Getting away to it all

This has been my least productive year as a fiction writer since I learned to hold a pencil. So far, anyhow. Since January I have been so busy with everything but writing that I occasionally forget that it is, as Sue Goyette frequently points out to me, my true work.

Instead of writing I have been running, and writing about running. And I have been struggling to learn to play the piano well enough to play it in front of a bunch of strangers at a recital in June. And I have been editing a book for a publisher on the South Shore, one that’s taken up a lot of my time, but has been an edifying project for a variety of reasons–though it has taken me MONTHS more to finish it than I thought it would. And I have been mentoring a young writer through the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. Again, satisfying work to be engaged in, but it all takes time from my true work. And I also wrote an essay for a McGraw-Hill Ryerson e-text-book for use in high school English classes. Which I was definitely not going to turn down. Even though it meant several hundred more words written that had nothing to do with Evan and Lansing and Dacey.

Who are, by the way, finally all together in one place. I got them all together and then abandoned them to work on these other things.

This may not be coincidental. In the past, I have stopped short at important places in whatever I’m writing, usually to give myself time to figure out what the hell is going to happen next.

I’ll find out this weekend. The Common is taking its show on the road, travelling to Tatamagouche tomorrow night. We’ll spend a few days in a beach house in River John, writing and hanging out, and on Friday night, we’ll read en masse at Fables. We are very excited about this! We’ve never done an event together before.

As for me, I love these retreats. Generally, I get a tonne of work done. Last fall, when we went to Windhorse Farm for a couple of days, I managed about five thousand words. If you think your manuscript overall is going to be around eighty or ninety thousand words, five thousand is a pretty significant chunk. So I’ll be hoping to get much, much deeper into my story this time.

And when I get back to Halifax I’ll be working as hard as I can to land the plane on all those other projects so that I can get back to my true work without needing to leave town to do it!

For your information

Oh hello! Thanks for dropping by! It seems there’s a spate of interest out there about some of my activities beyond writing. 

The rumours are true, I am learning to run. I am training for a 5K at the Bluenose Marathon, and you can read all about my adventures in running here.

Also, lots of people curious about my marital status. I am indeed married. To this amazing man.

And some people are wondering how they can contact me about matters related to public broadcasting. I can be best reached in that regard at stephanie dot domet at cbc dot ca

And yes, it’s true, Homing is being made into a movie! Trish Fish is writing it, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Better her than me!

We now return you to your regular programming — infrequent updates about the ongoing interminable process of writing a second novel.

Squeezing it in

This is the method I’m currently using for getting stuff done. I’m editing a book for one writer, and mentoring another and still trying to finish my own first draft. So I am cramming in bits of writing where I can, and trying not to freak out. The good news is I just booked off most of a week in February for writing. The bad news is, that’s still three weeks away.

Sigh.

Stephanie Domet is fat, rude, sucks and is married to Kev Corbett

Figured I might as well address all the most recent web searches that have brought people to this website. Every couple of weeks, some very flattering search turns up like Stephanie Domet rude or Stephanie Domet is fat or, this week, Stephanie Domet sucks. And there is perennial curiousity, it seems, about my little husband.

So let’s take these one at a time. Fat. Well, duh. Moving on.

Rude. I suspect it depends: on the day, who you ask, what you said to me first, how many people before you also said it to me that day. If I have been rude to you, I do apologize. I get a little ragged and snappish sometimes. Who doesn’t? It’s just, most people are able to get ragged and snappish and be halfway anonymous. Me, not so much.

Sucks. Well now, surely that’s subjective. What a thing to google! I mean, if you think so, do you really need the internet to shore you up?

Is married to Kev Corbett. Who loves me despite all of the above. Imagine.

In the homestretch

Well, here we are, just a few days of writing sabbatical left. Big sigh. At the farmers’ market yesterday, the clerk at Fox Hill said, that went fast. I said, yeah, if you think it went fast for you, imagine how fast it went for me. I can’t believe it’s almost over, but I’m so gratified to have had the time, and so pleased with what I accomplished, and with what I’ve discovered about the story and characters. I would love to have produced more pages, ultimately, what writer wouldn’t? But I feel like I have a solid jumping off point now to see it through to completion by September, second draft by the end of December.
Tour was great and exhausting and I learned a lot, and figured out some of my most important stuff on the road.
I’m feeling a bit nervous about my return to work. It’s a funny feeling. I know I’ll remember how to do it… though it make take me a few days to get back in the groove. I hope they still like me! I’ve been leading such a solitary life for the last couple of months, mostly talking to myself. I imagine I’ll feel somewhat flayed the first couple of days, imagining all those pairs of ears. Go easy on me, people. At least for the first week. After that, you can let fly.

You think you know someone…

So, lately, I’ve been struggling with Dacey Brown. I thought I knew her, and then I sit down to write her, and she comes out all robotic and weird, making snap decisions about things and refusing to smile pretty for the camera. I got super frustrated with it all today and had a very short day of writing. I said one sentence about it to Kev and he said, maybe she’s mentally ill. And I’m like, no, uh-uh, no way, she is not, I don’t know anything about that, I’m not writing it. Then I went to Ryan’s to play Boggle for a couple hours (oh Boggle, how I love you), and we had further conversations, during which his partner Erica brightly suggested, maybe she’s bi-polar. And again, I’m all in denial nope no way no how.

Then I get home and I have a couple hours to kill before my next thing and so I go spend a little time with my pen and paper and Dacey Brown and whaddya know… she’s a little on the bi-polar side. Like, on the spectrum. You know? Not diagnosed, not medicated, not dangerous to herself just–a little up and down. She’s making some crazy decisions right now, and we’re just going with it. The writing I did once I accepted Dacey as she is… best writing of the day.

This is one wild ride, that’s for sure.

Perchance to dream

I could do this, I could. I love my job, I do love it, but I could do this forever. I get up when it seems right to, and I make coffee. Maybe I read the paper or maybe, if I woke up with a sentence in mind, I write first. In any event, at some point in the morning, I put my hand on a pen and the pen on a page and I make sentences, and the part of my brain that occasionally says things like, hey, that sentence sucks! gets told to shut the hell up. Your time is not now, you’ll have your time later. And I write till it feels like it’s time to stop, and if it’s Monday, I go to the gym for yoga and a run. Or else I have lunch. Then I write a little more, and think about what to defrost for supper.

I love my job, but man, I love this more.