. I’m always so impressed with young people, the questions they ask and their incredible capacity for compassion, understanding and imagination. They are lights in the dark. Being around young people is also an important reminder that the land and water is something we borrow from future generations and that we should be mindful of how the decisions we make today can impact their well-being now and for years to come. 

It made me realize that I want young people, including my daughters, nieces and nephews, great-nieces and nephew, to have hope for the future. And that means doing my part now. To help find, share and create knowledge that empowers us to have compassionate discussions, to be who we are meant to be, and to hold a respectful place in our hearts for those around us. How to do this, especially right now, is a question I’ve thought a lot about over the last few weeks. 

I don’t know about you, but lately I’ve found it challenging to read the news on Facebook and Twitter. I’ve tried to bring balance to my use of social media and establish some boundaries because as much as I enjoy the break from reading so many dismal reports, I also think it’s important to be informed. So for example, I will be looking to subscribe to one or two newspapers in the very near future, to help bring more balance to my life and help feel more prepared to interact with the world for the months ahead. Right now I feel like I’m reading everything, all of the time, which is great because there are so many important perspectives, but not so great in that it also really crowds out my own sense of self—especially when there are so many terrible things happening. I want to be a force for good and to be able to encourage others. To do that, I need to have some light to share. 

So at this time, creating is so important and making time to be creative is vital. Writing, painting, playing piano. These are things I can do to transform my space and because I’m connected to the world, it will spread :). 

In the meantime, I’ll keep doing my best to be supportive and compassionate, learn our languages, learn more about our culture with my daughters and share what I can with others so I can help build positive relationships and a sense of community for us all. 

I’m also focussing on my dissertation research. Right now, this means a lot of reading and thinking and revisiting aspects of research paradigms such as ontology and epistemology. I’ve started working on a series of paintings that can help me capture those ideas in a visual way and will hopefully reinforce my learning. It’s a way of staying active with my art practice and also moving forward with the work. 

This is the first painting I'll share. It’s a picture I drew while listening to a presentation about Indigenous research methods. The speaker talked about how the land is a teacher and that it teaches us things even if we don't recognize it right away. It was a really beautiful teaching that resonated and reinforced others I've heard from elders and speakers before. 

I hope you like it! Until next time!

Happy creating!

Sara