Blog

Death is not an event; it’s a process

We tend to think of death as a sudden event—the moment we transition from life into… its opposite. In truth, death is a process we stave off every day by living. Which makes life an activity, not a state of being.

If I don’t hunt and eat, I die. If I don’t procreate, my future generations will never be. If I don’t mind my step, I will be killed by a car. Every day we must actively live, or we are likely to meet an untimely end. I must exercise and manage my diet, or my ability to live is compromised—and so it goes.

Death is part of the process of renewal. I, as an individual, make my contribution, then give way as new ideas and modes of living are born. Whole civilizations become artifacts and ultimately particles of dust in the inexhorable cycle of life. Worlds come into and pass out of being.

This perpetual struggle to survive is masked in the comfortable environments of the ‘developed world’. We don’t connect the need to work with the ongoing battle for survival. Ultimately, though, that robs our lives of meaning. We are here to give what we can, while we can.

Life is the convergence of energy, matter, and spirit in conscious, willing being. To me, the best possible life is devoted to bringing joy into the world—as much joy with as much grace as I can muster in my brief span.

ImagiNation

Creative writing takes us places we have never been, invents new worlds, converts ideas and memories into things experienced in the mind’s eye. That’s the first half of the creative cycle; reading is the second. It’s the intent of authors and poets to incite creativity in the minds and hearts of readers.

Creative interaction has always been a driving passion for writers, and—fortunately—we live in an era when that fundamental, almost instinctive urge can be channelled into new formats, reaching new ‘audiences’. We can engage our readers (and listeners) before, during, and after the writing and publication of our ‘books’.

Let me share a couple of examples.

I’m rewriting a story titled Entrapments, which I rediscovered after it had sat on my MS shelf for some years. Right now, I’m getting to know the characters. In the mix: an aging prostitute, a journalist, an art critic, an artist, a petty crook… and so on. I’ll be reaching out online for ‘enactors’—people who have lived those personas or are very familiar with them. I want these contacts to feel engaged in the creative process and to enjoy the experience.

My most recently released novel, The Mural Gazer, was the second I have posted online as a work in progress, inviting readers to join me page by page as the story unfolded. My first online novel, The Boy From Under, is also available online. Both can be purchased in print via my Amazon.com author’s page.

Again, the purpose of creating literature online is to engage readers and writers as early as possible and to invite questions and commentary as the story emerges. Other possibilities and benefits?

  • Links can be inserted into an online story as supplementary information and graphics.
  • An audio edition of the story can be made available in the same space as the print edition.
  • Feedback from readers can be welcomed and responded to.
  • Literature can be shared instantly, at a lower price, and with reduced environmental costs.
  • Other books on an author’s shelf can be linked seamlessly…

The potential for writers to meet readers via new digital technologies excites me. It’s daunting, too. But in an era when young people in particular are being drawn more and more into the online universe, authors have to establish a niche—let’s call it ImagiNation!

View From Up the Hill

I’m so used
to looking at things,
not into them
that I’m startled when I witness
the space between our molecules of Being
and come to realize:
It’s not empty,
this infinite sky,
this eternal orbiting of day
into night / into dawn /
into the glare of high noon.

I wrote this morning
in my latest revision of a fiction:

She glanced away
then out the window
at the sunrise he’d witnessed earlier;
it had morphed into the blare of morning light
the gorgeous tints of dawn burned off
by the intense rays
of a risen sun.

Will this epiphany of the dazzling light
and its glorious host of questions
well once again at at the end of day?

Can the invisible be divisible?

Is it my plight to know?

How many times can we split
the atoms of our truths
before we discover the ultimate germs of
Infinity, Eternity, Omniscience, and Spirit?

Craig Spence

Every picture tells a story

Be Still and They Will Come by Diana Durrand inspired Craig Spence to write Waking Dream (see below). Photographs, paintings, sculptures—any art form—can resonate in the minds of writers.

If you are interested in a workshop that engages participants in responsive writing to shared images (photos & paintings), please contact me. More info below…

Every picture tells a story, which makes art a source of inspiration for writers. The same goes for music, dance, and every other art form out there, but the visual arts, especially, are a trove of ideas.

Open up a family photo album and memories are triggered by the images you see. That’s a source for writers whose chosen genre is memoire. But images from other collections can also inspire.

