IWSG: Wednesday, November 7, 2018 ~ Now What?

It's the first Wednesday of the month,
the day that members of the
Insecure Writer's Support Group
share their writing struggles
and writing successes
and offer their encouragement
and support to fellow writers.






To visit the IWSG website, click here.

To become a member of the IWSG, click here.

Our wonderful co-hosts who are volunteering today,
along with IWSG founder Alex Cavanaugh are:
Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor,  Ann V. Friend,  J. Q. Rose, and Elizabeth Seckman.  

I hope you have a chance to visit today's hosts and thank them for co-hosting.
I'm sure they would appreciate a visit and an encouraging comment.

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Every month the IWSG that members can answer with advice, insight,
a personal experience, or a story in their IWSG posts.

Or, the question can inspire members
if they aren't sure what to write about on IWSG Day.

Remember the question is optional.
This month's featured question is:

How has your creativity in life evolved since you began writing? 

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November's IWSG question has me doing some head scratching,
and it comes at a pivotal point in writing my memoir
when I'm asking myself Now what?

I'm not sure writing has had a big impact on my creativity,
certainly not in recent decades while I was teaching,
and now I'm wondering if it ever did.

I've always had a big imagination, and as a child it ranged far and wide.
I heard Santa's reindeers' hooves on the neighbors' roof.
I saw the tooth fairy.

When my brother and I crawled inside a culvert under a road in rural Alymer
to jump over a big hole that vanished into darkness,
we knew that hole went to the middle of the Earth
and we were the bravest of all when we risked our lives and leapt.

I roamed the world and the solar system in my imagination
before I ventured out of the Maritimes at the age of seven.

When Roy and I Were the Bravest

Back:  Me (Louise), Dad, and Roy

Front:  Donnie and Barbie (Bertie not even on the horizon)

Alymer, Southern Ontario, Canada

Fall 1957

Photo Likely by Sara MacBeath

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

I realize, as I look back, that most of my writing has been non-fiction,
and that even as a child, reality anchored any fiction I wrote.
Details obsessed me:
What is the name of that tree?  That rock?  That river?
Could imaginary events I was concocting in my simple stories really happen?
How fast does a tidal wave move?  Could a person actually outrun one?

A Big Wave

Pixabay

I remember making up a story when I was five
about an earthquake swallowing people alive.
A poignant picture of a cow's tail sticking out of a closed crack in the ground inspired it.
Even then I wanted the how of the story and the details of my story to be factual.

The more I think about my own creativity, 
the more I think it's rooted in divergent thinking
and a divergent approach to doing things.
I've always been different and didn't think like the people around me.

In grade six my nickname was The Professor 
because I was obsessed with dinosaurs.
That was painful for me as I learned to jive,
put on makeup, and consider boys and popularity;
but not painful enough to give up dinosaurs.

Sometimes I flat out refused to conform.
For example, I spent several years working on
my certification in paleontology in the early 1990s.
The now Denver Museum of Nature and Science created its certification program
to train and retain its paleontology docents and fossil lab volunteers.

The rigorous program required students to attend
a variety of night and weekend courses, workshops,
and lectures by visiting paleontologists,
to participate in a grueling fossil dig
in the Bridger Basin Badlands of Wyoming,
to volunteer as a docent and/or a fossil preparator,
to write a paleontology research paper,
and to pass a comprehensive exam.

The Bridger Basin Badlands

Southwestern Wyoming, USA

Spring 1993
Photo by M. Louise Barbour

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Around the Campfire

The Bridger Basin Badlands

Southwestern Wyoming, USA

Spring 1994
Photo by M. Louise Barbour

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Although I was teaching full time in a multi-aged, second and third grade classroom
in a four track, year round school during this period,
I lived for this program.  I ate it up!

I ate it up,
whether I was knapping flint to make a knife and slashing meat with it,
painstakingly extracting throat ossicles from rock matrix
containing fossil remains of one of Edward Drinker Cope's brachiosaurs,
or crawling on my knees over Eocene outcrops in the Bridger Basin
searching for elusive mammal fossils.

On My Knees on the Eocene 

The Bridger Basin Badlands

Southwestern Wyoming, USA

Spring 1993
Photo by M. Louise Barbour

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

DMNS Volunteers at Work 

The Bridger Basin Badlands

Southwestern Wyoming, USA

Spring 1993
Photo by M. Louise Barbour

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

I rebelled when it came to the research paper.
Instead of pursuing a typical scientific paper, I drew on
a Tolkien bestiary and a favorite science fiction series and wrote
"A Bestiary for The Saga of Pliocene Exile:
A Science Fiction Quartet by Julian May
with Notes on the Pliocene Epoch."

"The Saga of Pliocene Exile"

by Julian May 

Photo by M. Louise Barbour

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Thank goodness, Dr. Stucky, the then Curator of Earth Sciences, got me.
He let me borrow paleontology books from his personal collection
and overuse his xerox to pursue my research
which included a critique of Julian May's science fiction series
and a study of the Pliocene crispy critters featured in her books.

