One can never underestimate the self-sabotaging power of procrastination.

I spent four days this week at a remote retreat center near St. Martins, New Brunswick called In the Stillness (www.inthestillness.ca) because I wanted time to jumpstart a special project. I whined about needing a place with no interruptions and no distractions. No stifling, familiar surroundings, no domestic duties.

When I arrived on top of the mountain retreat overlooking the Bay of Fundy, my hostess led me to a tiny, rustic cabin in the midst of an overgrown stand of aged spruce. On the deck was a dishpan and drying rack atop a long wooden bench beside a water source. Across from the deck was a lazy hammock hanging among the tall trees.

Inside the cabin was a twin bed, a desk, a couple of chairs and two lamps. An electric heater for chilly nights and a cooler for coffee cream. But no Internet or cell phone access, no television or radio. No connection to the outside world.

No distractions. My husband gave me one of those looks and he snickered. “Hey, look! It’s exactly what you wanted!” he said. “I bet you’re going to have a great time. See you Friday.” And then he was gone.

I sat on the bed, panicking a little. Through the window, I watched a little red squirrel skitter along dead logs and branches in front of the deck. I watched him eat. I’ve never seen a creature nibble so fast, like his life depended on it.

At that moment, I felt just as manic as he. I imagined myself at a twelve-step meeting. “Hel-ll-llo… I’m… Rh-rh-onda Bulmer and I’m a procrastination addict.

You see, I came here to put a huge dent in a big project, but now I don’t think I can do it. There’s no Facebook, no email messages, no Internet surfing, no telephone (except up at the main house, and who wants to walk all the way up there?) There’s no kitchen to take one-too-many snack breaks or reheat my coffee. I’m actually going to have to do what I came here to do and produce something—anything—decent, or I’ll feel like a big, fat fraud. It’s too much pressure! I can’t deal with it! ARRrrgh!”

Then I shook myself. Good grief—There’s fantastic coastline to explore, even though it’s an awfully long trek down. There are walking trails, too…if you’re not afraid of bears or coyotes. (Maybe cougars!) Come on, I thought, this is going to be great. By the end of it, you’ll only wish you’d had more time.

So I arranged my work on the desk close to the window. Every once in a while I glanced up, wondering what the squirrel was doing. I noticed the water spigot on the deck was leaking. My goodness, maybe the owners should know about that. I mean, who wants to waste water? I pull on my rubber boots and squish through the soft moss to report my findings.

They thanked me and I returned to my perch by the window. It’s so quiet here. I put my chin in my right hand, thrummed the desk with the fingers of my left. What am I going to do for the rest of the day?

I looked at the bed.

So I lay down to read until the book grew heavy and I took a nap—a good one, actually.

When I awoke, I went to the computer and wrote a paragraph.

But then I had to pee. So I put my boots back on and trudged up to the bathroom at the main building.

I came back and wrote a couple lines of dialogue.

Then I looked at the bag of Easter-coloured peanut M&Ms sitting by my laptop and popped a few in my mouth. Would the squirrel like some? I threw him some walnuts instead.

A mouse appeared and grabbed a fragment greedily and then darted back through a hole under a tree root. I was angry. “Those aren’t for you, you dirty little monster!” I cried, tapping at the window.

Later, there was a tap at the door. The owners’ daughter brought me a couple of chocolate chip cookies. “How sweet,” I said. “Thank you.” She smiled shyly and left.

Well, if I have cookies, I should have some coffee. I waited while I brewed a pot.

There’s always a way to procrastinate.

In her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain references the work of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the state of being he calls “flow.”

“Flow is an optimal state in which you feel totally engaged in an activity—whether long-distance swimming or songwriting, sumo wrestling or sex. In a state of flow, you’re neither bored nor anxious, and you don’t question your own adequacy. Hours pass without your noticing.”

I have experienced this during writing sessions, but not often.  Mustn’t something come easy to you in order to experience flow?

