Nov 2010
Time To Put It On The Shelf
28/11/10 03:48 Filed in: Writing
On Friday morning, before going to work, I made some
final small revisions and then saved the final
chapter of my new draft of The Silent
Goodbye to the hard drive of my netbook. I then
opened a new file, copied the text from each of my
chapter files into this new file, and saved the
entire manuscript as a single entity.
Done. Wow.
The writing adventure that I began on September 8 has come to a close (at least temporarily). As you might recall, I sent my mystery novel submission package to a publisher in early September, expecting to wait for weeks if not months to receive the inevitable rejection. Instead, I found an e-mail in my inbox two days later, asking for the complete manuscript to be sent by return e-mail. I sent it and, again expecting a long wait, I was amazed to find not an outright rejection but a very helpful set of suggestions from the publisher just four days after I had sent the full manuscript.
That was Sunday, September 8.
My original draft had two major plot lines: the action plot, where Gold is hunted by a trained killer after witnessing the assassination of a police officer; and the trial plot, where Gold represents a street-gang leader on trial for sexual assault. In that first draft, I had arranged these two plots consecutively. In other words, most the action plot took place in the first half of the novel while the trial took up most of the second half of the book. The two then came together at the end.
The publisher had some nice things to say about the writing of the trial plot and advised me to restructure the novel to have the trial begin at the opening of the book. This would require me to do a complete rewrite, in effect to have the plots run concurrently, trial by day, action plot by night. It made a lot of sense and, as soon as I began the rather difficult task of reordering the scenes, I found it brought a new pace, a new life to the entire book.
The publisher also made some clear character-related suggestions, which resulted in my writing one fairly prominent minor character out of the book completely, reducing the role of a second, and transforming a third into an entirely new person. Once again, however, I found that, as I was doing the work, the novel was getting stronger and stronger.
Back on September 8, I had set myself a target of completing the revision before the end of the year and submitting the revised manuscript, properly polished, to the publisher early in the new year.
I'm still on track. I think the work I've done to date has been good and I believe the novel is the better for it. I have more work ahead of me in the correcting, editing and polishing process but, for now, I have to put the current manuscript on the shelf for a couple of weeks. I need to get a little distance from it, so that when I go to do that final polish, I'm a little more objective, more able to see what needs to be done.
Still, it's a great feeling to have gotten this far. And to be as happy as I am with the outcome.
Done. Wow.
The writing adventure that I began on September 8 has come to a close (at least temporarily). As you might recall, I sent my mystery novel submission package to a publisher in early September, expecting to wait for weeks if not months to receive the inevitable rejection. Instead, I found an e-mail in my inbox two days later, asking for the complete manuscript to be sent by return e-mail. I sent it and, again expecting a long wait, I was amazed to find not an outright rejection but a very helpful set of suggestions from the publisher just four days after I had sent the full manuscript.
That was Sunday, September 8.
My original draft had two major plot lines: the action plot, where Gold is hunted by a trained killer after witnessing the assassination of a police officer; and the trial plot, where Gold represents a street-gang leader on trial for sexual assault. In that first draft, I had arranged these two plots consecutively. In other words, most the action plot took place in the first half of the novel while the trial took up most of the second half of the book. The two then came together at the end.
The publisher had some nice things to say about the writing of the trial plot and advised me to restructure the novel to have the trial begin at the opening of the book. This would require me to do a complete rewrite, in effect to have the plots run concurrently, trial by day, action plot by night. It made a lot of sense and, as soon as I began the rather difficult task of reordering the scenes, I found it brought a new pace, a new life to the entire book.
The publisher also made some clear character-related suggestions, which resulted in my writing one fairly prominent minor character out of the book completely, reducing the role of a second, and transforming a third into an entirely new person. Once again, however, I found that, as I was doing the work, the novel was getting stronger and stronger.
Back on September 8, I had set myself a target of completing the revision before the end of the year and submitting the revised manuscript, properly polished, to the publisher early in the new year.
