Category Archives: General Musing

General Musing

Dusting Off My Blog

Leave a comment

With this tumultuous year at long last coming to an end, I’ve decided to make some changes. One of them is to dust off this blog and start writing here again, as much as I’m able to. A thick layer of dust has accumulated, as it’s been about three years since I last wrote a blog post. Excuse me while I pull out my feather duster, which is buried at the back of the closet, and get to work. It’ll only take a minute or two.

feather duster

Now that the dust is off, you may well ask why I’ve neglected to write for so long, and there have been plenty of reasons (or call them excuses if you will). The 2020s have been a trying decade so far for too many of us, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Early in 2020, I started to write about my experiences of the pandemic here, but I only depressed myself by doing so and didn’t want to depress anyone else by publishing my musings online. The pandemic didn’t change my daily life much–I continued working from home, just as I’d done since 2007–but I did feel profoundly afraid, and not a little bit angry at those who weren’t doing the right things to protect themselves and others from disease. In time my negative emotions began to dissipate, but the pandemic continued taking up too much space in my brain. And even though I’m pretty introverted, it made me feel very isolated. However, I count myself among the fortunate: I haven’t had the virus myself or lost anyone close to me because of it.

Then, in late 2020, we moved from Toronto to London–not the big London in England, but the little London in Ontario. It’s a city of approximately 400,000 people, and it’s not much like the megalopolis that is Toronto, the city where I’d lived my entire life until then. It’s smaller, quieter, and older, and it’s a bit like a village in some parts. Moving made me feel as if I’d been dropped on another planet and, two years later, I’m still adjusting–though the more places I visit here, the more at home I feel. Because the pandemic continues to be with us, I still mask in public places, and I’ve felt that this is one thing that’s inhibited me from making new friends–that and not feeling quite ready to join the sorts of groups where I might meet those who share my interests.

What else have I been doing? Editing–a lot. I was fortunate in that my work didn’t dry up during the worst of the pandemic. On the contrary, it seemed as if clients had more time on their hands to crank out their novels or memoirs, which they then passed on to me. One enormous project, which I edited over nine months, consisted of four autobiographical novels totalling 560,000 words! I’ve been writing my second novel too, The Spirits of South Drive, a cozy mystery. It’s the sequel to Virginia’s Ghost and is nearly ready for publication. But I only got as far as completing the book cover because so much has  happened during 2022. This year has taken away far more than it’s given, with two major losses–our dog in March, and my sister in October–and numerous other stressors and aggravations I won’t go into. Suffice it to say that 2022 has been–without any shred of a doubt–the most difficult year I can remember. It’s taken a toll, but I’m ready to move on from it now and am doing my best to generate some optimism about the future.

Happy new year, everyone.  May 2023 be everything you’re hoping for.

Email, RSS Follow
General Musing

Headache Begone: Preventative Strategies for Fellow Sufferers

Leave a comment

Editors, writers, and others who spend long hours working at the computer seem particularly vulnerable to migraines and tension headaches. Perhaps more than any other group of people I know, editors frequently commiserate on Facebook about headache hell. Personally, I inherited a predisposition toward migraines from my mother and have suffered from them since I was fourteen. Although my headaches have abated recently, under severe stress I still sometimes get three-day episodes; these start on one side of the head and slowly migrate to the other, causing severe pain not just in my head but also in my eyes and jaw. Needless to say, it’s almost impossible to be happy or productive under such circumstances.

Several years ago, I attended a workshop on natural headache prevention and wrote an article about the techniques I gleaned. I’ve adapted the article for this blog and hope you’ll benefit from these suggestions I present below.

If your pain is caused by either muscular tension or blood vessel dilation—as in migraines—a daily exercise routine can alleviate existing headaches and prevent them from recurring. The routine is rooted in the principles of energy medicine, which postulates that energy must flow harmoniously within the body; if it fails to do so, pain and illness result. These exercises are designed to move around the stagnant energies that induce headaches.

For maximum benefits, perform them slowly and fluidly. Rushing through them or making sudden, jerky motions will diminish their effectiveness. You might even strain yourself in the process. Also breathe deeply and exactly as instructed. Let’s get started.

