With Jenny guiding us, I and a group of 12 other actors, writers and playwrights with various levels of experience spent most of the day developing characters on paper, creating dialogue together, and then sharing our work.

Just like any other artistic endeavour, creative writing can be a relaxing tool and a powerful outlet for personal expression. No matter what we spend most of our time doing, it’s beneficial to flex our creative muscles.

So I thought I would share one of Jenny’s writing exercises on character development with you, using what I came up with as an example. Try it! You might find yourself developing a new hobby.

Step 1

Hunt through magazines and other periodicals and choose a photo of one or more people who capture your eye. They could be old or young, oddly dressed or conservative. (One of the participants at Jenny’s workshop chose a photo of a man standing in front of a picture window on a sunny day, staring inside the house.  Did I mention he was buck naked? As Anne of Green Gables says, there’s a whole lot of “scope for the imagination” there…so choose a challenging picture! )

Being someone who enjoys writing for young adults and middle graders, I chose a photo of a teenage girl and a slightly older boy. She had dark, super-curly hair, was dressed in preppy clothes and had a sweet, innocent expression. The taller boy looked quite different. His expression was cool and aloof, and he struck me as a potential trouble-maker.

So, I set about imagining a back story for these two.  Are they brother and sister? Is she obedient and dependable, while he’s a bit more unpredictable…maybe worse?

Step 2

Now that you have your photo, set a timer and write for 15 minutes about your character in the third person.  Here’s my example.

Monica is 15 years old, a grade nine student. She’ll turn 16 before she makes it to grade 10. (Age is very important to her.) She’s a straight A student and plays soccer with the community league for her age group in the summer. She likes basketball more than soccer, but she’s only 5’1”.  Monica is sensitive about her height. Her older brother teases her about it. She was pretty good at gymnastics, too. Her compact frame is suited to somersaults and balance beams.

Monica is sweet and a good rule follower. She is motivated to do everything well—not like the flashy cheerleaders, not a flirt, not a pot-smoking rebel, just an industrious girl with her head down, doing what’s expected.

Sort of invisible, in her own way. Good in school, good at sports, gets along with others, murmurs “please” and ‘thank you,” holds the door for people, even teachers.

She babysits for the next-door neighbor, who gave her 50 bucks to watch the kids on New Year’s Eve. She dresses well but not designer—frugal like her mother, she’s not opposed to diving in the dusty bins of second-stores for a bargain. She knows how to obey, how to please, which sets her parents free to concern themselves with her older brother, Seth, who does not know how to obey and doesn’t care about pleasing anybody.

Monica worries about him. He’s two years older, secretive. She’s caught him in lies occasionally when asked about where he’s been or what he’s been doing.

Pens Down!

Step 3

Now, set your timer for 15 minutes and write about this character in the second person. Here’s what I wrote for Monica:

You are 15 years old and you are so mature for your age. You’re the kind of girl who does everything well all the time, so much so that people just expect it, just take it for granted that no matter what’s going on you will be there.

You are always the one standing behind the table, organizing, representing, helping, serving. You are always dependable. You are on time, you work hard, you’re an A student, you scored the winning goal in the last soccer match, probably because you knew everyone on the team would be so disappointed if you didn’t. You are always there to hold the door for people, murmur a “please” and “thank you,” be a friend to the new kid on the block who’s lost. You sit with the unpopular girl in the cafeteria at lunchtime.

You’re the type of daughter two parents are lucky to have. And you also wish so desperately that they would say, “Thank you, Monica,” for cleaning up after your older brother. “Thank you, Monica,” for helping your little sister with her homework every night. “Thank you, Monica,” for making dinner while they were at the police station; “Thank you, Monica,” for doing the laundry and the dishes while they were out hunting for Seth every day for a whole week…but thank you never comes.

You know they don’t mean it, you know they’re doing the best they can with a bad situation, but you just feel, well, invisible.

You sometimes wonder, if you left home, just dropped everything and left it all behind, would they even notice?

Pens Down!

Step 4

Now, set your timer for another 15 minutes and write about your character in first person.  Once again, here’s my example:

Yesterday, here’s how my day went.  At six am, I got up and walked the dog. The dog my older brother Seth wanted so badly six years ago and never once fed, bathed, played with or took for a walk. I don’t think Seth even came home last night, which means my mother will be beside herself when she gets up and my father will rant about throwing him out again.