I'm still on track. I think the work I've done to date has been good and I believe the novel is the better for it. I have more work ahead of me in the correcting, editing and polishing process but, for now, I have to put the current manuscript on the shelf for a couple of weeks. I need to get a little distance from it, so that when I go to do that final polish, I'm a little more objective, more able to see what needs to be done.
Still, it's a great feeling to have gotten this far. And to be as happy as I am with the outcome.
Coming Along Swimmingly
25/11/10 07:44 Filed in: Writing
I haven't been writing much lately about writing. The
main reason for that is that my work on the revisions
of The Silent Goodbye are coming along
really well and I didn't want to interrupt that by
writing a blog about it.
I have been working in regular concentrated sessions on the revisions and have been making excellent progress. In fact, I have now begun work on the final day of the novel. That is very, very exciting for me. What's more exciting is how pleased I'm feeling about the revised manuscript to date.
In accordance with the suggestions of the publisher, I have started the trial right at the beginning of the book and then intertwined the courtroom scenes with the scenes of Phillip Gold's duel with the trained killer. It's working well. A nice balance, in fact. And it keeps the pace moving at a heck of a rate.
I plan to finish this draft by the weekend. Wow. I can't believe I actually typed that sentence. I plan to finish this draft by the weekend. Then it will go on the shelf for a couple of weeks before I return to it in mid-December with a fresh eye.
The hope is to have a polished manuscript to send out by the end of the year.
So far, so good. I'm enjoying the writing and happy with the results. The Silent Goodbye may just make some noise yet!
I have been working in regular concentrated sessions on the revisions and have been making excellent progress. In fact, I have now begun work on the final day of the novel. That is very, very exciting for me. What's more exciting is how pleased I'm feeling about the revised manuscript to date.
In accordance with the suggestions of the publisher, I have started the trial right at the beginning of the book and then intertwined the courtroom scenes with the scenes of Phillip Gold's duel with the trained killer. It's working well. A nice balance, in fact. And it keeps the pace moving at a heck of a rate.
I plan to finish this draft by the weekend. Wow. I can't believe I actually typed that sentence. I plan to finish this draft by the weekend. Then it will go on the shelf for a couple of weeks before I return to it in mid-December with a fresh eye.
The hope is to have a polished manuscript to send out by the end of the year.
So far, so good. I'm enjoying the writing and happy with the results. The Silent Goodbye may just make some noise yet!
Deathly Hallows Part 1 Impresses
22/11/10 19:25 Filed in: Film
I am about to offer my thoughts (a casual review,
perhaps) on the latest installment of the Harry
Potter movies series, Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows, Part 1, which opened in
theatres last week. Before I begin, however, I think
I should offer up a series of disclaimers, if you
will, to allow you to understand clearly where I'm
coming from in writing these thoughts for your
reading pleasure:
1. I am a huge fan of J.K. Rowling's seven Harry Potter novels. I have read each one at least five times and I have probably read (or listened to on CD) the seventh novel, The Deathly Hallows, more than 10 times.
2. As a member of the Board of the Hamilton Literacy Council a couple of years ago, I was asked to name my favourite novel. Ignoring such classics as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Jane Austen's Emma, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, and even Stephen King's The Stand, I chose Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as my all-time favourite novel.
3. I own all of the first six Harry Potter movie adaptations on DVD and have watched them countless times, even if I'm not particularly happy with several of them.
4. I have begun to compile my own Harry Potter concordance and I have begun writing my own Rowling-world novel, The Way Forward (which appears on this website).
5. I am often consulted by friends on Harry Potter trivia and have never lost a game of Harry Potter Sceneit, though I don't get to play nearly as often as I would like.
Perhaps most importantly, I HATED the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Despised it. I watch it often enough to start to appreciate some of its unique merits but I still abhor what director David Yates and Co did to Rowling's excellent sixth novel.