The answer is in the next paragraph. “The key to flow,” writes Cain, “is to pursue an activity for its own sake, not for the rewards it brings.”

Dare I suggest two other keys to flow: maybe discipline and persistence?

My muse the squirrel stayed with me all week, lured by copious amounts of walnut fragments. I did manage to put a dent in my project and developed a roadmap to finish—but not as much as I hoped. Let’s face it, I’m unrealistic. My reward-oriented brain expected more, but despite all that I did experience a couple of magic flowing moments.

And I suppose that’s the lesson a hopeless procrastinator needs to learn: That life cannot be a continuous stream of perfect productivity. But if you’re persistent, there can be beauteous moments of “flow” flanked by long periods of simply being in the present—what C.S. Lewis refers to as, “God’s eternal Now.”

But Battle Royale (Toushun Katami, 1999, Haika Soru) made me wanna throw up.

I read all 608 pages in three or four days. By the end, I was bloody, ragged and gaunt, just like the surviving character(s) at the end of the book. And I felt…nothing.

And perhaps that’s what the author intended. Emptiness.

I understand now why it was harshly criticized in Japan for its gratuitous violence. And, unlike at least one of the characters, I will never endure that battle twice. This book is not for the faint of heart. If you don’t like lurid descriptions of spreading pools of blood and eyeballs being smooshed with an opponent’s fingers and axes through gooshing brains and subsequent vomiting, perhaps you’d better pick up Anne of Green Gables instead. Go for a nice walk by the Lake of Shining Waters.

(I can just imagine Anne Shirley in an alternate universe like this one, by the way. She might do something else entirely to Gilbert Blythe with that wooden chalkboard. Just a thought.)

The story opens with a class of 42 junior high school students in the “Republic of Greater East Asia,” who are taken captive by the military, dropped on a deserted island and forced to participate in a semi-secret experiment called “The Program”— an annual scenario involving approximately 1500 students per year throughout the republic. They are provided with arms, bread and water and forced to kill each other until only one survives.

Sound familiar? The book jacket describes Battle Royale as “a Lord of the Flies for the 21^st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world.” People have accused publishing darling Suzanne Collins of stealing this premise for her successful book “The Hunger Games,” but now that I’ve read both, I think the accusation is overblown. This story is not an examination of war and the division of rich and poor through the eyes of young people.

Battle Royale is about good-old-fashioned survival, and how far people will go to succeed. Turn one of the ruthless sociopathic characters in this book into a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and you’ve got it about right. There are misfits, brainiacs, introverts, snobs and maneaters—just about every kind of personality that exists in school or work.

I was disappointed that only one student out of 42 displayed pacifism—in other words, he makes a conscious decision not to fight his schoolmates. (Well, that’s not entirely true: a couple commit suicide together early on in the book. But they don’t do it because they’re pacifists, they do it because they don’t want to be killed by someone else.)

After reading the introduction, I suspected it would end up that way. The author defines a “Battle Royale” as a wrestling term in this alternate universe. He writes, “…In that [wrestling] match, though, one of the guys—I don’t remember which one—intentionally went for a count out to let his partner win, a display of comradeship that was kind of a letdown.”

Comradeship is a letdown? After I read that early passage, I wondered if the author was simply pointing out that people are not inherently peaceful. Refusing to fight is boring, a sign of weakness. We show our strength by fighting to survive, and deep down, we have no loyalties to anyone but ourselves. Might makes right?

Kind of throws the “all people are basically good” mantra out the window. As a person with a Christian worldview (that teaches all people are born in sin and need a Saviour), I find the book bleak, but true.

Takami is meticulous with his descriptions of various weapons and of the island, its zones, buildings and topography.  And in the beginning of the story, he does a good job of building a sense of despair at an impossible situation and how different personalities subsequently react. I particularly like his use of simile. He painted sharp word pictures, like this one: “He felt in awe of the boy, like a rookie boxer realizing he was doomed to mediocrity upon encountering a world champion. Mitsuru saw genius.”