While in a comfortable sitting position, relax your shoulders. Tilt your head toward your right shoulder. (Do not bring your shoulder up toward your head.) Place your right palm on the right side of your head. Inhale as you press your hand and your head against each other for a few seconds. Exhale slowly while dropping your hand into your lap. Stretch your head further to the right, inhale, repeat the isometric press between your right hand and your head, and exhale as you let your hand drop. Stretch your head as far right as you can, and perform the sequence a third time. Finally, reach across your head with your right hand, resting it on your left ear. Allow the weight of your elbow to pull your head over further. Repeat the entire sequence on your left side.

Next, find the two indentations between the two ridges of the base of your skull; these indentations are known in Traditional Chinese Medicine as the headache points. When stimulated, they relieve pain. While tilting your head back, inhale and press your fingers into the headache points while pushing against your fingers with your head. Drop your hands into your lap while returning your head to an upright position. Exhale slowly through your mouth.

The next step takes some getting used to, and since you’ll look really silly doing it, you might feel more comfortable without an audience. Inhale through your mouth as you thrust your lower jaw out and pull it up toward your upper jaw. Now exhale and allow your jaw to relax. Repeat the inhalation and jaw-jutting exercise, and as you exhale, let your head drop toward your chest.

Now you’re in the home stretch. Inhale and press your fingertips up into the middle of your forehead while pushing your head down. As in the previous exercises, you’re pushing against yourself. Release your fingers as you exhale, and let your head drop down further. Repeat the inhalation, fingertip press, release, and exhalation before dropping your head further toward your chest again. Repeat the sequence a third time, and as you exhale, lock your fingers behind your head and gently pull your head down.

After performing this combination of simple isometric exercises and deep breathing, you’ll feel deeply relaxed. The exercises sweep away the cobwebs by removing energy blocks. You’ll feel refreshed and alert as energy begins to course freely through your body again. If you’re experiencing a headache before you start the exercises, it should start dissipating as you continue. Perform this easy sequence of exercises religiously every day, and you should find they go a long way toward alleviating your headaches.

Email, RSS Follow
General Musing, Virginia's Ghost

New Year, New Look

4 Comments

Happy new year! If my greeting comes rather late, it’s because life has been unexpectedly eventful in recent weeks, and not necessarily in the most positive way. I’ve needed to spend a little time just catching my breath.

There have been some exciting new developments. Virginia’s Ghost, the novel I never thought I’d finish, finally went to my colleague Irene Kavanagh for a manuscript evaluation in December, and I’m eagerly (but patiently, I should emphasize, since I don’t want to rush things) awaiting her feedback so I can resume work on it. Based on her reactions so far, it seems the novel has provided her with a few good giggles, but I expect I’ve still got plenty of work to do. As well, I’ve recently finished editing the first in a series of thrillers featuring an investigator with a wonderful canine sidekick.  Any book featuring dogs as characters is always a delight; this series is right up my alley.

If you’re familiar with my website, you’ll notice it has a fresh new look that I hope you’ll see as an improvement over the old version. I hadn’t actually planned to make any changes; I don’t know my way around WordPress that well and was content to just let things be. But I discovered four days before Christmas that I could no longer add new material to my site. A friend put me in touch with a WordPress specialist, who would ultimately end my frustration and update the look of carolinekaisereditor.com too.  But fixing my broken-down site would have to wait, as Toronto was struck by a devastating ice storm unlike anything I can remember.

 

Toronto Ice Storm, December 22, 2013
Toronto Ice Storm, December 22, 2013

 

Overnight, everything was glazed in a thick coating of ice, and I could hear ice cracking and cascading from enormous branches as they crashed to the ground. Sadly, Toronto lost an estimated 20 percent of its tree canopy. Our building lost most of its power, and we had no heat from the radiators and no hot water. We toughed it out for a couple of days, boiling water, running a couple of space heaters, and praying that the power would go on in time to make a turkey dinner. But when the temperature dipped to -10C and the dog began shivering and whining, it was time to go. We were fortunate to be able to drop Trinka off with a caring friend who had power (and a boisterous wire-haired dachshund for her to play with), and we also managed to find a hotel, which was where we spent our Christmas. It was four days before we could go home. Yes, we were a lot luckier than many people who had no friends or relatives to depend on, but it still made the festive season a bit dismal. In truth, I felt a bit numb from the ordeal–and not just from the cold.