I despised the fact that Yates and Co altered Rowling's original book in ways that went way beyond what was necessary to trim it to feature-film length or to make it more visually appealing. I felt that Yates and Kloves (I think that's the screenwriter's name) actually believed they could improve on the original, by inserting extra scenes of their own creation, changing the motivations of characters, rewriting the story entirely.
So I approached this new film with no small degree of trepidation. After all, Yates was still in the director's seat and he'd used the same screenwriter to adapt Rowling's tremendous novel. I was prepared to hate it.
I'm pleased to sat that, after the debacle that was the film version of The Half-Blood Prince, The Deathly Hallows Part 1 is a breath of fresh, Rowling air. Yes, the first 500 pages of the original novel have been adapted to become the two-and-a-half hour film but the adaptation is respectful of the book. It seems to recognise that Rowling's novel tells a ripping good story in an interesting and exciting way.
In trusting the source novel and in deciding to split the book into two parts, Yates has created what I think is a really good movie. Yes, my intimate knowledge of the seven books and six previous movies allowed me to catch references that others might miss and, yes, my partner, who is familiar with the Harry Potter stories but has not even read all seven of the books, found this movie a little tough to follow in places. But I can honestly say that this movie provides great entertainment for both fans and newcomers alike and is probably my favourite film since The Prisoner of Azkaban.
In the interests of brevity, here is a list of five things I really liked about this new movie:
1. Emma Watson as Hermione. Watson carries this film, just as Hermione carries Ron and Harry throughout the story. The young actress performs beautifully in quietly emotional scenes, such as early in the film when Hermione erases herself from her parents lives in order to keep them safe from Voldemort. Watson also holds her own in the scenes of great conflict and action, not allowing her character to be overwhelmed by the many overwrought villains who surround her. And she has an impressive ability to convey a great deal with a simple facial expression.
2. Director Yates' willingness to film entire scenes almost exactly as they appear in the book, trusting Rowling and the actors to make it work;
3. The several small changes that Yates and crew made to render aspects of the story simpler to convey or more visually interesting, changes which were both surprisingly creative and still true to the spirit and flavour of the novel: for example, rather than having to explain how Harry's use of "Expelliarmus" during the opening battle scene gave him away as the real Harry Potter, Yates has Hedwig intervene in the battle to protect Harry, thus giving her death a level of heroism that is missing in the novel and providing an easy but still plausible explanation for how Voldemort identified the real Potter;
4. The humour in the movie, matching that of the book, which brings much-needed comic relief to an intense, brooding story; and
5. The slower sections of the film, which allow an exploration of the finer points of the plot and characterization and give the three main actors a chance to show off their chemistry and really shine.
I plan to go to see the film again soon. I don't know if a second viewing will change my impressions of it but I'm willing to take that chance. And hopefully, this time, I won't have a family of obnoxious loud mouths behind me, making idiotic comments all the way through the film.
1. I am a huge fan of J.K. Rowling's seven Harry Potter novels. I have read each one at least five times and I have probably read (or listened to on CD) the seventh novel, The Deathly Hallows, more than 10 times.
2. As a member of the Board of the Hamilton Literacy Council a couple of years ago, I was asked to name my favourite novel. Ignoring such classics as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Jane Austen's Emma, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, and even Stephen King's The Stand, I chose Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as my all-time favourite novel.
3. I own all of the first six Harry Potter movie adaptations on DVD and have watched them countless times, even if I'm not particularly happy with several of them.
4. I have begun to compile my own Harry Potter concordance and I have begun writing my own Rowling-world novel, The Way Forward (which appears on this website).
5. I am often consulted by friends on Harry Potter trivia and have never lost a game of Harry Potter Sceneit, though I don't get to play nearly as often as I would like.
Perhaps most importantly, I HATED the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Despised it. I watch it often enough to start to appreciate some of its unique merits but I still abhor what director David Yates and Co did to Rowling's excellent sixth novel.
