August 2008

a little hello

We are back in Vancouver.  Will comes home tomorrow and we are very excited, as we have missed him enormously.

My writing seems to be getting a little steam under it’s belt, and words (for the time being) are coming a little easier.  It was a good thing, cutting back on my daily chats with all of you, even though I missed it.  I got a lot done on the manuscript.  Have quite a bit more to go, but I’ve broken the back of the halfway hump and do not feel as if I am in the middle of a great dark tunnel with no end in sight. 

My sister, Suzanne and her boy will be arriving for a few nights, and I am really looking forward to long chats and walks and tea.

And Dave is coming and bringing someone special and I hope that she likes me and doesn’t find me too odd.  I mean, I know I am a little bit, but hopefully she’ll look at it in a oh-well-of-course-that’s-Dave’s-mum accepting kind of way.  Not a run-for-the-hills way.  I saw a picture of her and she looks really nice.

Don’s finishing up his beloved Richard Ford novel, The Lay of the Land.  He’s loving it, and I am living vicariously through his perusal of it.  I am relegated to reading mostly short stories when I am working on a manuscript, because, with really good writers, I get worried that their themes or style will rub off and I will subconscious change course, mid-stream.  So, I’ve been reading Richard Ford, A Multitude of Sins, short story collection, as well as a little Tobias Wolff.  We went to a reading and talk of his at this wonderful bookstore in Corte Madera called Book Passages and both Don and I got so invigorated by listening to Tobias Wolff read his stories and talk about writing that we wanted to pull up stakes and go sit at his feet and learn everything we possible could from him.  Of course we’d have to get into the impossibly difficult to get into ____(I can’t remember the name of the program, I just know that hoping to get in is like spitting in the air and expecting it to down a moose.) And then if one of us got accepted and the other didn’t...well, that wouldn’t be good for the old marriage now would it?

Anyway, he’s only got a couple of pages left, so, I think I’ll go upstairs and abscond with the last few droplets of toothpaste.  There are so many things that we have let fall by the wayside in the last few weeks in our dash to get all our words on the page. 

Sweet dreams everyone. 

Posted by Meg Tilly on Friday, August 15, 2008 in Chewing the Fat

the fickle nature of the writing life…or should I say, Meg

Nothing much to say.  Writing is going well.  At least it did today. 

Yesterday, I hit a huge brick wall, stared at my computer for way too long, trying to figure out where the next piece of the puzzle fit.  Then realized that the reason I couldn’t figure out what happened next is because nothing should happen next.  That I should s__t-can the whole kit-and-kaboodle.  That I was a lousy writer, would never write anything of note, and that I should just stop wasting my time.

I spent the rest of the day, trying to figure out how to spend the last third of my life, since being a writer was no longer an option.  I’d always wanted to learn how to make pottery.  I had met Chris Carter on a plane once and he had offered to show me the ropes.  I wondered if he still knew how to make pottery after all these years, but then dismissed it as one of my more preposterous ideas. 

The allure of theater raised it’s hibernating head.  I’d always wanted to do theater way back in the day, but it didn’t pay much and was a long commitment and I had small children to care for and support.  But now, with Will having only one more year of school, perhaps I could do a play.  A performance from beginning to end, no interruptions, no one yelling “cut”.  To get to dive into a character and stay there for the entire duration of the play, now that would be a luxury!  Or I always wanted to learn how to fix my own things.  I’ve done a carpentry course, but I could sign up to learn how to fix my own plumbing.  That would be cool.

Yes, last night, when I wasn’t mired in depression at how lousy and untalented a writer I was, my mind was spinning with alternative plans. 

In the middle of the night, I woke up feeling rather foolish.  Not quite sure what had happened.  So, I’d had a bad day, so what?  It didn’t mean that I would never be able to peck out another coherent sentence again.  And on the heels of that I became filled with remorse.  Poor Don.  The things he puts up with living with a woman in the full flush of menopause. 

In the morning, I had a lovely chat with my agent, Laura.  I also received a very nice email from my friend Diana, who passed on a generous compliment from a mutual editor friend.  Then I made a tasty cup of Arabian mint tea, and cloistered myself in my writing room.

AND...I had a GREAT day!  All the blocks that tormented me so, yesterday, has miraculously dissolved and I ended up writing 4 and a half pages!  Unknown wealth, for this snail paced writer.  And if tomorrow goes half as well, I shall be walking around with a rather pleased smile on my face.

(Still am feeling incredibly thrilled about Emily’s news, by the way.  That is the sort of happiness that lasts and lasts.)

Posted by Meg Tilly on Thursday, August 07, 2008 in Chewing the Fat

The most EXCITING news ever!!!!!!

Okay, everybody.  Do you remember way back in the beginning of April when I went to visit my daughter and stayed at that weird Bed & Breakfast and wrote this:

Emily was beautiful, brilliant, luminescent.  From the first sentence she had me, totally captivated, entranced, delighted.  I knew she was good.  I had no idea how good.  Her wit, her words, her impeccable delivery.  Everything so original, fresh, so Emily.  My God, I had no idea that poetry could be so entertaining.  I don’t know how she did it.  So sly and funny and heart-breakingly sad. 

I’m sorry if what I’m going to say sounds biased, because actually, I’m not.  I can see the work of people close to me, people I love, very clearly. 

My daughter, Emily, is a f___king genius.  Not an opinion.  Fact.

Now, you might have said to yourself, Ah yes, Meg, but you are her mother.  Well, that is true.  I am her mother.  I also happen to be right!

My clever, brilliant daughter, Emily Zinnemann and her friend Elizabeth Gramm, whose poetry I have never heard but am certain is spectacular as well because Emily has told me so on several occasions, are both finalists for a major poetry fellowship!  45 poets have been chosen out of around 900 applications and five lucky poets will be awarded a $15,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship that is given by Poetry Magazine. 

I love Poetry Magazine!  I am so proud of Emily, and Elizabeth too.  Emily has asked me to keep my fingers crossed for both of them and of course I shall, but I figure, collective good thought sending is always helpful, so if all of you, my dear bloggers out there, could just for a second, cross your fingers and send good wishes their way as well, that would be great!

CONGRATULATIONS EMILY AND ELIZABETH!  I am so, so PROUD! xxxooo

Posted by Meg Tilly on Friday, August 01, 2008 in Chewing the Fat

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