Thank goodness all this is behind me and that 2013 is gone at last. By all accounts, it was a challenging year for many. The destructive energy of that year lingers on, however–it’s still the year of the snake on the Chinese calendar, and will be until January 31st. But I for one will be awfully relieved when that old serpent hisses its last and gives way to the year of the horse. Happy 2014, everyone.

 

Email, RSS Follow
General Musing

Gifts My Father Gave Me

2 Comments

As some readers of this blog will already know, I lost my father, Lawrence “Larry” Kaiser, on February 2nd, just a little over a month ago now. He was 87 and ailing, so his death was not unexpected, but it’s true that nothing can ever truly prepare you for the loss of a parent. Of course, Dad lives on through my memories of him, and as a number of people have pointed out to me, he also lives on through whatever unique qualities he passed along to me, his youngest child.

Lawrence Reide Kaiser
Undated photo of my dad, Larry, looking very dapper, probably around 1950

When I was a child I felt closer to my mother, Shirlee. She was a stay-at-home mom, so we spent more time together than I did with my father, who was busy simply trying to earn a living and support a wife and four children. But as I was growing up, I was often told I was more like my father’s side of the family. Dad was soft-spoken, easygoing, slow to get angry, and unlikely to hold grudges, all qualities that I inherited. He could also be quietly and stubbornly persevering in the pursuit of what he wanted, which is something I’ve also been quite rightly accused of (as character traits go, it’s not a bad one to have). As a young person, he loved to draw, which was an interest I shared with him (though in time we both grew out of this). He was a navigator during WWII on a Lancaster bomber, and I treasure the pencil sketches he did–character studies, really–of his flying crew during this period, as well as some later sketches he did of my mother.

Of course, we also differed in some crucial ways. Unlike me, Dad had a engineer’s mind and had been crazy about airplanes since childhood. He almost certainly would have become an aeronautical engineer if the war hadn’t intervened; when he came back from overseas, he had a young wife and soon a growing family to support, so he carved out a career in industrial sales, which seemed to suit him just fine, making use as it did of his technical knowledge and his relaxed, easy manner with people.

The Kaiser family: parents Larry and Shirlee and their four children.
My parents, Larry and Shirlee, with their brood of four in 1965. I’m the wee one in the white parka.

Neither of my parents had much formal education, but both were avid readers who educated themselves on the numerous subjects that interested them. Later in his life, Dad became quite a chatterbox about many topics, and that was when I started to feel I really knew him at last. He would have laughed if I’d ever called him literary, for he had no serious literary aspirations. He did write many letters in his distinctively graceful, artistic script, and he tried his hand at whimsical light verse about family members. He was a very modest man and always called these efforts “doggerel.” No, he was not particularly literary, but he was certainly literate: he had an eloquent and precise way of expressing himself in both speech and writing, and I never knew him to make spelling and grammatical errors. Given his example, it’s probably no great surprise that I’m an editor.

As for where his way with words came from, I have reason to believe that it came from his mother, my grandmother Florence, who I’m told I greatly resemble in both looks and mannerisms. Florence, a native New Yorker, had been a legal secretary, but I learned from a cousin recently that she had literary ambitions and was writing under a nom de plume. What she was writing remains a mystery. My aunt tells me that Florence was delighted by the theatre and could quote extensively from the works she loved, so perhaps she was writing a play. Whether she ever finished what she was working on or pursued publication is also up in the air. My guess is that as a wife and the mother of three young children, she simply put her writing aside, perhaps hoping to get back to it one day. I’ll probably never know. I’m just glad that she and my father were the sort of people they were, and that they passed down something of their wonderful gifts to me.

My father Lawrence Kaiser with his parents, Jesse and Florence
Dad in 1925 with his father, Jesse, and his mother, Florence.
Email, RSS Follow
General Musing, Writing and Editing

Overcoming Tendinitis for Writers and Editors

2 Comments

Occupational hazards would seem to be few and far between for writers, editors, and others who spend long, solitary hours tapping away at a keyboard. Some would say that we have it easy; as an editor, I’m not exactly out there risking my neck by fighting crime (unless you consider grammatical errors to be criminal acts). Loneliness–the deep kind that is best alleviated by face-to-face interaction, not chatting on social media–is a risk and certainly affects our emotional well-being. Another obvious threat is gaining weight. The unfortunate truth is that the refrigerator cannot be locked and is always much too close at hand. And we sit entirely too much, so we don’t burn off as many calories as we should. Apart from that, are there really that many occupational hazards that can befall us?