I despised the fact that Yates and Co altered Rowling's original book in ways that went way beyond what was necessary to trim it to feature-film length or to make it more visually appealing. I felt that Yates and Kloves (I think that's the screenwriter's name) actually believed they could improve on the original, by inserting extra scenes of their own creation, changing the motivations of characters, rewriting the story entirely.
So I approached this new film with no small degree of trepidation. After all, Yates was still in the director's seat and he'd used the same screenwriter to adapt Rowling's tremendous novel. I was prepared to hate it.
I'm pleased to sat that, after the debacle that was the film version of The Half-Blood Prince, The Deathly Hallows Part 1 is a breath of fresh, Rowling air. Yes, the first 500 pages of the original novel have been adapted to become the two-and-a-half hour film but the adaptation is respectful of the book. It seems to recognise that Rowling's novel tells a ripping good story in an interesting and exciting way.
In trusting the source novel and in deciding to split the book into two parts, Yates has created what I think is a really good movie. Yes, my intimate knowledge of the seven books and six previous movies allowed me to catch references that others might miss and, yes, my partner, who is familiar with the Harry Potter stories but has not even read all seven of the books, found this movie a little tough to follow in places. But I can honestly say that this movie provides great entertainment for both fans and newcomers alike and is probably my favourite film since The Prisoner of Azkaban.
In the interests of brevity, here is a list of five things I really liked about this new movie:
1. Emma Watson as Hermione. Watson carries this film, just as Hermione carries Ron and Harry throughout the story. The young actress performs beautifully in quietly emotional scenes, such as early in the film when Hermione erases herself from her parents lives in order to keep them safe from Voldemort. Watson also holds her own in the scenes of great conflict and action, not allowing her character to be overwhelmed by the many overwrought villains who surround her. And she has an impressive ability to convey a great deal with a simple facial expression.
2. Director Yates' willingness to film entire scenes almost exactly as they appear in the book, trusting Rowling and the actors to make it work;
3. The several small changes that Yates and crew made to render aspects of the story simpler to convey or more visually interesting, changes which were both surprisingly creative and still true to the spirit and flavour of the novel: for example, rather than having to explain how Harry's use of "Expelliarmus" during the opening battle scene gave him away as the real Harry Potter, Yates has Hedwig intervene in the battle to protect Harry, thus giving her death a level of heroism that is missing in the novel and providing an easy but still plausible explanation for how Voldemort identified the real Potter;
4. The humour in the movie, matching that of the book, which brings much-needed comic relief to an intense, brooding story; and
5. The slower sections of the film, which allow an exploration of the finer points of the plot and characterization and give the three main actors a chance to show off their chemistry and really shine.
I plan to go to see the film again soon. I don't know if a second viewing will change my impressions of it but I'm willing to take that chance. And hopefully, this time, I won't have a family of obnoxious loud mouths behind me, making idiotic comments all the way through the film.
Kudos to a Couple of Writing Pals
17/11/10 18:01 Filed in: Writing
Just a quick note to send out a hearty
congratulations to my friend, Ross Pennie, whose
first novel, Tainted, recently won the 17th
Annual Arts Hamilton Literary Award for fiction.
Fantastic news and well deserved.
Ross and I were in a couple of writer's groups together back in Hamilton and Tainted was the book he was working on during our most recent meetings (before I moved out East). He was kind enough to mention both me and our writing buddy, John Hewson, in his acceptance speech, a kindness for which I am very grateful.
And speaking of Dr. Hewson, Ross brought to my attention that an excerpt of John's excellent but unpublished novel has now been included in the second volume of an anthology called Canadian Voices. That's a real feather in John's bonnet. Again, this novel (whose title I will not include here since I do not have John's permission) is superbly written; I hope his inclusion in Canadian Voices will help bring John's work to light (and to the attention of a fiction publisher).
