Author Archives: Jane Cawthorne

About Jane Cawthorne

Jane is a writer currently living in Victoria BC. She grew up in Toronto and also spent many years in Calgary where, among other things, she taught Women's Studies at Mount Royal College (now Mount Royal University). Her work is about women on the brink of transformation.

Concussions and Confined Settings

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I’m reading concussion stories, and my colleague Elaine Morin pointed out Lauren Groff’s excellent story in the New Yorker, The Midnight Zone. It’s full of truth and suspense and fractured thoughts and a fractured head and it took me, inevitably, to the reading of an interview with Groff, which was (sadly, for my purposes) more about motherhood than concussions, although both topics are writerly obsessions of mine, the former being a thirty-year obsession and the latter much newer.

(I read that last sentence three times, by the way, and it is technically grammatically correct. It is representative of the tangential way my mind works these days, and I’m keeping it as is. Welcome to the inside of my head.)

In the interview, Groff makes a great point about setting. The setting of the story is confined to a small cabin. Danger lurks outside, but also liberation. Asked about this, she says, “it’s psychologically easier to live if you believe you have an exit plan. It’s easier to run ten miles if you tell yourself that you can walk when you get to eight; it’s easier to work for four hours without a break if you keep the door to your office open; it’s easier to live with how we’re killing the planet if you believe the completely insane notion that humans will colonize Mars.”

She’s so right. And I love the way she extends the situation of the story to the much larger world. But back to concussions. Three years (plus) into this brain injury, I am still keeping the door open. It’s easier to live that way. It’s behind me, back there somewhere, even as I stare down the very real possibility that this is as good as it gets for me. Concussion and confinement go together. Concussed people avoid light and sound and people and life. I wonder if Groff made that connection? Do you ever wish you could talk to a writer and ask these questions, go deeper into something you find fascinating in their work?

Suffice it to say, I am now a Groff fan. Maybe one day I will get to talk to her about how she knows so much about brain injuries. Until then, I’ll keep reading concussion stories.

Prize Winning Worrier

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My mother was a legendary worrier. I seem to have inherited that trait from her. No matter how hard I try not to worry, I do.

I’ve worked hard at not worrying. I meditate and breathe in and out and do yoga. I take long walks and have long and logical conversations in my head about why the worrying I’m doing is senseless.

I once heard that worrying is nothing but praying for something you don’t want. Now when I worry I ask myself, “Why are you praying for something you don’t want?” Actually, I usually substitute “obsessing about” for “praying,” but whatever.

Right now I have a lot to worry about. We all do. How can we turn useless worrying into something constructive? Ideas welcome.

This writing prompt is for the birds

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The last few weeks of winter have been hard. The snow piles that became ice piles finally begin to melt. A relief. But with the melt comes the revelation of how much garbage is on the ground. So many coffee lids, cigarette butts, fast food wrappers, bits of blue plastic twine, (why is there so much blue plastic twine and where does it come from?) a rubber glove, a ruined pink toque now dark with grime.

The birds are back, and that is something. They fly in and out of the Bulk Barn sign, nesting in the curve of the “u” and the “a”. Then I see a sparrow flit to the sidewalk, pick up some blue plastic twine and take it to the nest.

This bird is making its nest with garbage.

Is this awful or not? I can’t decide, but the image sticks. It is a metaphor for everything. I can make it optimistic or pessimistic or both simultaneously.

Use it. Write.

Snow Day!

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Is there anything better than a snow day? Is there any better story prompt than SNOW DAY! I don’t think so.

Go outside. Stand in the cold. Kick your feet through the snow. Is it powdery? Sticky? Does it squeak underfoot? Let the cold get to you. Let your nose turn red and start to run. Remember sledding, that time you just missed that tree, or that time you fell off and the sled went into the river and you stopped just short, scrabbling at the snow going by with frozen hands inside of gloves so big they might as well have been oven mitts. How does it feel? Remember the feel of snow in the gap between your pants, socks and boots, how snow could build up in there and give you a rash on the back of your legs. What is happening to your fingertips? Is snow getting inside your collar? Shovel a bit. How heavy is the snow?

What are the animals doing? Where do the squirrels go when it snows? Where are the birds? How does it sound out there? Is snow falling from tree branches? Has it piled up high on the fences? Is it blowing from roofs? Is it drifting? Are there other people around? Describe how they are bundled up. Can you see their eyes? Are they squinting against the snow and wind? What are they thinking?