Starting back in July, I experienced tendinitis for the first time in my life. The inflamed tendon was near my elbow, but the pain also radiated into my wrist. The inflammation was so severe that for a number of weeks, I couldn’t twist a lid off a jar or turn a key in a lock without experiencing excruciating pain. Everyday activities that I’d taken for granted became hellishly difficult, and that included working at the computer.

I started to assess my behaviour at the keyboard, and I noticed a few things. First, I was using the mouse much more than I needed to, so instead of using it to move up and down through a document (a bad habit I’d somehow got into), I switched to the arrow keys. As well, I was moving away from the keyboard inadvertently; my chair is on casters, and because of a slight incline in the hardwood floor, I was rolling away and straining to reach both the keyboard and the mouse. I slipped a carpet under my chair, and I’m now sitting more snugly up against the keyboard. I always check that my hands are centred precisely over the keyboard before I begin typing, rather than at an awkward angle to it.

All this was helping, but the inflammation was still so severe that I needed medical help. So I visited my acupuncturist-chiropractor, Dr. Z. Worried that tendinitis might put an end to my editing activities, at least temporarily, I asked him what the chances were of recovering from my affliction. He said that for some people, especially those who don’t actively try to do anything about it, tendinitis becomes a chronic condition. I knew I wasn’t going to be one of those people; I was definitely willing to put in the work to overcome it. What choice did I have?

Because my tendinitis was a repetitive strain injury, Dr. Z. advised me to take as much time away from the keyboard as I possibly could and simply rest the tendon. Otherwise, the inflammation would never come down. I would also need to ice it three times a day for a few minutes at a time. As well, I applied Traumeel homeopathic cream a couple of times a day. Dr. Z. taught me stretching exercises that I could do daily, and I went to his office once a week for acupuncture treatments. After he removed the needles, he also did some deep muscle massage on my arm. I started taking a supplement called SierraSil Joint Formula 14. Before long, I turned the corner and the severe inflammation died away. Dr. Z. told me I could start strengthening exercises, as keeping the muscles strong would prevent a recurrence of the tendinitis.

Cumulatively, all these measures worked; it wasn’t any one thing that solved the problem. Now I can work away at the keyboard for hours pain-free, and I’ve even been able to go back to knitting (although Dr. Z. cautions against doing it daily, as I used to). I still try to take entire days away from the keyboard, if I can tear myself away from both work and the allure of the online world. If you have severe tendinitis, it’s all too easy to give in to despair; but given enough time, effort, and patience, you too can overcome it.

Email, RSS Follow
General Musing, Writing and Editing

Is Pointing Out Errors in English Just Plain Rude?

15 Comments

I hate to admit to such poor taste, but recently I was watching a certain TV show in which brides try on wedding dresses before an entourage of friends and family members who often seem all too eager to rip their self-esteem to shreds. If there’s anything good to be said about this show, it’s that it provides valuable lessons in how not to behave. All that aside, I was horrified the other night when the mother of a hapless bride criticized her dress, saying that it needed more embezzlement. “Embellishment!” I shouted to the screen. “Embellishment, not embezzlement!” The usage crime went unnoticed by the bride or anyone else for that matter, and I wonder what I would have done if, God forbid, I’d been sitting in that bridal salon with that unpleasant family. Although I wouldn’t have shouted the way I did to the TV, I would have been awfully tempted to say something, even a meek and mild “Um, did you happen to mean embellishment, perchance?”

Outside the context of teaching or editing, is it ever all right to point out errors in English? Being a polite Canadian, I seldom do it. But being an editor, I’m always dying to. Honestly, I hate to see the English language abused, and I think it’s vital that people make the effort to speak and write correctly. If I didn’t think this way, I wouldn’t be doing what I do. As well, when you edit people’s writing for a living, it’s sometimes hard to fall out of the habit of pointing out mistakes. And so my polite Canadian self is invariably at war with my editor self, generating a lot of inner turmoil whenever I hear someone mangling the language. Of course, in this matter of correcting versus not correcting, context is everything. I’ll tactfully point out errors to my Russian friend at the dog park because she’s told me before that she wants to speak better English. She’s never taken offence, so no harm done. But you’re really putting your neck on the line when you choose to correct people you don’t know all that well, no matter how politely you do it.

