Rumer Ruminates on a Room

This.

And what about this, you may ask?

Well, this is my recently repainted, yet-to-be-recarpeted spare room after it suffered some water damage from upstairs.

I've lived in this flat for 10 years. Yep, we're stupefying friends, family, and London lettings agents left and right with that one.

Whether they realize it or not, my readers are already well-acquainted with this space--it's Rand's flat in my past-present paranormal novel, What the Clocks Know. And this particular room is where Margot has many-a haunting dream in her sleep... But to me, it's my office / guest bedroom / husband's closet. Oh, and I suppose bike rack (thanks to a very, very high ceiling). That's how we roll in London. Life in miniature.

Anyway, what I'm taking my sweet time getting around to is that it's been a decade since I've seen this room empty like this. The first time since we moved in. And it's weird. Though I've imagined it this way many times over the years (in mentally/emotionally preparing for when we do ultimately move), to behold it like this now has made me realize something:

When we move out, it'll be like we were never here.

Our first years of marriage, the first home we made together, every book I've written so far, all the trials and tribulations of international relocation we've endured, the dozens of people we've hosted, the laughs we've shared, the tears we've (okay, I've) cried, everything we'll have learned and dreamt of and achieved in the span of over a decade--*poof*

Vanished.

Like Keyser Soze.

(And Kevin Spacey, for that matter.)

None of this will disappear from our minds and hearts, of course. We're lugging all our memories with us when the time comes. Only for a cleaning crew to come through and wipe the slate clean behind us, leaving everything just as we'd found it in 2008. Just like every previous tenant/owner had before us and will after. These containers brimming with our lives...they just return to empty spaces.

But do they?

Since celebrating our 10-year anniversary in the UK, we've been reminiscing a lot about our time here, and somehow this whole water-damage/renovation fiasco has shifted our nostalgia into hyperdrive. So, at first I looked at this empty room where I literally started my writing career and felt such sadness that all that meaning will just get erased as someone else's blank canvas to paint on. I can't take it with me. But will it ever truly let me go?

As I said to my husband the other day, "We're gonna leave so much energy behind in this place! The next tenants are screwed!!" And then we both laughed because we both know it's so totally true.

These walls...they've locked us in. A part of us, anyway. We've energetically imprinted ourselves on this space, so in a sense will always be here, just as I believe a part of everyone else who's lived here still does, possibly affecting us in ways we don't realize. You don't have to be dead to haunt a place.

And haunt places we do, which is what I like to write about. It didn't take moving to London for me to contemplate the spaces I live in and pass through, the people who've shared those places, and the individual and collective experiences to be had (and have been had) in them. The past always lives in my present, and I reckon the future does as well. Layer upon layer of life in a single space.

Think about it.

You can read about it, too. Here http://getbook.at/SFAS and here http://getbook.at/WTCK. 😉

In the meantime, since that first photo was taken earlier this week, our spare room has indeed been recarpeted and refilled with our schtuff, as we're not going anywhere just yet. So, here's to filling these walls with more memories and manuscripts! And to the energetic prints we'll leave behind, living on in our wake. 👻 😊

Upstate 8 Literary Festival: Keynote (Part 2)

In Part 1 of my keynote address, I related my personal history with the Upstate 8 and how my writing life began by entering my elementary school's Young Authors Contest. I learned at an early age that rejection is part of the process, but also that the more I tried, the more I improved. The key was to KEEP WRITING. Yet on that note... 

I wish I had kept writing creatively, but I’d let it lapse awhile during and after college, when I studied finance and became a consultant. In the years to follow, I wrote mainly emails and financial analysis. As all the while, my mother lamented, “Where are my writers? Where is my poet?” since all four of us kids had gone into either accounting or finance.

My brothers are still CPAs, but both my sister and I are now authors—so, Mom? You’re welcome. My sister and I both started out in finance, too, and maybe we weren’t writing fiction then, but we continued to read it as our escape from an everyday existence that paid the bills but didn’t quite make us tick. I don’t regret pursuing a business career—it’s challenging and rewarding in its own way—but during those daily commutes to downtown Chicago, when I was reading a novel when I probably should’ve been keeping up to date with the Wall Street Journal or something, I just knew. I knew I wasn’t long for the business world.

