Inspiration | Sharon Wildwind

2008 May

Tue, 06 May 2008 11:49:19 -0600

You can’t knead bread dough or writing into submission.

~Sharon Wildwind, mystery writer

On Thursday, August 10, 1978, I started keeping a journal. It began as a very proper book, words only, in a certain kind of black journal, written with a certain black ink fountain pen. Nothing obsessive, compulsive here, no, not at all. It took me eight months to before I dared add a small diagram of a garden I planned to plant.

At the start of this year, I opened Book 51 of that journal. Over the past 29+ years, I’m happy to say that the journal overcame its pure black beginnings. Book 51 contains drawings, photographs, art work, and scraps of ephemera. When I realized I was writing the same headings at the beginning of each entry, I had two rubber stamps made. One says simply “Day and Date.” The second one has key words that I use as a framework for starting an entry.

In the beginning, I promised myself I would do one thing:

Write everything, erase nothing.~Natalie Goldberg, writer and teacher

I’m very proud that I’ve kept that promise to. It’s all there: the angst, the outright depression, the anger, the dreams and nightmares, the sexual fantasies, the struggle to grow and understand, the triumphs, and the silly, embarrassing things that no one, absolutely no one, will read until I’m long gone.

Yesterday I started an exciting second life for my old journals. I’ve found a journaling program that works on MacIntosh and I intend to convert all of the previous handwritten entries into an electronic format. I promised my husband, the historian, that I would not alter one thing as I transcribed it. Misspelled words stay misspelled; meandering sentence continues to meander. But—I say with a gleam in my eye—we agreed I could add commentary and additional material, like photographs.

If things go well, I figure it will take me about a year to keyboard all the entries. It’s amazing how fast doing this goes once I sat down to do it. For a writer, this is like discovering a mother load. No doubt some fiction will come out of it. I’ll let you know how it goes.

2008 February

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:56:52 -0700

Thought for February:

Inspiration that comes late is still inspiration

Several weeks ago, in bitterly cold weather, I sat in a parking lot, listening to the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s program, Tapestry. The host was interviewing a remarkable man with a soft, gentle Irish accent. His name was Father John O’Donohue.

I found what he had to say about the simplicity of life, about how our modern activities erode our spirit, and what we had to do to turn that around. At the end of the program, I was devastated to learn that he had died unexpectedly only a few days before, at an entirely too young an age. I had so many questions I wanted to ask him, and even though I’d only heard of him for the first time an hour previously, I felt a real sense of loss.

Thank goodness that he left a life-time of books to be savored.

To learn more about his life, go to http://www.jodonohue.com/

To hear the CBC interview (RealPlayer required), go to

http://www.cbc.ca/tapestry/archives/2008/011308.html

2007 November

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:58:07 -0600

What you put on your back influences what you feel inside.

Thirty years ago, I participated in a weekend workshop on soft toy making. We were test driving patterns for an art professor at the local university. At the end of the day, Dr. Duffey shyly took out a large white box. She said, “I’d like to branch out from toys. Do you think there might be a market for this?”

This was the most exquisite white-on-white vest I’d every seen. Every inch was covered with lace, pearls, ribbon, embroidery, and applique. Keep in mind that this was long before the current fascination with art clothing and magazines such as Belle Armoire. At that time, clothing “embellishment” meant embroidered mirrors on bell-bottoms or tie-dyed T-shirts.

She picked me to model the vest, and slipped in on over my shoulders. The thing must have weighed five pounds. As soon as it was in place, I swear I had visions. An entire fantasy rolled through my mind involving a haughty queen and a curse, and a band of women who came together to free the queen.

That was the day I realized that writers—especially those who write fantasies or historical pieces—need a costume trunk. If you’re stuck in the middle of a story, try dressing like your character, even if it’s just putting on a hat, feather boa, or piece of jewelry.

As far as I know, Dr. Duffey never branched out into clothing. I’ve always felt that was a terrible shame.

2007 October

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:59:20 -0600

A still point and a moving point have the most hope of intersecting.

This is one of those irritating, half-remembered inspirations, which meant a great deal to me at the time. I should have recorded the source, but life was busy, and I never got around to it. I know for certain it’s an idea from the Canadian author Rudy Weibe. http://www.canadianauthors.net/w/wiebe_rudy/

I think it comes from his Playing Dead: A Contemplation Concerning the Arctic (NeWest Press, 1989), but I only learned about the idea some time after the turn of this century.

Regardless of source, the idea is that in the Arctic, where landmarks are there—if you know how to look for them—when someone is lost, the best chance to be found is to combine a still point and a moving point. The trick is to know whether you should be the still point or the moving one.

For someone lost in the Arctic, the wisdom has been communally passed down for centuries. The lost person stays still; the search party moves.

What I learned from this is that when I’m batting my head against a seemingly-unsolvable problem, in essence when I’m lost, sometimes the best solution is to stop moving and find a still centre within myself. Chances are that there is a rescue party out there looking for me.

If you don’t believe this works, try this experiment the next time you lose your spouse in a shopping mall. Stop. Stand still. Your spouse will find you.

2007 September

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 12:00:36 -0600

Strong women have full lives. Some of my favorite strong women include

Rosa Parks, the woman who refused to move to the back of the bus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

Admiral Grace Hopper, computer pioneer and take-no-guff-from-anyone officer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

Elizabeth Daniels Squires, mystery writer. A lovely lady, sadly missed. http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/s/elizabeth-daniels-squire/

Emma Goldman. If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution, either http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman

elinor peace bailey, artist and doll maker elinor peace bailey: dolls

It took me a long time to realize that strong women have full lives. Unfortunately, my experiences as a child led me to believe that strong women had miserable lives. Thank goodness that, as I got older, I had wonderful experiences of learning just how varied and rich women’s lives can be.

I set out to make all of my women characters strong, and a little quirky. Okay, so maybe Pepper got out of hand in the quirky department, but she has a good heart. A character that surprised me was Nana Kate, another character’s formidable Southern grandmother. She once surprised a robber in her kitchen, on a day that she had to bake dozens of cookies for the church bazzar. She gave him an apron and put him to work baking. After all the cookies were cooling on racks, they sat down and had a cup of tea before she phoned the sheriff to have him arrested. She visited him in jail and he still mows her lawn.