Recently, I attended a networking event and was sitting beside a woman I’d chatted with perhaps once or twice before. She was promoting a book she’d written and showed me a postcard that summarized the plot. She knows I’m an editor, and she pointed out an error in the postcard to me. I read the rest of it and noticed an ungrammatical, wordy sentence that was actually much more of a heinous crime than the typo she’d noticed. Hesitantly, I told her it was ungrammatical and then went on to suggest a better sentence she could use in its place. With this act, I extinguished all joy. She just looked at me grimly, and a profoundly awkward silence passed between us. In her mind, I had committed a serious faux pas, and we barely spoke another word to each other for the rest of the event.

The way I see it, by pointing out the first error, she opened the door for me and I merely walked through it. And I said what I did in the spirit of helpfulness; I could see how the postcard could be improved, and thought I should take the opportunity to tell her how to do it. But perhaps I’m wrong about the appropriateness of my actions. What would you have done if you’d been in my situation? Have you ever pointed out someone’s error to his or her face, only to have it backfire? Is it ever right, outside the context of editing someone’s writing or teaching them about the language, to point out errors?

Email, RSS Follow
General Musing

Summertime . . . and the Livin’ Is Easy

1 Comment

This post has absolutely nothing to do with editing or writing–mainly because last week’s adventures on the shores of Lake Huron had absolutely nothing to do with editing or writing either (but plenty to do with reading novels of the page-turner sort). I’m not ashamed to say that I really ought to title this What I Did on My Summer Vacation, and I’ve even included nice photos designed to make you wish you’d been there enjoying the sights with us. Don’t say I didn’t warn you about what to expect.

Below is the cozy, wee cabin we stayed in for a week in MacGregor Point Provincial Park. Yes, it’s completely adorable and bursting with cottagey charm, and I love the spacious deck, the fact that one of the bedrooms had bunk beds (just seeing them made me feel like I was ten again), and the assortment of mismatched but homey mid-20th-century dishes in the kitchen. We do not own the cottage but were renting it. The park has a number of beachfront private cottages within its boundaries, as well as hiking trails in the woods that are not exactly taxing for non-athletes like me.

The beaches of Lake Huron are quite rocky and rugged, as you can see below. Unfortunately, due to lack of rain, the waterline was disturbingly low, and no matter how far I waded out, the water would not come up much above my thighs. I envisioned having to walk halfway across Lake Huron in order to be able to swim, so lacking sufficient ambition, I gave up on that idea and contented myself with wading close to shore and wandering the beach to watch herring gulls, turkey vultures, common terns, and double-crested cormorants in flight.

Apart from my meanderings along the park trails and across the beach, my entertainment consisted chiefly of lazing in the sun on the deck and watching the ruby-throated hummingbirds jostle each other for the best position at the feeder. I also passed the time by reading suspense thrillers by Peter Robinson and Nicci French in a delightfully dozy fashion, my facial expression no doubt resembling that of our dog Trinka below as I nodded off now and then.

Occasionally, we went into town (the town being Port Elgin) and drank strong coffee, and one day we drove north to the picturesque, touristy town of Southampton, which boasts its own lighthouse on nearby Chantry Island. Once there, we met a dear old friend for lunch, which consisted of curry wraps followed by a luscious slice of homemade lemon poppyseed cake. Every night, we had a barbeque on the deck; I can still taste the mouth-watering halibut steak with blueberry and mango salsa that I enjoyed. Then we watched the spectacle of the sun going down. The shores of Lake Huron are famous for dazzling sunsets worthy of the pages of National Geographic, and I was not the least bit disappointed by the sun’s glorious performance.

Nothing much really happened up at MacGregor Point, but that was precisely the idea. In the end, I couldn’t have asked for a more relaxing escape from reality. I even rediscovered that almost forgotten artifact of my past, the afternoon nap. And after enduring several weeks of apartment building destruction/construction–not to mention a painful root canal procedure I had just before we went away–a whole lot of nothing was the very thing I needed. I highly recommend it.