So, at 15, my first profession is dog walker. I don’t even like dogs. Seth named him Bailey, after the street we live on. Six-fifteen: five-minute shower, get dressed, stuff some toast in my mouth and then run down to the basement. I had to throw another load of laundry in because Mom forgot to do it last night. I think she was searching Seth’s room for drugs. I dunno for sure, cause I was in my bedroom with the music turned up really loud, studying for an English exam, hoping that all the other noises would just go away.

Seven am, finished writing up a science lab, and headed off to school where I had two tests and a speech before lunch. Student council meeting at lunch, science and gym in the afternoon and soccer tryouts after school. Then home to an empty house, except for the living room. There was Seth, passed out on the couch. Mom and Dad were still at work, and the dog is sleeping faithfully at his feet.

That’s the ultimate insult. Seth doesn’t do a damn thing for you, dog, yet he’s the one you like?

Yeah, thanks. I guess I’m invisible. I’ll just go to my room and disappear.

Pens Down!

Interesting exercise, huh? Did you notice your character change and develop? What I noticed is that the third and second person compositions gave information other people observe about Monica…what she does and what she says.  But in first person, we saw what Monica really thinks and feels on the inside: she was resentful, stressed, and angry, tired of always picking up the slack and not being appreciated.

This plays out later when Jenny asked us to write a scene using our own character in dialogue with another participant’s character. You could do the same if you write two or more character sketches.

Monica was paired up with a character named  Jean,  written by fellow participant  Kathy Mac. Jean is a stubborn old woman with ill-fitting dentures and dyed hair. Her property straddles the border between Canada and the US, but has no intention of moving from her family homestead. Instead, she drinks mint juleps with her neighbor and as a recent widow, plans to purge a lifetime of junk from her house. In this exercise, our job was to interpret not only our own character, but the other character as well.

Here’s the short scene I imagined for them:

Monica knocks at the front door, Jean answers, and her eyebrows knit together.

Monica: Hello?

Jean: Hello, can I help you?

Monica: Um, can I use the phone?

Jean: You’re not from around here.

Monica: No.

Jean: Yeah, I haven’t seen you around here before.

Monica: No, I’m from…away.

Jean: Huh.

Monica: Well, can I use the phone?

Jean: (clicks her dentures, they’re uncomfortable) Yeah, I guess so…if it works. I’ve been arguing about the bill.

Monica: (tries the phone) It’s dead.

Jean: Figures. Highway robbery. I said I wasn’t going to pay the bill til they fixed their mistake. Well, sit down, girl.

Monica: (stays standing). Do you have a cel phone?

Jean: A cel phone? Why would I have something like that? I don’t like to talk that much.

Monica: Funny, I wouldn’t have thought that.

Jean: Well, I like to talk, but not on the phone. If you want to talk to me, come and see me. That’s what I tell my kids, anyway. And do you see them here? No. Figures. What’s your name, kid? Sit down, for God’s sake.

Monica: (sits down on the edge of a dusty rose chair) Monica.

Jean: Nice to meet you Monica. I’m Jean. Well, it’s my middle name, my first name’s Margaret, but I like Jean. So how old are you?

Monica: I’m 15. I’ll be sixteen by next month.

Jean: Ah…I have a daughter-in-law named Monika. Well, not anymore. She divorced my son.

Silence for a minute.

Jean: So what are you doing here? You don’t live in Woodstock.

Monica: No, I’m from Halifax.

Jean: Kinda young to be travelling all alone, ain’t ya? D’ya want some tea? We drink tea here in the middle of the afternoon.

Monica: No, I don’t like tea. My mother drinks it, it calms her down. But I think it tastes bitter.

Jean: How about a mint julep, then? Me and the neighbor drink barrels of it.

Monica: Okay, I’ve never had one.

(Jean gets up and serves her a mint julep and sits down across from her.)

Jean: So, your mother’s nervous, is she?

Monica: She has good reason to be. My older brother is a drug addict. She’s-she’s confused.

