Summer, Back In The Saddle
Summer is upon us in all its sweet green glory, and The Farmhouse looks the way I'd always hoped it would eventually look. The rosebushes outside are unbelievably lovely, the colours bright, singing, and creamy. The yellow clapboard we had painted two years ago has acquired a patina after two years of Canadian weather, and in the most gracious way looks like the century home it is. I never tire of coming along the street and pulling up to the house.
At night, especially, the scent of the roses is poignant and evocative of the rose gardens my mother's gardner maintained outside the villa we lives in when my father was posted to the United Nations in Geneva in my early teens. The cherry tree out front had its sudden flashing moment several months ago, and now the cherries are beginning to swell and hang from the branches. Pretty soon they will fall, and the marauding squirrels will have to duke it out with the neighbours when it comes time to collect them. Let them sort it out.
I was talking with my web designer in Boston this week about some updates to michaelrowe.com. It occured to me as we talked that I hadn't touched this blog since I went into hibernation to write my novella In October which will be published this fall in Triptych of Terror alongside original novellas by David Thomas Lord and John Michael Curlovich. The writing of that was a rather unique experience, one which, I think, will warrant a separate entry at some point about the process of writing fiction versus writing non fiction. Writing that story gutted me in some ways, and in others I'm still recovering from it.
At present, though, my intention is to try to make this more of a regular thing. Having read several blogs in the last few weeks, I'm impressed at the ability of certain people to simply switch on the computer and begin to rattle off events and the minutiae of their life as though it were the most natural thing in the world. I kept a diary well into my thirties, and then stopped rather abruptly. Somehow the daily occurence of reaching for my journal to write in whenever I had a free moment began to seem less natural as I entered into a new phase of my personal evolution. Pity, that. Reading back to how I felt in my twenties and thirties (and even before that) has been invaluable in my writing, and will likely become more so as I turn more and more attention to fiction writing. I don't think a blog will ever be the ideal substitute for that. In a published document, there is a barrier of personal privacy which I instinctively won't breach.
That having been said, perhaps there's a happy medium somewhere between a journal entry and a personal essay, and I'll be able to keep it up more regularly.
At night, especially, the scent of the roses is poignant and evocative of the rose gardens my mother's gardner maintained outside the villa we lives in when my father was posted to the United Nations in Geneva in my early teens. The cherry tree out front had its sudden flashing moment several months ago, and now the cherries are beginning to swell and hang from the branches. Pretty soon they will fall, and the marauding squirrels will have to duke it out with the neighbours when it comes time to collect them. Let them sort it out.
I was talking with my web designer in Boston this week about some updates to michaelrowe.com. It occured to me as we talked that I hadn't touched this blog since I went into hibernation to write my novella In October which will be published this fall in Triptych of Terror alongside original novellas by David Thomas Lord and John Michael Curlovich. The writing of that was a rather unique experience, one which, I think, will warrant a separate entry at some point about the process of writing fiction versus writing non fiction. Writing that story gutted me in some ways, and in others I'm still recovering from it.
At present, though, my intention is to try to make this more of a regular thing. Having read several blogs in the last few weeks, I'm impressed at the ability of certain people to simply switch on the computer and begin to rattle off events and the minutiae of their life as though it were the most natural thing in the world. I kept a diary well into my thirties, and then stopped rather abruptly. Somehow the daily occurence of reaching for my journal to write in whenever I had a free moment began to seem less natural as I entered into a new phase of my personal evolution. Pity, that. Reading back to how I felt in my twenties and thirties (and even before that) has been invaluable in my writing, and will likely become more so as I turn more and more attention to fiction writing. I don't think a blog will ever be the ideal substitute for that. In a published document, there is a barrier of personal privacy which I instinctively won't breach.
That having been said, perhaps there's a happy medium somewhere between a journal entry and a personal essay, and I'll be able to keep it up more regularly.
posted by Michael Rowe at 9:09 PM