But even though there was definitely one main character, I didn’t enjoy the shifting point of view. The author periodically jumps from character to character in subsequent chapters much like a movie does in shifting scenes. This was a bit distracting. I’m used to this method in movies, but not in books. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t find it as emotionally gripping as it could be. I just wanted the whole ugly thing to end, I wasn’t really invested in their lives. The story didn’t wrap up any hope that this barbaric practice might end in the future, either.

Just another reason to read it only once, like the Lord of the Flies: two books that deserve one another.

I ordered Battle Royale today online, the 1999 young adult novel by Japanese author Koushun Takami, just to figure it all out for myself.  You know, the big controversy? That The Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins “ripped off” the story hook, line and sinker from Takami’s cult classic?

I bet nobody in the publishing world is worried about it…such controversy will only serve to hoist Battle Royale into yet another surge of  popularity (and tons of book and DVD sales), pulling it farther into the mainstream. In that sense, everybody wins, everybody makes plenty of money. If The Hunger Games weren’t making uber-money, maybe somebody would sue. (Is that cynical? Ah, well.)

It seems the only people who are especially upset are devotees, the ones who feel outraged on the author’s behalf. Everybody else just loves a good controversy and possible public humiliation.

But with another wave of royalties coming, I doubt Takami will be too upset.

The big stink is that people doubt Collins’ assertions that she never heard of Battle Royale before submitting her manuscript to Scholastic. The movie, subsequent to the novel, did make a splash in US theatres a few years ago, although it achieved nowhere near the popularity of The Hunger Games, which made more than $155 million opening weekend in the US and Canada (and globally, more than $214 million!).

It seems plausible that she didn’t hear about it, though, because I had never heard of Battle Royale either, until a couple of years ago. It was placed on my nephew’s school summer reading list. He told me that he found it gory and disturbing and difficult to get through, so much so that his mother complained about the “darkness” of the books on the list.

The Hunger Games is not so much like that, though given the strikingly-similar premise of the story, there is some. But it seemed more to emphasize the cruelty and savage nature of the powerful Capitol, and the powerlessness of the districts it ruled with such fierceness. It seemed to be building to something bigger—revolution—as the next two books confirm.

To me, The Hunger Games’s Capitol and its president reminded me of a wife beater who blackens his wife’s face and then says it’s her fault.

I liked The Hunger Games very much, including its well-drawn main characters: Katniss’ fiery courage, Peeta’s unconditional love, Gale’s strength of will, although as I’ve said in another blog post, the love triangle was somewhat unconvincing, perhaps perfunctory compared to the emphasis on action. But then, I assume that was the writer’s choice.

I am a relatively new writer, with one self-published novel under my belt and writing more. I’m still trying to break into publishing and I’m finding the venom against Collins disturbing. It shows me that no matter how much you achieve, there will be people who will pick your success apart, people who have absolutely no idea how hard you laboured to make it happen.

Let’s not forget, Collins has accomplished something few writers do—she has achieved huge popularity and sales in numbers that most writers can only dream of.

If one cannot acknowledge this, it just sounds like sour grapes to my ears. Anybody can write a crappy copy of somebody else’s work. It takes talent to build a story and a world that captures the imagination and love of young people, a world that they return to again and again, a world they will never forget– because they read it when they were young.

I suspect when I read Battle Royale, given its gory nature, I will find that the novel’s theme is different. I think it might question how much people will do to survive regardless of their prior friendships, and what it takes to get ahead of others in life.  Perhaps it will be an allegory of mainstream Japanese society? I’ll let you know what I think.

Conversely, The Hunger Games focuses more on the effects of war and on the question, is it possible to maintain one’s humanity in the midst of inhumanity? As I read, I couldn’t help but think about child soldiers that exist in our present day world and what the threat and aftermath of war has on any society and its children. Can they ever be normal again? And the biggest question of all:  is mankind doomed to repeat its mistakes over and over?