Working on a Duck-Billed Dinosaur (Edmontosaurus) 

Fossil Lab, Denver Museum of Natural History (Then)

Denver, Colorado, USA

 1992

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

He also lent me a tent in the Bridger Basin
when the wind, hail, and floods destroyed mine;
then he refused to accept my money when the wind ripped
that expensive tent of his out of the ground
and carried it away never to be found ~ 
but that's a tale for another day.

Dr. Richard Stucky 

Former Curator of Paleoecology & Evolution

Southwestern Wyoming, USA

Spring 1993
Photo by M. Louise Barbour

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Most of the writing I did as an adult was non-fiction, 
everything from reports and newspaper articles,
to curriculum-based plays and report card comments,
to papers and projects related to my continuing education
and my Denver Museum of Natural History Certificate in Paleontology,
to applying for and getting significant grants.

But can I call my writing creative?
It's a question that eats at me.

And now I contemplate now what? with my memoir.
I accomplished publishing my father's Lansdowne Letters in my blog.
I worked through my memories without contaminating them with outside information.
Now I have to delve into the outside sources that will verify and augment 
my father's letters and my memories,
and I have to craft my memoir into a compelling read.

I get weak-kneed and overwhelmed when I think about it.
One step at a time.  One day at a time.

I'm currently studying one of The Great Courses,
"Writing Creative Nonfiction" by Tilar J. Mazzeo.
I'm about halfway through its twenty-four, thirty minute lectures.
It's excellent and inspiring!

"Writing Creative Nonfiction"
by Professor Tilar J. Mazzeo

Photo by M. Louise Barbour

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

I'm currently reading "The President is Missing" by Bill Clinton and James Patterson.
Yes, it's fiction, but Patterson is a master at creating complex characters
and at plotting each and every chapter to propel a story forward,
while cutting anything that doesn't accomplish these two things.
You can learn a lot by studying Patterson's skillful writing.

Goodreads

I'm allowing all that I've written about the North so far 
to lie fallow for four weeks from my last Lansdowne Letters post;
I hoping that my story will grow like Tolkien's, 
"like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind:
out of all that has been seen or thought or read,
that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.”  Goodreads

In other words, I've stuffed it all back into my thawing muskeg
and am allowing the bubbling carbon dioxide and methane to churn it for a while.

Northern Muskeg

Flickr: Rover Thor ~ License

Then, finally, comes the task of hiring one or more researchers
to dig into information I've been unable to access,
like the Hudson's Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, 
or the parliamentary records in Ottawa.

As soon as my four story-churning weeks are over,
I'm going to write a detailed, chronological outline
and decide the narrative structure my memoir will have
and how to develop the main characters, including myself.
I'm hoping that whatever my creativity is, it will improve my writing.

Speaking of creativity,
let me recommend a highly creative IWSG writer ...

I've read a quartet of Pat Hatt's novels in recent months.
Two I reread as they were the beginning books in two of his series:
"The Connective" and "Delivered."
I followed each one by reading its sequel:
"The Disconnective" and "Detoured" 
(which I stayed up late to finish a couple of nights ago).

Pat has an imagination that doesn't quit,
and I keep turning the pages of his books
because I have no idea what twist will happen next.

His characters in these books are everyman and his settings are anyplace:
ordinary people, often children, placed in extraordinary situations
and ordinary places, often vaguely Nova Scotian or Canadian,
that metamorphose into the unexpected and weird.
I admire Pat's boundless creativity.

Part of the fun in reading Pat's books is to watch his growth as a writer:
He improves with every book, and he has published well over 100!

Another part of the fun for me is to compare his writing with mine.
We're very different, and I've learned a lot about just telling the damn story,
not getting bogged down in precise details and explanations,
and moving the plot along at a cinematic pace.

I enjoy his books,
I'll buy more, and I definitely recommend them, but with a few caveats:
Pat pushes boundaries outside the polite and conventional,
the scenes can sometimes be gory or violent,
and the language can be earthy.
These things don't bother me.

Pat Hatt Books I've Recently Read

Photo by M. Louise Barbour

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

I enjoy Pat's humor,
his unconventional characters and their outlook on life,
and his rollercoaster plotting.

I adore his cats Cassie and Orlin popping up in his fiction.

I admire his courage in tackling many genres,
in writing books and poems, rhymed and unrhymed, 
for children, juveniles, and adults,
in experimenting with Point of View 
and male, female, and animal protagonists.

And OMG do I admire his dedication to writing and his amazing productivity!
Writers who want to publish books can learn a lot from this prolific fellow Bluenoser.
(Find Pat at his blog "It's Rhyme Time." )

Wishing everyone a great IWSG Day.
I look forward to visiting and reading your posts!
Happy writing in November!

Link to My Website: Standing Into Danger

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of the Bridger Basin

Wikimedia