Jean: Zat why you ran away?

(Monica looks up, eyebrows raised)

Jean: Well, why else would you show up at my door, dearie, in the middle of nowhere? What were you going to do, sneak into the US? Nothin’ there but cutthroat politics and cheap fast food.

Monica: (begins to cry) I can’t take it anymore! For the first time in my life, I failed a test. I figured if I left it on the kitchen table, somebody might notice me, might complain. Maybe somebody would say, “Monica, what’s going on? What’s the problem? You’ve never failed a test before.” But nobody did. They took Seth to detox for the fifth time. I signed my mother’s name on my own test, brought it to school, and then I realized…nobody notices you in my house unless you’re a drug addict.

The point of these exercises is not to come away with a perfect piece of writing, but to show how to develop characters. The more you spend time with them, the more they interact with others, the more they change. Whether you’re interested in writing for pleasure or for work, learning to observe others and imagine their reactions placed in a variety of situations can only improve your skills. Good luck, and have fun!

When the time came, I easily let go of the 80’s blender hair, leg-warmers and the Madonna off-the-shoulder sweater, but I couldn’t let go of MW. It’s been with me through college and job searches, my first “real” job and all the ones that followed. It faithfully served me through freelancing at home and the abuses of three young children. The red cover was the first to tear off.

Now, it’s yellowed and has that musty-aged smell. The dog-eared pages, including the explanatory notes at the front of the book, keep ripping away. It starts at page nine, now. The “population of places in the United States,” S through Z (that’s pronounced zed, by the way, as in King Lear: “You are a zed! An unnecessary letter!”), on page 841 is hanging by a thread, too. MW split open between pages 262 and 263: fast/fatuity on the left, and fatuous/feather on the right. It’s ironic that page 263 also carries the word fealty (n, pl -ties: loyalty, allegiance).

I suppose it’s a sign.  My old dictionary is hopelessly behind the times, a little like myself. It doesn’t list words like “Facebook” and it doesn’t offer the option of using the word “text” or “Google” as a verb (i.e., “I’ll Google it and then text you the information”).  There’s no mention of phone service alongside the adjective “cellular.” But, at least it had the decency to list both Canadian and American spellings as correct.

So, what should I buy to replace it? I’m willing to entertain recommendations from my writer friends. A new dictionary won’t be as warm and comforting a pal as MW has been over the years and I doubt it will have the same feel. It won’t trigger the same memories.  The pen marks dragged across the top edge, for example, the result of one particularly boring political science class.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. It’s just a dictionary!

But I don’t think I can bring myself to throw it out. It would be like throwing out the memory of who I was then. Maybe I’ll just put it on the bookshelf and let it collect dust for awhile, until I decide who I am now.

After a few irreversible spills, most of us get tired of cleaning up the mess. So we learn to self-censor.

Not so Ezra Levant. Self-censorship and the fear of reprisal is the topic of discussion in his book, “Shakedown: How our government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights” (McLelland and Stewart, Toronto, 2009). In this sobering read, Levant cites examples of HRC cases, their unfair methods and rulings, from various commissions all across Canada. He also details his own hearings with the Alberta Human Rights Commission regarding his publication of infamous Dutch cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed in Levant’s now-defunct publication, The Western Standard.

Levant says that “Human rights commissions were a beautiful idea—that failed.”

Sure, we all want to live free of discrimination, but Levant says HRC’s are anti-democratic, because they try to enforce how people should feel, think and speak. What’s worse, Section 13 of the Act (referring to hate messages communicated via the telephone, computer networks, the Internet, and by extension, the media as well) turns HRC’s into, in his words, “the thought police.”

He says, “That’s the thing about Section 13. It’s focused 100 per cent on words, not on criminal deeds. Everyone charged under Section 13 is trying to spark a debate of one kind or another.”

The rulings he cites illustrate his opinion with brutal clarity. A Christian pastor in Alberta, for example, was raked over the coals regarding a letter to the editor in the Red Deer Advocate criticizing homosexuality. He was finally ordered to recant this religious viewpoint and never to preach about it again. Maclean’s magazine was targeted for publishing an excerpt from columnist Mark Steyn’s book, “America Alone: The End of the World as we know it”; and Levant himself, for “insulting” a guest during a debate on a radio show about his decision to publish the Mohammed cartoons.