Ross, John and I met steadily for a period of several years while I lived in Hamilton, to discuss writing mostly but also books, movies and pop culture of all types. It truly was a privilege getting a chance to know these two gentlemen and their writing. I guess you never know how good you have it until you move on to something else!
Congrats to both Ross and John for recognition well-deserved. I understand that Ross' next novel is expected to hit the bookstores in the spring, published by ECW Press in Toronto. That's something to look forward to (if you don't mind me ending this blog post with a preposition!).
Ross and I were in a couple of writer's groups together back in Hamilton and Tainted was the book he was working on during our most recent meetings (before I moved out East). He was kind enough to mention both me and our writing buddy, John Hewson, in his acceptance speech, a kindness for which I am very grateful.
And speaking of Dr. Hewson, Ross brought to my attention that an excerpt of John's excellent but unpublished novel has now been included in the second volume of an anthology called Canadian Voices. That's a real feather in John's bonnet. Again, this novel (whose title I will not include here since I do not have John's permission) is superbly written; I hope his inclusion in Canadian Voices will help bring John's work to light (and to the attention of a fiction publisher).
Ross, John and I met steadily for a period of several years while I lived in Hamilton, to discuss writing mostly but also books, movies and pop culture of all types. It truly was a privilege getting a chance to know these two gentlemen and their writing. I guess you never know how good you have it until you move on to something else!
Congrats to both Ross and John for recognition well-deserved. I understand that Ross' next novel is expected to hit the bookstores in the spring, published by ECW Press in Toronto. That's something to look forward to (if you don't mind me ending this blog post with a preposition!).
Not Remembering But Finding Out
16/11/10 08:00 Filed in: Reading
I was eleven, I think, when my mom took me for a
brief vacation to Ottawa, our nation's capital. I'm
not sure why it was just me who got the chance to go:
probably some combination of a lack of money to bring
my siblings, my own strong desire to see the capital
city and the fact that Mom didn't want to leave me
behind so that my brothers and sisters had to take
care of me. I don't know.
I remember it being a wonderful trip. We tried to see everything we could and even the bus ride there and back was a lot of fun. My most vivid memory, however, was our visit to the National War Museum. I was a bit of a World War II buff at the time and it was fascinating to see so much of what I had been reading about become real and tangible. I remember seeing a Nazi staff car with a bullet hole in the windscreen, various airplanes that I'd only seen pictures of to that point, and the re-creation of the WWII trench.
Mom didn't want to go into the trench, with its realistic sound effects and light flashes, but she saw how much I wanted to go and finally agreed. I guess I was too young to see just how strong her disinclination was but she overcame her aversion for my sake.
It was an amazingly realistic experience. I was enthralled but my mom, well, I wish now I hadn't convinced her to go in. First, she got this panicked look on her face. Then she started to cry, tears streaming down her cheeks. Then she ran out.
I found her on a bench a good distance from the entrance to the trench, her face in her hands. She tried to put on a brave face and, ignoring my questions, hustled me off to see other exhibits. Sometime later (I think it was a couple of years later, in fact), I asked her about it. She told me it was too real, too overwhelming. It brought her vividly, viscerally back to her childhood in Holland during the war.
She was about three and a half when the German military over-ran Holland and nine when the Canadian Army finally liberated her town. She had spent most of her childhood under Nazi occupation, in fact.
Just recently, with Remembrance Day here in New Brunswick, I've been thinking about that day. Patti and I talked on November 11 about the terror my mom and her family must have felt for the entire six-year period of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. That conversation led to a wider ranging conversation about the two world wars, why they happened, how they happened, and what their results were.
And we talked as well about how it must have felt to be a soldier, for example, enlisting in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1914, preparing to go off to Europe for what you believed was a just war, knowing that the chances were very strong that you would die while overseas.
I simply cannot imagine what it would be like to do that, to volunteer for that duty, to travel across the world to face an "enemy" you didn't know, to spend every hour of every day knowing that the order would soon come for you to go "over the top" and quite likely die. And if you survived, if you watched your comrades get mowed down but somehow stayed alive yourself, you'd soon be facing the same order, the same task, the same odds.