Email, RSS Follow
General Musing

What I Love about Old Books

4 Comments

Eleven years ago, I went on a road trip to the Finger Lakes district of New York with two friends. Happening upon a dusty second-hand bookshop in Ithaca, I discovered a 1919 copy of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, a novel based on the life of Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. I’d read the book a number of times before, but the price was a mere six dollars, so how could I pass it up?

It isn’t a fancy edition by any stretch of the imagination, but in its simple way, it’s a lovely object. I love the bold graphic of the palm trees on the cover and the graceful illustration of the Tahitian beauties on the inside cover. I adore the way the title of the book has been designed, with the linking o‘s in Moon. A fascinating little detail is the embossed publisher’s insignia on the front cover that features a peacock (visible in the bottom right of the photo).

My edition of the book is battered, so it’s not worth any more than I paid for it. One corner has been banged up, water spots speckle the cover, and the edges of the pages have yellowed over time, but this just shows that the book was read and enjoyed by many people over time, as any good book deserves to be. As well, there’s the intriguing inscription, which appears to be as old as the book itself, in well-formed script inside: “Happy Birthday Hugh. Frances.” I can’t help but wonder what Hugh’s relationship to Frances was. Were they siblings? Lovers? Husband and wife? Was she trying to impress him with her good taste in literature? I can’t help but wonder if he liked the book. What happened with the two of them after he received it? There’s a story there that we’ll never know, but we can always invent something.

With old books, the story within the covers is augmented by the story of the book as a physical object, passed from one person to another over time. Of course, there’s a lot of mystery about a book’s previous owners, hinted at only by things like inscriptions, notes in the margins, and passages underlined. And what does such a book say about the time in which it was produced? To me, my copy of The Moon and Sixpence speaks to a more elegant and serious time in which books were considered objects of beauty and thought of as items to be treasured for generations.

I have quite a number of battered volumes that bear the stamp of my grandfather, Jesse Kaiser, a World War One veteran who died when I was just eight years old. I have only vague impressions of him as a kindly but sombre man. Photographs of him, and his collection of books–mostly war-related novels and poetry from the teens and twenties–are just about my only link to him and hint at a preoccupation with events that were undoubtedly burned into his psyche for the rest of his life. Having his books gives me a sense of connection to him and to the past that I wouldn’t otherwise have.

In our world of disposable culture and e-books, hard-copy books have lost the sense of being significant objects in and of themselves, and I think this is a shame. Although I have an e-reader and find it handy for travelling, I still much prefer curling up with something made of paper than with a cold, hard, electronic screen. But I wonder how many people like me still roam the earth. Although I may be a dinosaur, give me my old books with their dog-eared pages and their whiff of the past any day of the week.

Email, RSS Follow
General Musing

Resolving to Enjoy Satisfying Purposelessness

2 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I was relieved when 2012 swept in the other day. For one thing, I was overjoyed to finally be able to put up my new calendar, which features beautifully photographed antique teapots in lush settings. And if I happen to get tired of looking at teapots, I can always swap this calender for the tastefully arty Maxfield Parrish one that hangs in the hallway. I’m even enjoying my very businesslike Letts of London 2012 desk diary, with oodles of space for scribbling notes.

Fun and frivolous reasons for welcoming 2012 aside, I was happy to put 2011 behind me since it was not the best year I’ve ever had. But I’ll be quick to point out that it was not the worst year, either. Unlike some of my friends, I was lucky–no true disasters occurred, and I count my blessings for this. Nonetheless, 2011 seemed to weigh heavily on me, challenging me at every turn, to the point where by the end of the year, I was finding that the simplest things–even activities I usually enjoy, like baking cookies–required almost Herculean efforts on my behalf. Although I seemed to achieve a fair bit this past year, I’ve frankly been worried about the toll those accomplishments have taken on my body and my spirit recently.

I’ve always considered myself an introspective person, but despite this, I often haven’t stopped to analyze what role I play in my own well-being and simply push myself through low-energy periods, misguidedly assuming that determination alone will see me through. In years past, at the beginning of a new year, I would often throw in a few resolutions to theoretically strengthen my will, resolutions that inevitably fell by the wayside within a few short weeks (or sometimes even days). No amount of determination and resolve has ever made me feel any better when I feel physically and mentally deflated.