While reading this book, I related Levant’s thesis to the biggest responsibility in my life right now: parenting. I wish I could control not only my children’s words and behavior, but also their feelings. It’s impossible. I may be able to force an apology out of one of my kids for something they did to another (on pain of punishment) but I can’t make them mean it.

Many examples cited in the book remind me of childish arguments that belong on the school ground. We used to settle a conflict ourselves, sometimes with a good scrap after school, and then it was over. Today, we want the government to settle our conflicts for us, to scold and embarrass people publicly just like mom and dad did when big brother cut off our hair in the middle of the night. But the problem with the state telling us how to live and think and speak is…well, the state’s gonna tell us how to live and think and speak.

Is it my unalienable right as a Canadian to punish those who offend me? If so, where do we draw the line between meaningful offenses and foolishness? Can over-arching rights like freedom of expression or freedom of religion be protected when individual rights are emphasized to such an extreme?

To use a biblical analogy (you don’t mind, do you?) perhaps we have traded our birthright for a bowl of stew.

Levant made me wonder if there was ever a time when HRC’s served a need not already addressed by the criminal code. He said, “they’ve [HRC’s] gone from being an informal ‘people’s court’ for disadvantaged minorities who are truly at risk to being a parallel legal system run by left-wing social engineers.”

I think it’s important to resist the American tendency to label and reject people’s opinion based solely on their known politics. More and more, popular opinion and media seem to flow into left and right camps, and I fear such herding keeps society from studying all ideas objectively and without stereotype.  Citizens of every political stripe in every region should give this book some serious thought. If we are willing to let the bureaucrats dictate policy to us, we will get the country we deserve.

All the revelations in Kelley’s book were Winfrey’s to dish out in 1993 when she suddenly withdrew plans to publish her autobiography with Knopf. She got cold feet, worrying that telling her unflattering secrets would hurt her.

This year, Kelley aired her dirty laundry, anyway. Defending her book, Kelley said, “I don’t want to live in a world where all we get is authorized information.”

I find it ironic that a person who has broadcast hundreds of sensational topics from sexuality to skinheads should be the subject of such a sensational book. Let’s face it, Winfrey’s life is sensational.

At 445 pages, plus an extensive bibliography, you have to be dedicated to the subject matter to finish this book. No one could fault Kelley for leaving anything out. She poured over tax returns from Winfrey’s various charitable foundations and conducted some 850 personal interviews, most on the record, with family members, former media colleagues, employees (some disgruntled) and show guests who were not afraid to talk or were bound by Winfrey’s infamous non-disclosure agreement.

Because Winfrey declined to be interviewed, Kelley also researched and categorized more than 2700 interviews given by Winfrey to media outlets in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada over the course of her storied career. She no longer gives interviews, and I don’t blame Winfrey for declining an interview with Kelley. Nobody in their right mind would want such personal inconsistencies, frailties and downright neurosis to ruin a carefully-constructed image. Everybody has secrets, but nobody cares about mine or yours, because we’re not worth $2.7 billion.

Kelley paints Winfrey as a woman whose primary drive in life has never been altruism, but billionaire status. She believes altruism is merely a by-product of her God-ordained success. She is a mix of contradictions: lavish beyond measure to her loyal friends and employees, but vicious to those she perceives as a threat to her brand; warm, sensitive and approachable on television, but demanding, selfish and unfriendly when the cameras are turned off; She carefully constructs a “truthful” message about “Living Your Best Life,” but is somehow unable to control her binge eating and other compulsive behavior.

Kelley gives an in-depth look at the history and business of television talk shows while she reveals Oprah’s not so flattering characteristics: she was probably not quite so poverty stricken as she maintains; she exaggerates or downright lies about several aspects of her past to sweeten her life story for her followers. She says Winfrey displays a personal inconsistency with her public brand: she’s been plagued by the legacy of sexual abuse, including teenage prostitution and promiscuity, an unwanted pregnancy, drug abuse and uncontrollable food addiction, and questions about her sexuality. She is remarkably generous with her deadbeat family even as she rejects them emotionally. They deny her abuse claims and make her feel like an “ATM machine.”