Nine incomprehensible Knock-Knock jokes

Nine bike rides through the mud

Nine growth spurts that make trousers and best-loved t-shirts too short

Nine hugs for teachers

Nine snorts of laughter regarding bodily functions

Nine constant utterances of the word “why?”

Nine perceptive and salient questions

Nine cries of injustice at the hands of older siblings

Nine reassurances

Nine bickering arguments

Nine forced reconciliations

Nine relative truces

Nine flickering moments of sincere affection

Nine acts of compassion

Nine hotdogs

Nine pancakes and bacon

Nine nacho cheese Doritos

Nine hamburgers with ketchup and mayonnaise and cheese on the side

Nine complaints about vegetables, particularly broccoli

Nine snowball fights

Nine swims at the pool

Nine sandcastles on the beach

Nine fun years.

Happy ninth birthday, C.

Now, the roles have reversed. Now I’m the mother of teenagers, who have recently complained that I lack decorum.  And it makes me defensive. I want to say things like, “I? Embarrass you? Why should you be embarrassed? What I’ve said has nothing to do with you and isn’t any of your business… isn’t it your bedtime, by the way?”

Coming full circle is a strange and curious experience. It’s not that I want to negate my children’s honest responses and feelings—I remember having them myself, after all. The mother-daughter relationship is complicated.

But when I look back, I realize that I perceived my mother as a one-dimensional personality, a cardboard cutout—and in some ways I still do. This is the woman who did laundry, made meals, had no history and only came to life when I got home from school. She only existed to serve my existence.

And I suppose that’s the way it should be. You don’t want to have a mother who doesn’t serve your existence: we call that neglect. Therefore, how can a child see her as anything else?

It is an excruciating thing to be a writer and not be allowed to express on paper what’s closest to the surface for fear of irritating someone else. Writers need to write about everything, it’s an outlet. Writing is how I make sense of my feelings, and how I make sense of the world.

It’s doubly excruciating to not be able to write about the experience of not being able to write.

In other words, I might get in big trouble for blogging—er—complaining, about this. (If I go missing, don’t believe the suicide note.)

Push presents? I wish this concept had been known 18 years ago, when I started having babies. In that case, someone owes me three. Can they be awarded retroactively?

Believe me, I understand the sense that labour is like being on the battlefield. I fought the good fight three times and lived to tell about it. Not everyone does, not even in the twenty-first century. Childbirth changed my body forever, and I will carry the scars for life. They are my battle wounds, and I wear them proudly.

But when people came to offer their congratulations to me in the hospital after the birth of my children, I remember respectfully requesting chocolate (and I thought I was being bold to do that!).

While my friends and family were happy to accommodate me, I had no idea that in a few short years, people (who weren’t even doing the pushing) would be getting expensive pinkie rings just for standing around watching the event.

We’re just too used to goodie bags. Such a thing didn’t exist when I attended my share of birthday parties as a kid. The party was for the birthday boy or girl, not for me. I was a guest: please bring a present, eat cake, pretend you like games and then go home, thank you very much. And make sure you buy something the kid likes, or you’ll hear about it.

Now, everybody gets presents at a birthday party, which is often held, by the way, at an expensive birthday venue. Cinema parties, public pool parties, amusement park parties.

And movie stars get goodie bags for going to a film festival or an awards ceremony. “Thank you for showing up…you came in and smiled, you tipped your hat, you looked great in your suit. Here’s some expensive cream and a new mobile phone. We hope you’ll promote them.”

I suppose sapphire pinkie rings are just for the wealthy at the moment, but such trends trickle down and I wonder if in the near future I will be asked to contribute to a push present fund for my younger women friends who are just starting their families? Does the push present party occur after the baby shower? Do we buy the proud father a commemorative gift, too? The thanks-for-standing-here-while-she-squeezed-your-hand-too-tight gift?