What has made me feel better lately is reflecting on the uselessness of most resolutions. I came to the conclusion that they are the last thing I need to be heaping on myself–now or at any other time of the year. Most resolutions just underscore a feeling of personal inadequacy; I make resolutions to do this, that, or the other thing when I don’t feel good enough. Yes, there’s always room for improvement–I could probably waste less time and be more productive if I really set my mind to it, and I’m sure that many of us fall into this category. But the pressure of trying to live up to an ideal of non-stop accomplishment exacts a cost. Do any of us really need to put that much more pressure on ourselves? Is life not already challenging enough for most people? Must we always be so focused on accomplishing things?

In 2011, my focus on accomplishment went far beyond what was healthy. In an effort to push my business to the next level, I developed a kind of tunnel vision: all my thoughts and activities seemed to be directed by the need to accomplish, and I felt utterly tyrannized by the word should. Where was fun, play, and relaxation? Like those poor souls who are incapable of taking a vacation, had I simply forgotten how to relax? The thought was horrifying. With such an imbalance in my life, no wonder I’ve felt so out of whack.

My last afternoon of the year was spent puttering–reading for pleasure instead of for work (a book about the history of handwriting, which was more entertaining than you might imagine), clipping mouth-watering recipes from magazines, watching the woodpeckers gorging themselves at the suet feeder, drinking my favourite Indian spice tea, and eating those orange double chocolate cookies I hadn’t much enjoyed making (since they were needed for Christmas Day). I wondered aloud when I had last had an afternoon of such satisfying purposelessness. This year, my only resolution is to allow myself to spend more time drifting in this way, free from the need for constant accomplishment. Happy new year.

Email, RSS Follow
General Musing, Writing and Editing

The Perfectionist Syndrome in Writing

6 Comments

James Scott Bell is a novelist and the author of several wonderful books on the craft of writing including Revision & Self-Editing. This book is a model of clarity and succinctness when it comes to delineating the essential elements of great fiction, and I’m convinced that it should be in the reference library of every fiction writer. The book is also wildly entertaining, peppered as it is with references to classic movies such as Casablanca and interesting little anecdotes.

One of my favourite anecdotes from the book concerns the writer Marcel Proust, who was once found writhing on the floor of his study by his housekeeper. No, Proust was not in the throes of a violent seizure. Instead, his contortions reflected his angst over what word he was going to write next. According to Bell, Proust was probably suffering from what he calls the perfectionist syndrome: the compulsion to make each sentence perfect before moving on to the next one.

Editors are well acquainted with perfectionism. Attention to fine, nitpicky detail seems to be in our blood, and we have sought out the editing profession because words are something we can control and strive to make perfect and beautiful. And our editorial training reinforces the idea that nothing less than perfection will do. Mistakes can be costly, we are told, and they are embarrassing as well, undermining our professional credibility. The perfect sentence is not just important, but crucial to our livelihood.

So what happens when people who spend an awful lot of time editing switch gears and write for a change? Not surprisingly, we often experience the sort of brain freeze that poor Mr. Proust was afflicted with. Our critic, which prides itself on its editorial prowess, dukes it out with our artist, which just wants to write. The critic, rather than going into hiding while we’re writing, is as opinionated and yappy as ever. It strikes fiercely at our creativity like someone pruning a sapling before it’s had half a chance to grow. In that quest for perfection, in which we painstakingly polish up each sentence before we dare write another, we stifle the artist, which just needs to get everything that’s inside us out there on the page, regardless of what condition it tumbles out in. It often seems that our creative impulses don’t have a hope.

Where’s the mute button? How do we go about shutting up the critic and letting the artist take centre stage? Bell has some good suggestions. Among them is a warm-up writing exercise involving just letting our prose flow for a few minutes without stopping to evaluate it. I’ve had some success with this technique, though I can’t deny that it’s difficult to lose myself in the process, as I’m often tempted to stop and fix mistakes as I make them. Which brings me to another one of Bell’s suggestions. “Any problem can be fixed,” he writes. Of course we know this–after all, our critic is an expert in fixing. But it needs to learn when to do the fixing, which is not while we’re struggling to get our words on the page in the first place. Otherwise, we end up like Proust–writhing, not writing.

Email, RSS Follow