Sunday Seeds: November Edition

Anne Shirley, Hozier, Divine Rivals and Wild Gods

Cornflowers, dandelions, maple trees, and all the rest of their towering and tiny green cousins send out their seeds on the winds, hoping to find fertile ground. Inspiration is much the same. A book, a song, a poem might land in just the right spot for you, on just the right day, giving life to a new idea. On the first Sunday of each month, I send out a handful of seeds that have drifted into my own path, in the hope that their beauty or their poignancy or their curiosity feeds your creativity.

Oh, November, with its sharp-toothed winds and carpets of decaying leaves, and the inexorable fading of all those brilliant oranges and golds into the heavy palette of greys. The world seems to conspire to keep you home, bundled in thick socks and woven blankets, mugs of tea and soup close at hand, sheltering between tottering stacks of books to be read.

Every year I find my well-thumbed copy of Anne of the Island, and by now the book opens by itself to one of my favourite quotes:

It was November--the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines. Anne roamed through the pineland alleys in the park and, as she said, let that great sweeping wind blow the fogs out of her soul.

Anne is not generally troubled by “soul fog,” the paragraph goes on to say, and nor am I, but there’s something about November that makes sinking down into melancholy feel therapeutic. And if you’re writing anything with even a hint of romantic angst or desperate, eternal love, go listen to Hozier’s “Francesca.”

Seemingly about the doomed love in Dante’s Inferno between Francesca da Rimini and her husband’s brother, Paolo, for which they were both murdered and sent to hell to be tormented by an unceasing storm for all eternity, the song’s first verse ends with the lines:

“My life was a storm, since I was born
How could I fear any hurricane?”

It’s. So. Good.

Next up, I’ve just started reading Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross, and while I’m only two chapters in (and thus will reserve full judgment until I’m finished), the first paragraph made me want to abandon all of my responsibilities and inhale the entire book.

Cold fog had settled over the depot like a burial shroud, and Iris Winnow thought the weather couldn’t have been better. She could hardly see the train through the gloam, but she could taste it in the evening air: metal and smoke and burning coal, all woven together with a trace of petrichor. The wooden platform was slick beneath her shoes, gleaming with rain puddles and piles of decaying leaves.

I, like literary-true-love-of-my-life Anne Shirley, am a glutton for words that give me a thrill, and this book starts out with “shroud,” “gloam,” and “petrichor.” I’m excited for this one. Be warned, there’s a sequel, but it comes out in December. Thank God.

And finally, a poem that perfectly embodies everything November feels like for me. “Sometimes a Wild God” by Tom Hirons is melodic, richly visual, and feral, and you can listen to him read it here. Do it on a dark night when the wind is howling round your eaves.

UPCOMING WORKSHOP: I’m teaching a workshop for breaking through writer’s block on November 25 at the McTavish Academy of Art in North Saanich. If you’ve been wanting to write but you’re not sure where to start or how to get going, come join us! More info and registration here.