It's a feeling, a life, a courage that I simply will never know.
That thinking led me to decide that I should do some reading, if only to find out what those men were thinking, feeling at the time. How they managed to get through it, if they did at all.
So I picked up four books from the local library: two diaries of Canadian soldiers chronicling their experiences in the First World War and two containing the letters sent home by Canadian soldiers in that same war. Will these books help me to understand what life was like for these men? I don't know. But I am interested to find out what their experiences were and how they responded to them.
I remember it being a wonderful trip. We tried to see everything we could and even the bus ride there and back was a lot of fun. My most vivid memory, however, was our visit to the National War Museum. I was a bit of a World War II buff at the time and it was fascinating to see so much of what I had been reading about become real and tangible. I remember seeing a Nazi staff car with a bullet hole in the windscreen, various airplanes that I'd only seen pictures of to that point, and the re-creation of the WWII trench.
Mom didn't want to go into the trench, with its realistic sound effects and light flashes, but she saw how much I wanted to go and finally agreed. I guess I was too young to see just how strong her disinclination was but she overcame her aversion for my sake.
It was an amazingly realistic experience. I was enthralled but my mom, well, I wish now I hadn't convinced her to go in. First, she got this panicked look on her face. Then she started to cry, tears streaming down her cheeks. Then she ran out.
I found her on a bench a good distance from the entrance to the trench, her face in her hands. She tried to put on a brave face and, ignoring my questions, hustled me off to see other exhibits. Sometime later (I think it was a couple of years later, in fact), I asked her about it. She told me it was too real, too overwhelming. It brought her vividly, viscerally back to her childhood in Holland during the war.
She was about three and a half when the German military over-ran Holland and nine when the Canadian Army finally liberated her town. She had spent most of her childhood under Nazi occupation, in fact.
Just recently, with Remembrance Day here in New Brunswick, I've been thinking about that day. Patti and I talked on November 11 about the terror my mom and her family must have felt for the entire six-year period of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. That conversation led to a wider ranging conversation about the two world wars, why they happened, how they happened, and what their results were.
And we talked as well about how it must have felt to be a soldier, for example, enlisting in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1914, preparing to go off to Europe for what you believed was a just war, knowing that the chances were very strong that you would die while overseas.
I simply cannot imagine what it would be like to do that, to volunteer for that duty, to travel across the world to face an "enemy" you didn't know, to spend every hour of every day knowing that the order would soon come for you to go "over the top" and quite likely die. And if you survived, if you watched your comrades get mowed down but somehow stayed alive yourself, you'd soon be facing the same order, the same task, the same odds.
It's a feeling, a life, a courage that I simply will never know.
That thinking led me to decide that I should do some reading, if only to find out what those men were thinking, feeling at the time. How they managed to get through it, if they did at all.
So I picked up four books from the local library: two diaries of Canadian soldiers chronicling their experiences in the First World War and two containing the letters sent home by Canadian soldiers in that same war. Will these books help me to understand what life was like for these men? I don't know. But I am interested to find out what their experiences were and how they responded to them.
Happiness Is...
13/11/10 21:37 Filed in: Writing
It's been a good week, writing wise. I've been able
to carve out an hour almost every day to do the work
of revising my Phillip Gold novel.
And I've made some excellent progress. I think I've finally gotten the tone right for the scene between my major character and the police inspector, wherein Gold tells the story of his violent past. I'm pleased with it, though I plan to make several more passes through the scene to make sure it is really sharp.
And I think the trial scenes are continuing to develop well. I have one more day of court to write/revise and then the climactic scenes of both plots. Great stuff. The final draft should come out at about 75,000 words, which isn't bad. It's a bit shorter than the first draft but I don't think that's a problem. As long as it is substantial, has an interesting plot and moves well.