This concept of rewarding a natural process with an extravagant gift to mark the occasion seems like one more example of a hugely entitled generation who don’t really understand that suffering is part of life. “Woo-hoo, I went into labour, and it really hurt…buy me an expensive present!” Should we expect to be paid for such experiences?

Women have been grunting, screaming, moaning, vomiting and bearing down since the beginning of time, and until a science-fictionish way to grow babies outside our bodies becomes commonplace, we’ll keep doing it.

But we’ll survive. And we’ll eat chocolate. No pinkie rings required.

This is why I usually save book-reading for weekends or holidays, when I can be left relatively undisturbed and absorb the words from morning to evening,  to the wee hours, with only bathroom breaks and the occasional trip to the coffee machine—resulting in more bathroom breaks.

So you can imagine how hard I was gripping the pages of The Hunger Games and its two sequels (Scholastic, 2007, 2009, 2010), written by Suzanne Collins. I read all three books, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and MockingJay in nearly one sitting over the Christmas holiday.

This young adult series is fast-paced with an extremely-detailed plot, but also rich in emotion…the kind of book I aspire to write. Its geographic locations, technological imagery and perceptive descriptions of the division between rich and poor, inspired both admiration and just a teensy bit of jealousy.

It seems Collins must have plotted out all three seamless books, (at least loosely) from beginning to end, before she ever began knitting the first few words together.

Part dystopian, part science fiction and part romance, The Hunger Games trilogy centers on a teenage girl, Katniss, who ekes out a living in a poor section of a futuristic, re-envisioned earth. She is forced by a totalitarian government to participate in a barbaric yearly ritual in order to save her family. The games are viewed by a rich and shallow portion of the public, desperate for entertainment. Her actions set off a chain of events that lead to civil war.

Of course, the story is reminiscent of Roman history, with its powerful center and powerless provinces; its gladiators who butchered one another in the Colosseum; and the horrific experiences of early Christians and others tortured by crazy emperors for the entertainment of the masses.

It’s about the horrors of war, how children suffer particularly, and the tendency for humankind to repeat its mistakes.

The one thing I didn’t care for is the love triangle between Katniss, her best friend and fellow hunter, Gale, and the baker’s boy, Peeta.  The triangle resolves itself in a satisfactory way, but not because the main character took any initiative. She is remarkably oblivious to her own feelings, right up to the end, especially the ones that precipitate some herculean efforts to save these two fellows.

A little bit’s okay, but the author carries it all the way to the last couple of pages of the final book, and by then, I’m dying. I’m dying!

Some romance movies (chick flicks) tend to do this lately, too… Sweet Home Alabama (2002–Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey) for example.  They place a girl in between two equally-likable boys, and tell me to choose.

I hate that. Don’t mess with formula.

Just tell me who to like. Really. One of them has to be a dough-head, or what am I supposed to do? Break one of their hearts? I can’t do it! I can’t do it, I tell you.

I suppose my distaste flows from the fact that I don’t believe one can really love more than one person at a time. I think that’s silly. If you think that’s possible, there’s just one word for you: deluded. Go home, take a bath…light some candles, read a book… and make up your mind, for heaven’s sake.

I was thinking about my memorable moments today while I was elbow deep in Christmas baking. I was happy to observe that I had more than one.

Five years old: In my flowered flannel nightdress early Christmas morning, I hopped barefoot downstairs to find my mother crouched beside a Wedgewood-blue plastic dollhouse with white shutters (saltbox-style) sitting unwrapped under the tree. She looked up at me and grinned when she heard my sharp intake of breath.  I ran down and immediately started arranging the little orange furniture pieces, individually-wrapped in clear plastic.

Nine years old: Two Shaun Cassidy albums…sigh…I was going to marry him. I have no idea why it didn’t happen. Later, when he starred in the Hardy Boys series on television, I switched my preference to Parker Stevenson. He was taller.