When you get inside again, read that Jack London classic, “To Build a Fire.” Not many people will ever experience something like that. But plenty among us are homeless, struggling to survive in the city, sheltering wherever possible, trying to stay alive. What’s the conflict in a story like that? Human against nature, certainly. But isn’t it also human against capitalism? Neoliberalism? Pull-yrself-up-by-yr-bootstrapism? Recently in Toronto, a woman died because she was trapped in a clothing donation bin. She was looking for dry clothes.

Or, stay sheltered with pen and paper in hand. What do you see from your vantage point? How does the warmth feel? Do you feel gratitude to have your shelter? Are you annoyed that your are stuck and that the roads are too bad to drive on and the buses are trapped on icy hills? If you stay home from work, do you lose a day of pay? Is there somewhere else you need to be? Are you anxious? Is it terrible to feel the loss of control?

Or does it fill you with joy and wonder? Snow. Snow day!

Think about all of it. Think about whatever this makes you think about. And write.

To Mary Oliver, in gratitude

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Why do we wait until someone dies to express our gratitude to them? Oh, Mary Oliver, I should have written you a letter.

I’m not “good” at poetry. I’ve read it and taught it and tried and tried, but I don’t think I have a poetic spirit and then I read someone like Mary Oliver. I can’t say what it is about her poetry that I love. I can open any Mary Oliver volume any day on any page and find something consoling and inspirational. She is always there for me, on my bookshelf, ready to help.

A lifetime ago I was working with a school board and I was asked to deliver a graduation speech at a program for students who were pregnant. They were segregated, and although I recognized the possible need for their segregation, their difficulties in conforming to a regular school schedule and so on, I also felt it was simultaneously terrible. Maybe it was because I grew up in an era when teenage pregnancy was the height of disaster and I didn’t like the idea of these young women being hidden away, if that was what was happening. I thought about that group of young, expectant mothers, and I could not know if they felt supported or judged or somewhere in between. I could not know their future, but I knew I couldn’t make assumptions. Maybe it would be harder than mine was at their age. They would have a child. Or maybe it would be more joyful than mine was at their age because of that same child. Realistically, they might be facing economic hardship, struggle to find work and child care, they might be single parents. It was hard to know what to say.

I turned to Mary Oliver. As always, she knew what to say when I didn’t. I read them, “Wild Geese,” and even now, when I think about that poem in that context, I get teary. Oh, Mary Oliver, thank you for the words.

Today, I open the book Swan: Poems and Prose Poems to the prose poem, “Don’t Hesitate.” The first line reads, “If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.” I am sad you are gone, Mary Oliver, but so joyful that you lived. Why do I feel that just maybe my gratitude to Mary Oliver is not too late? Why do I feel that she still might know? Why do I feel that she is flying above me, like the Wild Geese? “Don’t Hesitate” ends with the line, “Joy is not made to be a crumb.” No, it is not.

Submissions Continued: It’s a process

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It’s public accountability time. I said I would get 10 submissions done by January 15 and I’ve done three. I forgot. It’s a process. A time-consuming, angsty process.

I know I have one day left, but tomorrow is not a day I’m going to get any submissions done, so I admit defeat.

BUT–here is what I did accomplish. I created a plan for myself. I researched every possible Canadian publisher who is accepting unsolicited submissions and found all their requirements and figured out where my book fits. This meant studying back lists. It’s a process. The Writers’ Union of Canada has a helpful directory, (cost 10$), but beware: it is already out of date. Everything needs to be cross checked with the publisher websites and some publishers who were accepting unsolicited submissions have stopped. (Hello Anvil Press). Then I tiered my submissions from first choice to last. And so, a submissions strategy was born.

Next, I created my “Master Query Document,” which includes everything I might use in any query, from my bio to a marketing plan, (this means that I also created or spiffed up all of these things, including a marketing plan). I finally have a synopsis that actually works. It goes without saying that I already have a book, but maybe it does not go without saying, so I will say it.

I have a lot of *feelings* about being asked to create a marketing plan. I get it, but honestly, anyone who can guess what is happening in publishing must have a crystal ball at this point. I think what publishers really want to know is: will I work hard to sell this book? The answer is yes.

And then there were other very practical matters. I figured out what happened to my long dormant Submittable Account, went to the office supply store and got paper and envelopes. Some publishers still want a hard copy, and I have to say, I appreciate that. I think a physical stack of paper is somehow more insistent and harder to ignore.

And I have sent in my first three submissions, one via email, one hard copy and one via Submittable. Yay me.

I’ll finish the next seven by the end of this week. I’ll be two days over the deadline, but what’s two days in the lifespan of creating this novel? Barely a dot of an i at this point. And it’s not like anyone is waiting to see it. And isn’t this the crux of the problem? Who cares about this besides me? Maybe you. Thanks for reading, and for giving me a sense of a deadline, even if I did make it myself, and even if I did blow it.