Author: Alison Hall

Just when I thought everyone who writes for the public is aware of the importance of grammar, sentence structure, editing, and comma placement, THIS headline glared back at me THIS WEEKEND!  It’s still happening folks.  I suppose I should be forgiving and say yeah, mistakes are made all the time.  I make them too.  There will probably be something in this very post that I overlook even after the fourth time reading through it and editing, revising and tightening sentences to flow for your reading pleasure.
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This past weekend was another weekend of all things books. My partner and I are always buying books, at used book stores (like the Net Shed in Meaford or Williamsford Bookstore and Cafe in Williamsford), Goodwill, local independent bookstores (like Wordsworth Books, uptown Waterloo), and popular bookstores (like Chapters).

After filling our bookcases with a new mass of reading material, the shelves doubly stacked and books squeezed in on top of rows, we thought we needed to – haha you’re thinking GET RID OF SOME – but NO! (not yet!) We needed to buy more books for the 8 year old in our lives! Sarah’s son, Scott, needed books!
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This past weekend was a flurry of activity. A garage sale – and you all know how much work that is if you’ve ever held one! It’s like going shopping in your own house but finding what you don’t want anymore, hauling it to the garage no matter what size it is, then moving it all again out into the driveway when the big day arrives.

People pull up to your house – they’ve seen the signs you taped on the post at the end of the street.  Maybe you’re not even finished arranging those 1980’s coffee mugs or children’s t-shirts, but you need to say Good Morning! and welcome them.  That’s good sales, and also polite 🙂  They may be happy and pleasant, but they might be sour – staunch deal-makers and breakers, garage sale scavengers out early with the first sips of their Tim Horton’s coffees.

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I had a bus once.  It was the vehicle I drove to work everyday for a year and a half.  A 1984 Ford school bus van with a 350 engine that ran on propane.  I had seen it for sale in an empty parking lot, and day after day I drove by it, my heart lurching in delight at the possibilities – I would rip the seats out, paint it Miami blue, make funky curtains for it, build a deep lounging seat in the back that doubled as a bed, fill it with comfy cushions…I could picture myself driving it, groovy beads hanging from the rear view mirror, stereo playing, the purple carpet.  I had to have it.  It had a destination sign after all.  One that lit up with a flip of a switch over my head.  One that I could change the magnetic letters around to say anything I wanted.  Go anywhere I wanted.

This past weekend I was at the Ontario Writers Conference in Ajax.  I have to admit when I first walked in the doors of Deer Creek Banquet Hall I felt like I didn’t belong.  That feeling persisted through the Friday night at the Festival of Authors, where I listened to authors unknown to me.  Authors who had succeeded and who had already published their work.  Rob Winger read his poetry, Plum Johnson read from her memoir (I was sucked in and bought the book later), and Catherine Gildiner, who read a comedic excerpt from her memoir – about a time in the 60’s in London and her friend sleeping with Jimi Hendrix????  Maybe I was with like-minded people after all! Read more

I have fallen in love with my bookcases lately. So full of books to read. I was in love with bookstores before, you see.

I would come home from the store and unpack all the books I bought and stand before my bookcases trying to find a spot I could slide these new ones into.  And the books just kept filling up those bookcases because I just wasn’t done with bookstores yet.  Some I’ve read, but more are waiting patiently for me to open their covers, only just as wide as the binding allows, to feel the paper, to gaze at the first word, the first sentence.  It feels like I’m embarking on a new journey, each and every time, and once the first chapter is behind me I am fully engrossed.  Sometimes when I am finished a book, when I feel the need to read the last few sentences over and over again, when the story has been particularly emotional, I need to wait a day or two to begin another journey.  I need to let the story flow through me all over again.  I feel attached to it.  Sometimes I love that feeling so much I can’t read another book until that feeling passes.

Quick way to get a thrill huh?

The first couple of books were enjoyable, well written, easy to read, and pulled at my heart-strings. (Have you read “The End of The Alphabet” by CS Richardson?)  On with the next one, and the next…I lay on the couch with a brown furry throw over my legs, (it is promptly kicked off during a hot flash!). I’m propped up just write…sorry – right…with perfectly plump pillows, my glasses are clean, the house is dark except for the reading light strategically placed behind me, a can of gingerale is within reach on the corner of the coffee table, and once I settle in, George the cat climbs into my lap.  He is restless, but he doesn’t stop me from turning pages.  Sometimes I doze off, my stillness and the silence is so comforting.  But when my eyes open again, I raise the book up off my lap and continue.  Until I doze again….

This is what my evenings have been like lately.  I LOVE THIS.  And when I head off to bed, I take the book with me and do the same thing there.  Until I doze off for good.

The latest book has got me thinking though.  About writing.  I’m noticing this time, that I’m reading, but taking into account what is being said, when, and why, and how.  It’s not distracting me from the book very much.  I think though, that this book is less emotional – it’s called The Big Tiny (about Dee Williams building her own tiny home! brackets within brackets here (I wanna do it too!)) than my preferred type of book and I’m able to analyze the structure in a more detached way.  Perhaps this is why I should re-read some of my other favourite books to see what the author has done to affect me so much.

How has the author sucked me in emotionally that I need to read a book twice to figure it out!  Now that’s a successful book in my opinion.  That’s exactly how I’d like to write.  To engross the reader so deeply in the story and the characters, and the feelings of the characters, that they are unaware that they have attached themselves to your creation, a set of pages bound up in a paper cover, words and sentences, phrasing and timing..

Excuse me now, I have books to read.

Writing…writing…I’m a writer…I used to be a writer….I used to write!  Ah! Memories!…of being connected to something deeper than the daily life I live!  To sit with myself and the words on the screen, creating, organizing sentences, editing and thinking, my coffee and snacks around me, the word count increasing, the silence…

It’s been a few months since I sat down at my laptop – it’s a fresh new one now, a MacBook Air! – and spent some time.  Moving to a new city has been a busy and destabilizing experience after being settled for ten years…Boxes to unpack and organize where on earth the contents would go (omg, more books????).

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I’ve heard that exercise boosts creativity.

My third novel marathon begins this Friday.   At eight o’clock sharp the writing will begin – 40 writers in a room with their laptops, typing away the hours, the silence will envelope us and we will focus.

However, I have stared at the end of a sentence for god knows how long, the lovely silence lulling me into a stupor that I can’t seem to shake.

What to do…. Read more