One day, I left the office to visit a bookshop. I was picking out a gift for a niece or nephew, looking through the children’s section when I came across my all-time favorite picture book as a kid: The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf. I don’t know if you’ve read it, but it’s basically about a peaceful bull who loves smelling flowers more than anything. He chooses not to romp around with the other young bulls and won’t fight inside the bullring in Madrid. He simply wants to sit under his favorite cork tree and smell the flowers.

Believe it or not, finding this book in that bookstore on that day was an epiphany for me. Standing between the shelves, flipping through this story that I hadn’t read since childhood, I realized that I didn’t want to fight the corporate bullfight anymore either. It went against my grain, and all I wanted was to find my way of smelling the flowers, too.

Which is when I realized: books. Books are my flowers. They always have been. Reading them, teaching them, now writing and editing them. My life’s been a virtual greenhouse ever since I decided to pull a 180 and leave consulting to study English language and literature instead. I earned my masters in education and became an English teacher, first as a student teacher and long-term substitute at Geneva High School (go, Vikings!) and then as a full-time teacher here at St. Charles North (go, North Stars!). Teaching was by far the toughest job I’ve ever had, but I loved my work here. I loved my students and colleagues and the communities of the Upstate Eight. In my heart, this area will always be my home.

But life does happen. Nearly ten years ago, I got married and moved to London for my husband’s career. I won’t pretend the transition wasn’t difficult, but now I’m a dual American and British citizen, and the UK has become another home, and another inspiration for writing. 

And I’m talking crazy inspirational—I can’t walk a block without stumbling on something of historical or literary significance. I live right down the street from where Beatrix Potter wrote her Peter Rabbit tales. I often stroll through Kensington Gardens, where Peter Pan was inspired, and I’ve explored Shakespeare’s hometown. I’ve seen Charlotte Brontë’s original manuscript for Jane Eyre and stood in Jane Austen’s house (which is pictured here). I’ve hung out at Charles Dickens’ old haunts and met his great-great-great-granddaughter Lucinda Hawksley. I’ve even had one of my manuscript chapters critiqued in person by a descendant of Charles Darwin, the author Emma Darwin.

So, for close to a decade, I’ve been OMG-ing my fool head off over walking in the footsteps of my literary heroes, feeling ever humbled by their talent but ever aspiring to it.  

Yet the fact of the matter is, moving to London did take me away from family, friends, and my teaching career here. That was heartbreaking. And though I started out teaching across the pond as a substitute, until I could find satisfactory full-time work, I blogged for a London relocation agency, writing about life in the UK from my expat perspective. Professional blogging was my first foray into writing at length every day, and I found the process of sharing my written experience very therapeutic. And since I only worked part-time, I finally had the opportunity to try what I’d always wanted to do: write a novel.

Oh, yeah, suuure. Write a novel. Simple.

Right. I had no clue how to come up with an idea that I could run with for the entire length of a book! But what I always consider first as a writer is: What do I enjoy as a reader? Probably the best advice I’ve ever received and could impart to you today is this: Write what you want to read.

Write what you want to read.

For me, that’s fiction with elements of mystery, history, and a touch of the supernatural. Something modern but with a Gothic edge. Having lived in historic buildings in both Chicago and London, I can’t help but think of all the lives that occupy the same spaces over the decades if not centuries. Living and dying there. I look around and imagine what might’ve happened in the rooms where I stand, where I sleep. So, the nature of time and the soul just fascinates me and can be explored through so many dimensions; I don’t think I could ever exhaust all the ways to approach it.

But sometimes even all that possibility is overwhelming—almost scarier than having no clue what to write about. I might feel like my ambition exceeds my talent, and I psyche myself out. Which blocks me from writing.

To overcome a really bad bout of writer’s block that I had on my first book, I turned to short fiction. I cracked open a journal and did freewriting like I used to in high school. I started a personal blog and posted my responses to writing prompts. I also took some of these entries and revised them to submit to flash-fiction sites and short-story contests. And I simultaneously began editing for a small publishing company, which helped me hone my craft by helping others.  

And within a few years of trying, really trying to make space for writing in my life, I got two short stories and two novels published, mostly under the pen name Rumer Haven. 

Both novels are ghost stories of sorts that switch between past and present, and I’m currently wrapping up a 1920s murder mystery. After that, I’m tackling a paranormal book series, if all goes to plan, along with an anthology of supernatural stories. So, for as much as I’ve done, I’ve still got my work cut out for me. 

Because let’s not kid ourselves: Writing is a joy, but writing is also a lot of work.

To be continued in Part 3 of this keynote series...