An (Empty) Place of One's Own

This year, my blogs have been all about “place”. Mom caves, son caves, writer caves, workspaces, etc.

This year, it seems I’ve had to tweak my work space a dozen times. I’ve worked from the dining room table, from my office, from bed, a café, and most recently, I’ve been struggling to carve out an office niche that works for me in our antique shop.

One thing this business of selling “stuff” has done for me is to instill an appreciation of stuff… and an almost greater appreciation for an absence of stuff.

Yes, sometimes I feel a little bit like a character in a Dickens novel, surrounded by the stuff of others, stuff that is transient, just visiting, stuff piled so high, if it toppled it might kill me, but stuff for which I am the temporary steward, the guardian of its history, the caretaker of “stuff” that someone else found to be interesting enough to collect and amass around them.

Don’t get me wrong. I can sure find pleasure in stuff. (More cow bell, anyone?) I have my own clutter, tchotchkes, bric-a-brac, but it sure makes me appreciate wide open spaces.

Owning an antique shop, nay, a 7,500 sq. ft. antique mini-mall, has forced me to confront my love of stuff. If something comes in, something else has to go out. A place for everything and everything in its place, and most recently, I have found the greatest pleasure in empty spaces.

(DH and I spent our 23rd anniversary on the Poropotank River where we saw dolphins! The best things aren't found in a shop... and can't be kept in a drawer.)

Sure, we need some of that stuff, but don’t be afraid to get rid of some of that stuff too. Don't overlook the sheer pleasure of opening a drawer and finding the pair of scissors that you used to have to root for. 

Sofie Couch writes sweet romantic comedy and her upcoming series will definitely feature an antique shop owner.

An Empty Field

 by Sandy Cody

January 16, 2015 - The new year has begun, but just barely. It’s sixteen days old; there are still three hundred forty-nine days left, stretching before us like an empty field, just waiting for us to build or plant whatever we choose.

It is, as Dickens said in what is probably one of the most-quoted openings in all of literature: “the best of times, the worst of times”. The best, because beginnings are exciting. They’re full of promise, with the leaving behind of the false starts and, worse yet, the no-starts, of last year. We have all those days/hours/minutes/seconds in which we can build a house in that empty field. Let’s make it a big house, a huge house - and offer shelter to a needy world. Or we can plant wheat or corn to help feed a hungry world - or how about a field of daisies just because they’re beautiful. Why not? The world needs food for the soul too. Simply put, the opportunities are limitless, just there for the taking.

So much for the best. What about the worst? Beginnings can also be intimidating. Think of all the mistakes you might make. What if you do plant daisies, then forget to water them and they all die? You’ll have added ugliness instead of beauty to the world. That could happen. You could plant corn with the promise that you’ll feed the hungry, then let weeds take over and have nothing but thistles to offer. The trouble with making promises is that if you don’t keep them, someone is going to be upset. The risks are limitless too, but we have to take them because doing nothing is the biggest mistake of all.

To the writers among us, that open field might seem like blank pages - just waiting for a story to unfold. There’s a lot of space for characters to pursue a dream, to find their happily-ever-after. But, wait a minute, if you look at the field again, you’ll see a sky filled with clouds. Is a storm brewing for our characters? Let's hope so. It wouldn’t be much of a story without a few storms. That’s okay. That’s what writers are for. We’ll guide our characters through and help them find shelter, but only after they’ve been tested and proved themselves worthy. Words will be our seeds, hopefully to be watered by inspiration and fertilized by research and, when those fail, nudged into growth by the encouragement of people who care about us.

So ... sixteen days into 2015 I wish you a Happy New Year - filled with opportunity and risks that make you grow.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL: The Annual Obsession

By Sierra Donovan

It's not surprising that my husband proposed to me just after midnight December 25^th, right after watching “A Christmas Carol” on home video.

The classic Dickens story has been a presence in my life for a long time. I first read the story when I was 10 years old – about the same age my husband was when he did. Don't get me wrong; we have plenty of other things in common. Most of them are probably even less hip. We both love classic horror films, country music and the rock 'n' roll of the 1960s.

