The great Deloris Van Cartier once said: “If you wake up in the morning, and you can’t think of anything but singing first, then you’re supposed to be a singer.”
Nothing has resonated more with me than that quote. And though I do love to sing, writing is what I always think about. My characters are all around me, living in the back of my head, interacting with each other behind my back, writing their own stories in ways I could not have expected. I go to sleep dreaming up stories and places and wake up wondering where everything will go next.
Sometimes when I paint or draw, if I’m very lucky, I can almost see the finished work on the paper or canvas, and my lines and colours are just bringing to life what was already there. But with writing I always feel that way. Like I am simply peering into another place, another world, and bringing a sliver of those stories into being.
So after many years of scribbling in notebooks in my backyard, filling up binders on the GoTrain, creating folders in word and texting myself ideas while my kids play at the park, I’ve decided to take my writing one step further. Putting it on this website has forced me to complete what I have started. To not only fold, but put away, the metaphorical laundry that is editing and completing some of my stories.
And that is my only goal. Putting the stories out there, into the world, where they belong. No one even needs to read them. I just like knowing they exist in a place outside of my mind.