What if your mode is historical fiction? Take a walk around Chemainus and every wall comes to life in your imagination. You can feel yourself being drawn into the large-as-life scenes and back in time—hear sails luffing, wagons clattering, trains chuffing, the rhytmic stroke of paddlers in dugout canoes.

Is there an image that inspires you? Perhaps it’s not even a specific picture, but a sequence made up of many related images,  times, and places.

Craig Spence was inspired to write Waking Dream when he saw Diana Durrand’s mixed media piece Be Still and They Will Come, which has been displayed at the Cowichan Valley Performance Centre. Art galleries are great places to go in search of inspiration!

Stories or poems inspired by images aren’t descriptive exercises; they are works of art in their own right, which add a literary dimension to what you are experiencing.

Art, in the deepest sense of the word, is not meant to be ‘looked at’—or read, for that matter; it’s meant to be ‘invoved in’.  Looking at a painting, or reading a story, becomes an imaginative act-—it’s participatory. So stories and poems based on imagery are works of art in their own right.

Would you like to participate in a free workshop built around responsive writing to shared images? 

Waking Dream

They came to her
in a dream
on paws as soft
as evening light

They huddled in
the contoursof her restless soul
creatures of the land
between day and night

And she lay perfectly
still…
For an eternity…or so it seemed
Aware only of their being
and her delight

She dared not move
or even think…
of stirring…
for if she did
her moment…
she knew…
would take flight.

Craig Spence

Acts of Kindness

Acts of Kindness

I have to admit
It was kind of strange
for me to be hunched
at the edge of the lawn
like that…

On a Wednesday morning
After a Tuesday night-before
In a neighbourhood where
every sunrise-after
lulls the Land of Suburbanites
Into their becalmed state
Of being.
Of wakefulness.

It should not have surprised me
when a Good Samaritan approached
His footsteps cause for alarm!
I mean, what could I say?
“Just a minor heart attack.
The merest constriction of the chest
A barely measurable acceleration of pulse…
No need for an ambulance.”

What other excuse could I invent
that wouldn’t besmirch my reputation?
Why else would I be staring
into the dirt, beneath the parted blades of grass
As if I could see something down there,
couched in layers of smothering soil
waiting to be discovered by archeology
Even through the final act…
The ceaseless progress of decomposition.

“You okay?” he said
Summoning me to  the brink…
To my moment of truth…
I could not tell a lie… could I?
Couldn’t make up something
that would make sense
of my peculiarities.

“Just watching a worm,” I said.
“Burrowing into the earth…”
“Found him on the sidewalk…”
“They always do that when it rains…”

He looked at me as if
I might have been another species…
Or the long-lost member of an extinct tribe.
“Feast for the robins.” he might have hinted.

And who was I to argue?
Playing at God,
Absolving myself
of the inevitable sins
we’re committed to
By being alive?

CraigSpenceWriter.ca

Inspiration from beginning to end

Inspiration can be shared. This mural, One Feather at a Time, was created by 20 students and staff from South Grenville District High School in Prescott, Ontario.

Inspiration: The Beginning, Middle, and The End

In the Beginning

“The idea that poetry comes from beyond oneself is vital… One doesn’t know what one’s doing and is inspired in that respect… it’s just about allowing a poem to come from wherever it comes from and getting it into the world.” 

—Paul Muldoon, winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Moy Sand and Gravel

What does it mean ‘to be inspired’ as a writer or poet?

For me, entire novels sprout suddenly from the fecund soil of experience and imagination. That’s not to say they have revealed even a tiny fraction of what they are going to become, but they unfurl like flowers whose literary DNA infuses the creative process of telling from inception, every word along the way. I am startled and amazed at the things my characters do, and I know I am moving in the right direction when I laugh, or cheer, or moan at their behaviour.

In the Middle

If your idea of inspiration stops at wide-eyed wonder and shouts of Eureka, you will never succeed as a writer. Inspiration drives writers, poets, playwrights, and memoirists from word to word, page to page, episode to episode through a creative feat that can take years to work itself out. Inspiration dances and ballyhoos at the moment of inception, then puts its shoulder to the harness, quietly celebrating each laborious step along the way.

In the End

And when an author types ‘The End’ onto the last page of his manuscript, he’s really saying ‘The beginning’ in several essential ways. It’s time for him to begin a new work—to leave off editing, revising, proofing, and rewriting a story he knows inside-out and move on to another story. It’s not that the current work couldn’t be improved—the process of refining could go on forever. It’s just an admission that “I am done,” to quote Michelangelo from his Sistine Chapel scaffold.

