Letters to the Moon
When you ask the moon for a favour…
If you would like to skip my life story and head straight to the Whimsical Wednesday writing prompts, scroll down to the asterisks.
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It’s Wednesday! I’ve been thinking about what I should write here. For 22 years I journaled daily using whatever social media was at my disposal. I began with Livejournal and used that cozy little corner of the internet from the day I flew to Vancouver in 2001 right up until I had my first child in 2008. After that I started using Facebook. I would write up my day like I was the main character in a story, spinning my adventures into small readable tales.
When I moved to Seattle in 2013, I started a blog called 642 Things to Write About with the blessing of the San Francisco Writer’s Grotto, based on the prompts within a book of the same name and I wrote for 222 days straight. And then my second child stopped napping, and I got caught up coordinating stand up comedy and storytelling and other strange events. I kept journaling on Facebook, though.
My every day has always involved writing. Ever since my mother handed me a pencil when I was 22 months old and sent me into a corner to learn my letters so she could look after my newborn brother. Writing was my safe place. As were books. My Dad gave me my first journal when I was 6 years old and I wrote fervently, every day. Songs, poems and weird observations from my day to day life. I still have those journals in a box.
So when I say that I’m going to write every day, here, I know I can, and that it’s possible.
In October 2023 I made a decision to get off social media. After 5 years of running a venue/shop/community space, journaling online felt like work, and no longer a choice I was making. I had an inbox full of people who wanted to share their stories with me, and a lot of my writing was done in private conversations. I would say that I was likely writing about eight hours a day. Which didn’t leave me a whole lot of time for the stories buzzing around in my brain.
My family made a consensus decision to leave our heart-home of Almonte, Ontario, because the cost of running my shop had become financially no longer viable, and because it had been five years…
Every five years we kind of re-evaluate our lives. And this time, my children’s father posited that if he were going to move again, he’d want to move home. To Halifax.
I’m notoriously up for an adventure, but after living in a small town where my neighbours dropped by with drawings, and coffee and we could chat in the streets for hours, and the Mill Street was full of friendly faces and genuine smiles, and heartfelt “how are yous”…I knew I couldn’t move back to the city. I crave connection, and I wanted to finally sit down and write my stories. The make-believe ones I’ve been carrying in my heart all these years. The idea that my stories might get some young human through their everyday…like the stories of Oz, and Roald Dahl’s magical adventures, and Tamara Pierce’s non-binary tales of swordplay and family did for me…that is what drives me. That and, I really like creating worlds. Strange, magical, wondrous worlds.
This is a meandering and wobbly-written memoir about why I’m doing what I’m doing this year.
I haven’t written for an audience in three months, so I hope you’ll forgive me my trying to say everything at once.
In the summer of 2023 we sold our house, and went searching for a new place to live, and explored a bunch of possibilities, but we ended up looking, the day after a hurricane, in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Moon Town. A town full of colourful buildings. The ocean. AND a swath of creative, kind and welcoming people.
We found a house, but the folks didn’t really seem like they wanted to sell it.
So I gently looked to the moon, and I asked it a favour. I said “you must have ties to a town called Lunenburg? Would you help us find our way there?”
Maybe asking a favour from the moon seems like a farfetched and magical thing to do. But, the next day, we got a call saying the house was ours.
And now every night I look to the sky and nod and say thank you. And for three months, I wrote in a journal and titled each entry; Dear Moon.
Every day here in Lunenburg has been a special sort of magic. And I’ll tell some of those stories in this space. But I’ll also be writing on strange weird prompts that I’ll be posting weekly. And you’re welcome to come write with me. Or read. Or just know that I’m out here, and really very happy to be living the life I’m living.
I hope your 2024 has a gentle magic about it. Thanks for reading. I’m so very glad you exist.
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Whimsical Writing with Wake Week 1
First week’s exercises/prompts/whimsy
Write a journal entry in the dark or with your eyes closed
Write a poem about a shape
Write a grocery list for an imaginary grocery store
Write about your favourite flower
Write seven words and draw seven things
Write a letter to yourself a year from now on a random page in this book. Dog ear the page. Read it one year from now if you remember.
Stare a the clouds. Write what you see.
I will write one number 1. I’ll set my clock for 5 minutes and not take myself too seriously. And tomorrow I’ll tackle 2. And so on and so forth.
Write a journal entry in the dark or with your eyes closed (I wrote with my eyes closed and am surprised that it’s actually fairly legible!)
A whimsical day