But the Christmas season in general, and “A Christmas Carol” in particular, ranks high on the list of our favorite things. Based on a very quick count, we have at least nine film versions of the story, and we try to watch as many of them as we can work in every holiday season. (A sad by-product of this is that our children, now 19 and 15, have been known to shudder at the very mention of the tale. But they'll come around.)

A sane person might ask, why the obsession? What makes us relive multiple viewings of Scrooge's past, present and future every year? (Not back-to-back. That would be silly.) But a better question might be, what's made this story so enduring? My husband and I aren't the only “Christmas Carol” geeks, and Dickens' work has held up some 171 years now.

The trite, but probably correct, answer is that “A Christmas Carol” is a tale of redemption, and that's something that resonates with the human race. We love to see Scrooge's transformation and the stages that take him there. And it's not too big a stretch to believe it's because that's something we all want for ourselves – a chance to be kinder, gentler, better people. To get our priorities straight and remember what's really important.

The Christmas season is really a microcosm of the best things in life: God, family and caring for others. We celebrate with some of the things we love most: food, music, decorating, shopping. But those external celebrations are also where it can start going haywire for many of us. We get consumed by the need to get all those things done, and that's where the heart of Christmas can be lost.

This year, it's my hope that we all find and remember the joy of the season, and that we're able to share it with others. In the words of Scrooge's nephew Fred: “And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

And as a final word to the curious, I believe I've arrived at my personal top three film renditions: the 1984 George C. Scott made-for-TV-movie; the 1953 Alastair Sim film; and the 1938 MGM film starring Reginald Owen. If you'd like to weigh in with your own favorite(s), I'd love to hear it!

Novel Images

Have you ever found yourself going somewhere in your mind that is completely familiar, vividly detailed, and filled with memories only to realize that the place is not one you have actually ever visited?  I quite often do, many times to the lab in the basement of the English home in Daphne du Maurier’s The House on the Strand.  It wasn’t a very exciting place in the book, and in my mind it is dusty, with old fashioned chemistry equipment, little light, and whatever molders in old English houses.

It is obvious that I was never actually there but for some reason, a combination of the story, the character, and emotion, the place is as real to me as some I visited long ago.  It is not a form of déjà vu, at least I don’t think so, but the feeling of having been in that place is as close to real as it can be.

As vivid is the church rising out of nothing in Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth series.  Before I saw the video of it, I had the place firmly in my mind. The same was true with Manderly, in du Maurier’s Rebecca. I could see it ablaze as vividly as if I were standing beside it, listening to the roar of the fire and smelling the smoke.  But, I can also see it intact, with the unnamed character, the poor suffering second wife, trying to keep her head high in the face of what she perceived as inferiority on her part.  It is so dark, with overstuffed sofas and antiques and that horrible housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, undermining her every move.

It was sunnier on the porch where the main character in Lad: A Dog by Alfred Payson Terhune liked to lay his head.  This ability to turn fictional locations into reality has been with me at least as long as I was a child, reading that book, crying my eyes out when I read the ending.  The island where Walter Farley’s The Island Stallion lived is also as vibrant, especially the entrance to it.

Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, Sherlock Holmes stories, all stick in my mind, not as vividly, of course, as my special favorites, but easily recalled. The halls and rooms in Harry Potter books were all fully visualized way before the movies were ever made.  I can see and feel the Sorting Hat.  It was the same for me with The Hobbit books, but also for the houses in The Help, Gone with the Wind, and The Red Tent.  The Outlander books and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are now vivid memories of places I have visited, as is the Moon, in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Authors create new worlds for us and allow us to travel there.  But in many ways it is our own imaginations that furnish the details and let them imprint themselves on our brains.  When we get “lost in a book” we can find our own way out, or we can let a piece of ourselves live there forever. Then we can visit anytime.  It lets us keep enjoying the feeling we had at the time we read the books. 

The room in The Mirror Crack’d haunted me for years.  My second book, Vengeance Tastes Sweet, is in a way an homage to Agatha Christie.  So many books over the years have had such an impact on my mind that I feel as if I’ve gone into them myself.

Maybe, instead of saying “I read that,” I should be saying “I’ve been there.”