Time slides away like snow slithering over an open field, often imperceptibly. I see that such is the case when I look back to my last website entry, posted well over a year ago. Since that last post, I’ve been absorbed in the task of completing the manuscript for The Will; head down, draft after draft, I’ve focused all my time and creative energy on the writing and lost track of the days and months until this past October when after seven years of research, writing, rewriting and edits, I dotted the story’s last “I” and crossed the last “t.”
Having completed the manuscript, I then turned my attention to other writing. Off Topic Publishing offered a writing competition where they invited creative nonfiction entries describing a time when the author had either physically or psychologically lost her way. I scanned my memory for such an occasion. Sometimes getting lost can actually be a good thing. Its an invitation to explore beyond boundaries. Its where I often find things I don’t expect. Positive discoveries. And besides, to wander is not necessarily synonymous with lost as Tolkien confirms: Not all those who wander are lost.
Then there are cases when I’m lost in thought, lost in my work, lost in my characters’ worlds. Sometimes I’m just lost for words which is when my writing can slow to a crawl, stall and flop over, floundering on its side—until I get up from the laptop and walk around, distract myself with another task and its then that the words start to trickle in and finally the flow resumes. But when considering Off Topic’s subject for the writing competition, I immediately thought back to a day when I was about seven years old and attending a one room school-house about five miles from my farm home as the crow flies. It was on one particular snowy day then when I experienced the misfortune of being physically lost.
After writing “The Blizzard,” I realized that the outcome was actually a spin-off from The Will, set in the same time period and Qu’Appelle Valley area of Southern Saskatchewan location. The narrator is the same young girl who witnessed Walter Gordon’s inceptive visits to her farm home that inspired The Will.
After I learned that my story placed first toward the end of December and posted its Off Topic link on my Facebook page, my friend, Andre Gordon responded: Today’s generations couldn’t even comprehend winter cutter sleigh rides to an old manually heated one room school in the middle of the country. Brings back memories of my Dad in his same youthful years hunting for sustenance in the same locale in those sub-zero winter climes. He said the exact same thing to me in his recollections of his young days… don’t lie down in extreme cold. After trudging through the snow and bush and fields for hours looking for game, he too became tired, disoriented and wanted to lay down on a snow embankment for a rest. He soon realized when he became comfortably warm that he was starting to succumb to a frozen permanent sleep.
Andre’s words took me back to my own discussion with his father, Glen some seventy years following the incident of the blizzard. Glen and I both grew up in that same part of the world. The same world and yet not the same for reasons that are revealed in that discussion which unfolds in the opening chapter of The Will.
I would like to consider the story’s win as an auspicious beginning to 2025, a promise of new writing fresh with new ideas. To return to Tolkien’s words from his poem “The Riddle of Strider” from The Fellowship of the Ring: All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king. Tolkien’s words speak to me of strength and promise. I wish all of you a similar strength when needed and a promise of all good things in the coming new year and invite you to begin 2025 curled up on the sofa with a warm blanket and immerse yourself in “The Blizzard.”
Banner image from istock.
Gayle Nemeth: Writing The Will 