I have to force myself to keep up the momentum. It's not always easy, with all the other challenges and demands in my life. But it would be great to get this draft done by the end of November, then to have a chance to let it sit for a couple of weeks before coming back to it for a final review and revision before the end of the year.
That's the goal, anyway. Happiness truly is making good, solid progress towards the completion of a goal.
And I've made some excellent progress. I think I've finally gotten the tone right for the scene between my major character and the police inspector, wherein Gold tells the story of his violent past. I'm pleased with it, though I plan to make several more passes through the scene to make sure it is really sharp.
And I think the trial scenes are continuing to develop well. I have one more day of court to write/revise and then the climactic scenes of both plots. Great stuff. The final draft should come out at about 75,000 words, which isn't bad. It's a bit shorter than the first draft but I don't think that's a problem. As long as it is substantial, has an interesting plot and moves well.
I have to force myself to keep up the momentum. It's not always easy, with all the other challenges and demands in my life. But it would be great to get this draft done by the end of November, then to have a chance to let it sit for a couple of weeks before coming back to it for a final review and revision before the end of the year.
That's the goal, anyway. Happiness truly is making good, solid progress towards the completion of a goal.
Birding in Ontario
05/11/10 11:17 Filed in: Birds
Gavin and I both have the same camera (Olympus SP550UZ) and a common interest in seeing and photographing birds so it's a real pleasure to go to these kinds of places with him. With both of us so caught up in watching and taking pictures of the birds, I never feel like I'm irritating him when I stand still for ten minutes or more, trying to get the perfect shot of a nuthatch, for example. In fact, there was a white-breasted nuthatch there that day but my photographic efforts (in spite of long waits) were a waste of time. The nuthatch was just too quick for me.
Sadly, when we went into downtown Toronto to pick my sister up at her work, we discovered a dead bird on the sidewalk. It's a kind I've never seen and, even though I took clear pictures and sat with the photo and my bird books for some time, I still don't have a positive ID on the poor little guy. It looked to me like he'd been hit by a car, perhaps as he flew across the road.
A miserable sight but it kind of captured how I felt about Toronto's downtown core: lots of development at the cost of the natural world.
Yes, I'm becoming a true NBer, aren't I?
A Moment With Mom
03/11/10 08:18 Filed in: Travel
As part of my recent visit to Ontario, my sister Lynn
and I had our first opportunity to visit the London
Plane Tree we had planted at the Royal Botanical
Garden's Arboretum in Burlington in honor of our much
loved Mom.
I'm pleased that I was able to go to see it and
especially pleased that Lynn was there with me. She
and I have gone through a lot together over the years
and I'm glad to have been able to share this moment
with her.
The tree is already quite large and, judging from the fully grown plane trees in the area, it will be massive by the time it's an adult. What is more impressive is the location: beautiful. It's near the forest that lines the water, between the Lilac Dell and the shrubbery walk. It has an open space to itself and a small bench nearby. When you stand looking at the tree, you can also catch glimpses of the water in the distance.
I'm happy to have a place that I can go (or at least think of) when I want to feel close to my Mom. I don't know how often I'll get back there but it's good to know that the tree will grow and people, birds and other wildlife will get the chance to enjoy it for years.
The only negative was the fact that we got a
$35 parking ticket while we were visiting. We had
passes for the Arboretum but the ticket office was
closed so we just drove in. Oh well, we'll look at
the fine as another contribution to the good work of
the RBG.
On our way out, as we headed into the city across the high level bridge, one of the bald eagles that have taken up residence in the Arboretum soared over our car, giving us a lovely view as he passed. Again, I'm not the most spiritual person but it's hard not to notice the pattern: every time Lynn or I has an intense Mom moment an eagle or a heron (two of Mom's favourites) makes an appearance.