Winfrey is arguably the most powerful and influential woman in the world. Her television show is seen in 145 countries worldwide, she has single-handedly revived book publishing in the United States, and made publishers and authors alike very rich. She’s given well over $250 million to charity and has tremendous political clout. It’s no wonder publishers were afraid to publish Kelley’s biography.

So reading it seemed like a guilty pleasure. Somehow, after watching Winfrey on TV all these years, I felt I was betraying her trust by reading gossip. Such is the power of her public persona.

I shook it off and read it anyway, because books like these serve to remind us that celebrities are not god-like, after all, and should not be worshipped. The rich and powerful are occasionally just as insecure, petty, controlling (and sometimes, out-of-control) as the rest of us. Knowing this does not diminish Winfrey’s accomplishments, it only highlights the intense drive required to succeed in spite of tremendous obstacles.

While giving the couple’s bored 13-year-old son a guided tour of my beloved salt-water beach, I was stung by a jellyfish, a plentiful resident of the Northumberland Strait. As I scraped away the tentacles and rubbed my burning leg, “Junior” convinced me that the offender was actually a poisonous Portuguese Man o’ War.  I didn’t know that the Man o’ War is very large and a telltale blue color. The purplish-red jellyfish I normally saw were tiny by comparison. In fact, the Man o’ War only finds its way as far north as the south shore of Nova Scotia on rare occasions, thanks to the Atlantic Gulf Stream.

Nevertheless, my mother slipped Junior an irritated look when I bolted into the cottage and told the surprised adults between racking sobs that I had just been stung by the fearsome invertebrate and I was about to die. It took her a few exasperating hours to convince me that the chubby, pimply-faced teen was a big, fat liar.

All weekend, I ran to Mom for protection against Junior’s constant picking, teasing and lying, but she did her best to remain carefully upbeat in front of his oblivious parents. My gullibility and paranoia never failed to delight Junior and frustrate my mother. We spent Saturday afternoon digging a bucket of soft-shell clams to steam and eat at dinner time with melted garlic butter. But it became impossible for me to chew and swallow as Junior gleefully described the contents of the little mollusks, with their lumpy gray intestines and tough, shiny black heads.  I’ve never been able to eat clams, oysters or mussels since, a great heresy to seafood-loving Maritimers.

When they finally left on Sunday evening, Mom’s delighted relief proved the old adage, “all visitors bring happiness—some by coming, some by going.” My father was never allowed to invite them back, and more than 30 years later, I still steer clear of jellyfish. You just never know.

“No, Caleb,” Dad said, in a sleepy voice. “We’re going to visit Auntie Kimmie today. Maybe we’ll see the rest tonight.”

Caleb considered this while cuddling deeper under the blankets. Then, with his eyes closed, he said, “Okay, well, I’m going to watch a movie behind my eyelids.”

“Really?” Dad asked.

Caleb grinned. “Yeah…and I think the good guys are winning.”

Case in point: A few years ago, when my oldest child was 10, she presented me with one of her school essays. I dried my hands, wet from washing dishes, and grabbed a red pen, thinking she wanted me to correct her mistakes. So I scanned the page from top to bottom, marking as I went. Then I handed it back to her, with barely a word. When her face fell, I realized I’d blown it.

As a mom, I had broken the golden rule of parenthood. My daughter didn’t want me to correct her grammar—she just wanted me to say it was good, to validate her ideas. I did say I was sorry, but the damage was done. She never showed me another essay.

Recently, it was my turn to present some of my own childhood work to strangers, but thankfully, they didn’t get out their red pens.

The Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC Moncton Chapter) participated in the Frye festival on April 21 by hosting an open mic event called “Reveille!” at the Moncton Press Club.

This free event encouraged the public to present their angst-ridden childhood poetry and prose to an audience ready for some light-hearted giggles. Invited guest authors Beth Powning, Jacob Berkowitz, Christiane Duchesne, and folklorist Kay Stone showed up to prime the crowd with their youthful pieces.