It’s also time for a transition into a new creative phase for the work that’s just been declared completed. It takes most writers years, even decades, to realize that inspiration can’t end once a book has been printed and bound. Literature lives in the minds of readers—or audiences, to use a term more appropriate for our digital era. Books are like children. They have a life of their own once they’re fully fledged, but our responsibility for their success never wavers.

CraigSpenceWriter.ca

The Flea’s Protest

The Flea’s Protest
Imagine yourself a tiny flea
Upon an elephant’s back,
Where every gaping chasm
Is really just a crack,
A crooked little wrinkle
In Behemoth’s leather skin,
Careful how you tread; you might fall in.

Or maybe you’re an atom
Inside a nuclear jar
Your nearest next door neighbour
Might just as well be a star
Because a fraction of a fraction of a fraction
Of an inch
Is a measure beyond measure…
And yet, it’s not a pinch.
It's a finger on a button,
and a mind that will not flinch.

We’re tinier than tiny
In this greater scheme of things
Fodder for the canons
In those places anthems ring…
But stop and think a moment,
If you only will,
There’s space between the drumbeats
To shout, why must we kill!

(Written for the tens of thousands who have died
and the untold thousands yet to die
in Russian President Vladimir Putin's war)

Proof’s in; now the work begins!

It’s been a long time coming, but my proof copies of The Boy From Under have arrived… now the work begins!

So much has changed since I typed ‘The End’ onto the concluding page of this novel’s first draft. From a writer who believed his work was done once those two words were appended to his manuscript I have morphed into one who believes the creative cycle is never really completed, and that his books have to be actively and joyfully promoted and shared.

The first step will be getting proof copies into the hands, and minds, of beta readers and reviewers. If you want to join that helpful group, let me know. Alas, I only have five print copies to share, but I’ve posted an online edition of the book too, which will be free for all you betas out there.

If you like psychological mysteries, I think you’ll find the Boy From Under an intriguing read from front cover to back…

Old School doesn’t cut it in 2023

North Cowichan Council made the right decision last night when, by a 4-3 margin, it decided to uphold the principles of the municipality’s new Official Community Plan.

But the tenor of the debate left me feeling we’re not yet at the point where we can say it made this crucial decision for all the right reasons.

Municipal politics have never been more complex or important than they are today, and the 2022 update of our OCP is a case in point. As a document that will guide decision-making for the next decade or so it will have to be read and re-read for its full reach and implications to be appreciated.

It speaks to environmental issues from a global-to-local perspective; provides guidance on essentially humanitarian issues like homelessness; looks to sustainability and stability by focusing on a ‘regenerative economy’.

If you wanted to design a course in principled decision-making, it would make a pretty good syllabus. Perhaps the day will come when historians look at documents like our OCP and say, ‘It was ahead of its time.’ Hopefully the survivors of the environmental and social degradations we are now witnessing won’t end up saying, ‘It was too late in coming.’

Councillor Bruce Findlay, whose motion to offer a two-year ‘amnesty’ to property owners whose land was removed from the municipality’s Urban Containment Boundaries, said he was acting on behalf of the people who elected him.

That’s old school any way you look at it. The election’s over, councillors are now tasked with thinking and acting on behalf of all the citizens of North Cowichan, and (here’s the rub) to do that job properly in the 21st Century they have to place their decision-making in a global, humanitarian context.

I voted for a council that takes all that into consideration when it approves zoning, influences community policing, builds a road.

Note: I am a board member of the Chemainus Residents Association, and attended the Feb. 1, 2023 meeting of North Cowichan Council from that perspective.

The Sum of Cornucopia

Had a little fun after discovering our jam jar more than half empty the other day!
My good friend Zeno says to me
you can have your jam for free,
nothing’s lost except by halves
the future never meets the past.

So in I dipped my eager blade
to test this wondrous promise made.
I scraped about the empty glass
for evidence of my repast.

Alas, the jar seemed quite remiss
and jam on toast was sorely missed.

Well, never mind, dear Zeno said.
At least you have your daily bread
and I assure you not a bite
will frustrate future appetite.

For once you’ve swallowed half that loaf
half remains, and half’s the most.
Munch and chew to hearts content,
the boundless half remains unspent.

Alas, I’m left with meagre crumbs
and a whole whose parts are not its sum.

CraigSpenceWriter.ca