Mapping stories

While perusing my Google Reader feed I randomly noticed a headline and clicked on it to read the accompanying story. The Globe & Mail Q&A article featured Toronto writer Anne Michaels, an author of poetry and fiction, whose book The Winter Vault incorporates an idea that fascinated me. According to the article, a character in the novel, "meticulously assembles dozens of unusual maps. Maps of tree roots and wind corridors. A chocolate map. A remorse map. A map of the dead. A secret hope map."

The more I read of the article, the more fascinated with the idea I became. I think I might go to my local library to find a copy of The Winter Vault to read and learn more about this mapping stories concept. It just might be the jumpstart my brain needs to come up with interesting writing ideas of my own. I'll keep you all posted :)

Career list

Last night I got inspiration. I was in bed and semi-snoozing when, for some reason, I started thinking about all the careers I have, at one time or another, wanted to do for my lifework. I was beginning to compile a list of those careers in my head when I realized that it might be a neat idea to write them out somewhere. At first I was just thinking it might be a fun blog post, but then I started thinking about why I wanted to do each of those jobs and how my idea of the actual career was quite different, especially when I was in elementary school, than what the job was really like. Suddenly I was struck with a thought; I could use this for my writing assignment for Adv. Creative Writing. I liked that idea so much that I sat straight up in bed, reached over towards the door and flipped on the lights (first telling my sister, as any nice older sister should do, that I would be turning the lights on), and then took out my Moleskine out of my pillowcase (it lives there for moments just such as the one I'm describing to you) and started scribbling wildly. Once my idea was appropriately documented I turned the page and made a few notes about some ideas I've thought up for Literary Journalism. They aren't the greatest so far, but hopefully making a list will help to inspire some more ideas for that assignment. Then I put my Moleskine back into my pillowcase, turned off the lights and went back to bed. Although I was planning to go right to sleep, my sister and I started a night time conversation (something we used to do almost every night my first year here when we were roommates in the dorm, but haven't done a lot of lately because we usually go to bed at different times this school year), which just got more and more hilarious. By the time we actually finished talking and tried, once again, to sleep I was wishing I'd turned on my voice recorder or taken a video with one of our cameras so we could have recorded the conversation. I was totally random and just got more funny the longer we talked. It was nice to have one of those night time talks again.

Today it snowed. It was awesome, but I wish we'd got more snow. Oh well, what we got was pretty good for down here. At least it snowed enough for classes to be cancelled tomorrow, which is awesome and hasn't happened yet since I came here. I shall let you know what transpired in our "snow day" when I write again tomorrow. Good night for now.