I managed to read a short excerpt from a tragic spy novel I left unfinished at age 14. It was an embarrassing ride down memory lane, but I survived. As the evening wore on, however, I noticed a few common threads weaving their way through people’s journal entries, poetry and schoolwork, threads worth considering. I thought I’d share them with you.

Children are melodramatic. No matter what they’re writing, whether it’s an off-beat Cinderella getting to the ball in her halter and mini-skirt, or a mistreated girl who’s “beaten times and starved,”  or a boy writing lyrics about spending the night with a girl in an oak chest (?!) the situation is always grim, grave, passionate, and/or permanent. Thankfully, miracles often intervene, with life-changing results.

Children live in the present. They’re trying to figure out the world: what they’re feeling, thinking, saying, wanting and wondering right now. Loss, friendship, intolerance and strife, (poetry about life in Northern Ireland during “the troubles,” for example,) the nature of separation and death, personal responsibility, (say, poetry about staring at an empty fish bowl after the author failed to feed the goldfish!) and what it means to be accepted.

Children dream big. Kids write about being the smartest, running the fastest, jumping the highest, rescuing the damsel in distress, marrying the handsome prince. Adults focus on the details and the impossibilities, but kids see the big picture.

Children love adverbs. Adverbs are children’s first foray into deep emotion. If they can’t find them in the dictionary, they make’em up: Despairingly, dismissively, expectantly, simultaneously, patronizingly, sardonically, sarcastically, triumphantly…you get the idea. And with dialogue, their characters stated, snapped, grated, enquired, commented or breathed, instead of plain old “said.”

Children take themselves seriously. Their words and ideas, however silly they sound to adult ears, are logical and reasonable to a child. They expect adults to take them seriously, too.

Perhaps this is why I cringed at the idea of sharing my own adolescent work. To my adult ears, these 28-year-old words sound ridiculous, but I poured nearly a year’s worth of spare time into them. At 14, I thought my book would be a best seller. I remember how crushed I was when it wasn’t accepted by a publisher, and how I gave up on writing for many years as a result.

So, Reveille was an opportunity for me to leave some insecurity behind and enjoy a few laughs, but it was also an opportunity to embrace the optimism and clarity of childhood. It’s a two-hour life lesson I highly recommend. Next year, be there or be square!

It’s a buttery-popcorn night at my house when I can watch the angst arising from shallow relationships and wicked step-sister plots transform into joyful self-awareness and dream-fulfillment.

This includes Good Ugly Girl landing the object of her affection, Handsome Boy. He usually has the happy task of dumping Snotty Mean Girl after he realizes he’s an alpha male who wants a richer, more thoughtful relationship.

The actress is never really ugly, by the way. To quote the timeless wisdom of character Helen Morehouse on The Simpsons, “I wanted Mary Ann on ‘Gilligan’s Island’ ugly, not Cornelius on ‘Planet of the Apes’ ugly. TV ugly, not … ugly-ugly….”

In every feel-good movie, Good Ugly Girl becomes The Swan. She sheds the paunchy clothes and the bad hairdo, exposing the shining beauty we always knew was underneath. She overcomes, she succeeds.  She extends a hand of friendship to Snotty Mean Girl, who generally rejects it and ends up with pimples.

There’s a reason people relate to this story. I doubt a single person exists in the world who doesn’t feel insecure about at least one area of her life. (If you’re out there, Totally Secure Person, please let me know. I would love to interview you.)

Recently, I read the testimony of a professional in my industry who I shall call Has It Made.  Has It Made built an enviable resume in journalism despite a lack of education in that field. When investigating the possibility of pursuing a degree later on, a professor of journalism said, “At this point, there’s nothing more we could possibly teach you.”

Has It Made reasoned this was because of natural ability, drive, and a lifetime of experience. Her conclusion was, when it comes to writing, “you either have it or you don’t.”

When I read those words, I felt I had just been blown off by Simon Cowell. Has It Made might as well have said (in a posh British accent), “Shut up and go home. The only place you should be singing is in the shower…and only if you’re all alone.”

I, Good Ugly Girl, had just been slighted by Snotty Mean Girl/Simon Cowell. And she didn’t even know it.

Is this person right? Are all areas of creative endeavour like singing—you   either have “it” or you don’t? Is there no range of ability between tone deaf and Celine Dion? Painting, writing, acting, music…do all these artistic pursuits depend solely on talent?

