It's the first Wednesday
of the month ~
the day when members of the
Insecure Writer's Support Group
share their writing struggles
and offer their encouragement
and support to other members.
To visit the IWSG website, click here.
To become a member of the IWSG, click here.
Our wonderful co-hosts who are stepping up to help
IWSG founder Alex J. Cavanaugh today are:
Suzanne Furness, Tonja Drecker,
Toi Thomas, Rachna Chhabria,
Donna Hole, and Fundy Blue(That's me: Louise Barbour.)
Visit them and thank them for co-hosting.
I'm sure they would appreciate an encouraging comment!
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I grew up with parents
who wrote voraciously.
It's no surprise to me
that I must write.
Donald and Sara MacBeath
and Their Four Children,
Roy, Donnie, Barb, and Louise
(No Bertie yet!)
On a Trip, 1958
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved
How about you?
Did you grow up immersed in language?
I suspect many writers did.
Writing is my passion,
but there are those awful times
when I stare at a blank page
and I can't think of a single word.
Currently
I'm writing a memoir
about my family's
time in the North
among the Oji-Cree
west of James Bay.
wikimedia
My primary resource is a collection
of letters my father wrote
when he taught in isolation
over fifty years ago.
Here's one of them:
It's a short letter,
but it showed
me something
I never suspected
about my father.
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved
On Friday, October 14, 1960
My father wrote:
Hi There:
Mail day has come and gone,
only there was no mail.
The weather was out down south,
and all the planes were grounded.
I sure do hope that the plane gets in tomorrow.
I guess the weekly edition
of the Lansdowne Letter
will be delayed this week.
I am fairly well recovered
from my various ailments
and should be back to school Monday.
All told, I lost about ten pounds
during my bout with the flu.
Now I have come to
that embarrassing position
dreaded by all writers,
a nice clean white page
staring you in the face,
and nothing to put
on the cottonpicking thing.
Guess I’ll just have to let things sit for a while,
drink a cup of coffee,
and see if I can get some inspiration.
Nothing at all happened to me.
I just spent the whole day reading, sleeping,
and listening to the dogs howling.
Well, here I am back considerably later,
but with very little inspiration to show
for my time away from the typewriter.
Some days nothing happens
that is worth writing about,
and this is one of them.
Brian was over tonight,
and we played some chess.
Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell were over
to the Father’s tonight for some bridge.
They wanted me to play a few hands,
but I was still feeling ragged
from the flu and declined.
After they were through playing,
they dropped over to see our little cottage
and to see how we were doing.
If my life depended upon it,
I couldn’t find anything else
to write about tonight,
so I will just have to sign off.
Bye now,
Love, Don
It's strange to think of my father
wrestling with a blank page.
He never showed
that side to me.
My father typing a letter
in his two-room cabin
in the northern bush.
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved
I'm delighted to discover
that the apple truly doesn't fall
far from the tree!
When I slam into Writer's Block,
my best recourse is to step away,
do something completely different,
and come back.
As I work with my father's letters,
I'm finding more and more
how much I am my father's daughter.
What do you do when you run into Writer's Block?
I'd love to hear!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Notes:
If you would like to read a helpful discussion
about Writer's Block, check out this post
by Charlie Jane Anders:
The 10 Types of Writers' Block
(and How to Overcome Them).
It has lots of ideas and some great illustrations.
If you would like to hear
about life in the North
a half century ago, check out
my Lansdowne Letter posts.
I publish one every Friday.