Eleven years old: The first time I ever saw It’s a Wonderful Life late one Christmas Eve. The story enthralled me, and I pondered it for days afterward—“Every man on that transport died. Harry wasn’t there to save them, because you weren’t there to save Harry!” Powerful stuff.

Thirteen years old: My older brother came home from university to celebrate the holidays, and we posed for pictures in front of the tree. I was wearing a white knit pullover with purple stripes and dolman sleeves that I bought with my allowance money. And I smiled because, for the first time in memory, my brother seemed happy to sit and chat with me.

Eighteen years old: On Christmas break from my study at a technical school near Toronto.  Didn’t I feel cosmopolitan, coming home to visit the country folk? Within a few short months I had doused my permed hair with henna, turning it a brilliant red, and got a very short 1980s mushroom cut (long in the front, short in the back). When I boarded the plane in Toronto there was no snow, just a mild, dull brown landscape. I wore a long black coat and black boots with a bow and skinny heels.  But I nearly slipped and fell when I landed in Moncton, where it had been snowing heavily for quite some time.  I slipped and slid everywhere I went that Christmas—but I had great-looking footwear.

Forty-three years old: Right now, right where I am. With my three fantastic, healthy kids who are growing up so brilliantly in front of me and my husband who, by example, teaches me about unconditional love and servanthood every day.  I am thankful for one more Christmas with my parents and other family members. I’m thankful for the things I was able to accomplish this year—releasing a first book and experiencing my first play production. And I’m thankful for my health and really, really good friends.

And though things often go wrong and there’s not always enough money and there are plenty of things that need to change, none of it really matters compared to all the greatness in my life. And with that in mind, to you and yours, I wish you the very best of the holiday season, and a healthy and productive 2012.

As I glanced up to grab my mug I noticed the Jehovah’s Witnesses trudging up the walkway to R’s house across the street. It’s the white house with black shutters on the corner, gaily decorated for Christmas in red bows and greenery.

The experienced fellow of the pair opened the screen door and knocked while the novice waited and watched at the bottom of the steps.

I watched, too, wondering what R would do when she opened the door.

After about 15 seconds, the door opened and the man stepped forward. But as soon as the door opened, it shut again firmly.

They had nary a moment to get out the first pleasant greeting when they were shooed away like so many bold gray squirrels going after a picnic in a city park.

I noticed his resigned look  as he retreated down the street on this chilly December morning. I felt a twinge of discomfort on his behalf. What a lonely existence, I thought. It can’t be comfortable to be constantly turned out on your ear.

But perhaps it’s not such a lonely existence. Is it possible that when there’s little comfort or acceptance for one’s ideas, pride can easily fill in the empty hole?

This pride attached to knowing that one is utterly and completely right and the knowledge that one is suffering for a higher purpose is the fuel that gets us from door to door, whatever we’re selling.

My lips curved in a little sheepish smile then, because I remember many times when I found the same subtle satisfaction in the idea that I had all the answers, at least about a subject or two—and I know that attitude served to severely annoy the people in my life.

Because someone who acts as though they know everything and have no questions at all ceases to be relevant to the rest of us, who are mucking about in the quagmire of life.

Oh, the insidious, prideful comfort of being right, even more so if you actually are right. Then, you’re really annoying.

Continuing to be teachable even as you continue to be convinced of certain things is the key to a life that bears healthy fruit.

I think that’s why I love the Bible so much because there are miracles and mysteries contained within its pages that seem contradictory at first blush. Yet with time and closer inspection, they morph into paradox—a riddle of missing information.

And as my life races by, wrestling with these issues through difficulties and disappointments has made me less cocky and more objective. It’s the process of wrestling that has helped me make peace with the things that I don’t understand.

Is this what I’ll say when they come to the door? I think it’s something you have to go through to appreciate.

The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control…Galations 5:22