I hope not. Over the years, I’ve heard many instructors say in writing workshops, courses and seminars: “Keep writing, keep submitting, and someday you’ll succeed.” If they were lying, I’ve been wasting my time.

I’ve come to realize that natural talent does make the journey easier. People like Has It Made will always be with us, but our perception of their rise to the top may not be accurate. If you ask them, they might say they’ve struggled, too. However I perceive them, it’s not an excuse for me to stop trying. The real battle is won through hard work and the determination not to give up.

Snotty Mean Girl has often whispered in my ear, “Get outta here, kid…you ain’t got no future.” When I was 15, her voice was so familiar I thought it was my own, and I listened. Today, when I hear her speak, I choose to blow her off. How about you?

The Professional Writers Association of Canada’s Moncton Chapter invites everyone to its 2^nd annual Reveille, an event where members of the audience and special guests, including local celebrities and Frye Festival authors, share “works” from their youth (e.g. angst-filled poetry, embarrassing diary entries, sappy songs) in an open mic format. The more cringe-worthy, the better! The event will be held Wednesday, at the Moncton Press Club on Wednesday, April 21 at 7 p.m. Come prepared to groan, laugh and cheer. Reveille’s goal is to reawaken that inner child who wanted to be a writer. Anyone can participate and admission is free.

P.S. I’m planning on reading from a torrid novel I wrote as a young teen. (I was a Harlequin Romance lover back then.) See you all there!

The Giant Monster (TGM) is a set of bunk beds we purchased eight years ago for our two daughters. The bottom is separate from the top bunk and it boasts a large lighted desk, generous shelving and a set of five drawers (it’s in excellent condition, if you’re interested).

Lately my teen daughter’s feet have begun to dangle off the end, and we decided it was time to spring for some new beds.

My husband and I were at a big box store last week and spied some Queen-sized mattress sets on sale. A big sale. A sale for suckers. On impulse, we decided to buy two sets, and sell TGM online. Impulses can prove to be  expensive.

We were quite a sight, driving down the road with both sets stacked in precarious fashion on top of a full-sized van. We drove with much fear and trembling and got the mattresses upstairs without too much difficulty.

The box springs, however, were too rigid to bend around the wall of our enclosed stairway. Silly us. We didn’t measure before we made such an impulsive purchase. If we had only bought doubles…

“Oh, well,” we said to one another. “We’ll find a solution later. Let’s just get TGM apart and put it in the basement until we sell it.”

Around 9 pm, I managed to help my husband get the heaviest piece from the second floor to the basement, but not before I felt something pull in my back.

At 4 am, I woke up in excruciating pain, but needed to pee, as all women do in the middle of the night. It hurt so much when I stood up, I passed out. When I passed out, I hit my head. When I hit my head, I triggered a dizzy spell (I have chronic vertigo).

A trip to the emergency room earned me some very effective morphine mixed with muscle relaxant and lots of sympathy, sprinkled with bits of “what in the @!#!* were you thinking?” I have not fully recovered from this incident, but I’m improving, thanks.

But, what to do with the box springs? Should we try and return the sets? The kids were already sleeping on the mattresses and loving them. Should we try ordering queen-sized box springs that come in two pieces? They would be outrageously expensive.

No, we made our beds, so to speak, so now we had to lie in them. One way or another, those box springs were getting upstairs!

“We just need a couple of inches,” we said to each other.

“Maybe if we remove one of the stair treads…?” suggested a recruit.

While I watched from the sidelines with my injured back and my whirling head, my husband took off one wooden stair tread, and then another, then another.

It wasn’t enough. The box spring was wedged in the stairway. I mean, wedged.

“What if we just bang off a little of the plaster on the ceiling?” someone suggested.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

After cracking a big hole in the wall at the bottom of the stairs, and hammering off the corner of the ceiling in two places at the bottom landing, and tearing off each stair tread AND riser, we finally got the box springs upstairs. A week later, we’re still in the process of repairing the drywall, fixing the stairs and painting. But we were committed to the mattresses, by dinghy.

When we sell our house, the buyer inherits a couple of Queen-sized beds.