The tree is already quite large and, judging from the fully grown plane trees in the area, it will be massive by the time it's an adult. What is more impressive is the location: beautiful. It's near the forest that lines the water, between the Lilac Dell and the shrubbery walk. It has an open space to itself and a small bench nearby. When you stand looking at the tree, you can also catch glimpses of the water in the distance.
I'm happy to have a place that I can go (or at least think of) when I want to feel close to my Mom. I don't know how often I'll get back there but it's good to know that the tree will grow and people, birds and other wildlife will get the chance to enjoy it for years.
On our way out, as we headed into the city across the high level bridge, one of the bald eagles that have taken up residence in the Arboretum soared over our car, giving us a lovely view as he passed. Again, I'm not the most spiritual person but it's hard not to notice the pattern: every time Lynn or I has an intense Mom moment an eagle or a heron (two of Mom's favourites) makes an appearance.
A Quick Trip
Just back from a quick trip back to visit friends and
family in Ontario. A really nice visit, not too
frenetic, not too tiring.
While hanging out with my sister and brother-in-law, I actually found time to do some revision work on my Phillip Gold novel. It's coming along well. Most of what I did was cutting and pasting to reflect the new plot-order but it's progress. I really like the way it's turning out.
I also got the chance while in Toronto to see the original movie version (taken from Swedish TV) of Stieg Larsson's first thriller, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I was very impressed. The casting was perfect, with real-life (rather than Hollywood-perfect) people in the various roles, and I felt they got the two main characters spot on. The direction and editing were also excellent, with a lot of nice artistic touches that added to the excellently paced mystery.
What impressed me most, however, was how they dealt with the challenge of reducing a long, involved novel into a 150-minute film. Instead of dwelling on the sexual violence that permeates the book (and convinced me not to read the second novel in the series), they actually focused on Larsson's complex, rivetting mystery: the disappearance of Harriet Vanger. Great choice and it made for a fantastic film.
I actually believe that this is one of the few times that the movie is better than the book.
Meantime, I was continuing to read the fourth Rowling novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I am absolutely loving it. It was great to be among friends who really appreciate the Rowling novels too: I had several very enjoyable chats with Emily and Clare on Potter-related topics while in Hamilton, which always adds to my enjoyment of my visits.
So now I'm back in Freddie and back into real life. I hope to be able to find some time to focus on Phillip Gold over the next couple of days to keep the momentum going. And I'll have to think about looking up the second Swedish film adaptation of Larsson's book. Maybe I'll just watch the movie and not even read the book!
While hanging out with my sister and brother-in-law, I actually found time to do some revision work on my Phillip Gold novel. It's coming along well. Most of what I did was cutting and pasting to reflect the new plot-order but it's progress. I really like the way it's turning out.
I also got the chance while in Toronto to see the original movie version (taken from Swedish TV) of Stieg Larsson's first thriller, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I was very impressed. The casting was perfect, with real-life (rather than Hollywood-perfect) people in the various roles, and I felt they got the two main characters spot on. The direction and editing were also excellent, with a lot of nice artistic touches that added to the excellently paced mystery.
What impressed me most, however, was how they dealt with the challenge of reducing a long, involved novel into a 150-minute film. Instead of dwelling on the sexual violence that permeates the book (and convinced me not to read the second novel in the series), they actually focused on Larsson's complex, rivetting mystery: the disappearance of Harriet Vanger. Great choice and it made for a fantastic film.
I actually believe that this is one of the few times that the movie is better than the book.
Meantime, I was continuing to read the fourth Rowling novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I am absolutely loving it. It was great to be among friends who really appreciate the Rowling novels too: I had several very enjoyable chats with Emily and Clare on Potter-related topics while in Hamilton, which always adds to my enjoyment of my visits.
So now I'm back in Freddie and back into real life. I hope to be able to find some time to focus on Phillip Gold over the next couple of days to keep the momentum going. And I'll have to think about looking up the second Swedish film adaptation of Larsson's book. Maybe I'll just watch the movie and not even read the book!