Cynthia Reyes

Checking In – Again

July 16, 2024August 14, 2024 Cynthia Reyes

Hello, Friends.

Sorry, but the grandchildren and my teaching are winning. Not enough time to blog often – just enough to read some posts, often in the wee hours.

Sharing a rare update:

The Grandchildren

The grandchildren are doing well, thank God. The usual colds, etc. which we’ve come to expect.

The older one is the only 4 year old I know who spends huge after-school time writing and doing her math. She plays a lot, but also badly wants to learn.

The younger one is climbing everything – and trying to become an escape artist in the process. They both melt our hearts daily with their smiles and antics.

Teaching Writing

Teaching has also been rewarding. Not financially – the pay is so small, it’s almost like volunteering. But it delights me to watch my students become skilled writers. Three have had their short stories chosen for a respected anthology, and 4 have already completed the first drafts of their books (memoirs), and sent them to Beta readers. Talk about growth!

The rewards are mutual. I’ve grown alongside the groups I’ve taught.

Lunch with my Writing Students

An Important Lesson

The first year I started teaching writing, I was having a very rough time after a car accident. I wrote in my journal:

“On the first day with (the) group, I decided to reveal my issues that could affect my performance.

“They could already tell I had walking difficulties, so it was easier to address the pain which afflicts me when I stand or sit for long. But it took courage to tell them about the invisible stuff. All have been obvious at different times – the stuttering, strange talking, extreme forgetfulness at times, difficulty getting the words out, and completely losing it if sounds come at me from different directions.

“I also take pre-emptive steps to help me through potential problems. Each agenda is very clear and detailed to keep me on track and to help them help me if I lose my way.

“I don’t remember their names each week, so I started out giving name cards. Those disappeared quickly, so now I wait for the other participants to call each other by name, and I write it down, indicating where they are sitting that day.

“Each week, I remind them to let me know if I’m not being clear. I also stop and ask them: ‘Does that make sense? If it doesn’t, please tell me.’

“I think they are deciphering my intent in the rough spots.”

~~~

I’ve shared the above as a reminder to me, and anyone who needs it, that even when times are really bad, there’s still something we can do, and still people who will support you because they see how hard you’re trying.

My very best to you,

Cynthia.

A Good Home

A Quick Catch-up

March 26, 2024January 17, 2025 Cynthia Reyes

Hello Friends:

I counted my chickens before they hatched. And so the annual winter sinus infection and bronchitis hit me when I wasn’t looking. But before that happened, I caught up with one of my “penpals”.

I never met any of my childhood penpals. So it was lovely to meet someone with whom I only started corresponding in adulthood!

Years ago, Dick and Angel Strawbridge started a TV show and, coming from a background in network television myself, I encouraged them and told my friends to watch the series — called Escape to the Chateau.

Throughout the years, Angel and I kept in touch, sometimes sporadically.

Her kids enjoyed the Myrtle the Purple Turtle series. (I think the Myrtle fridge magnet is still in their kitchen). And when she wrote a new book, I cheered her on.

So my husband decided to buy us tickets to the Toronto stop of their North American tour – a fabulous show.

I was pleased with their shoutout of me and the Myrtle books from the stage. Nicer still was seeing how Arthur and Dorothy have grown, and meeting Angel and Dick in person. We kept hugging each other – we may not meet again!

Also in uplifting news:

The first batch of amaryllis bulbs brought indoors, over-wintered and planted, has bloomed. Hooray!

My best wishes, friends.

A Good Home

Housekeeping Disasters & Wisdom

January 11, 2024January 14, 2024 Cynthia Reyes

Rereading this earlier post – excerpts from my journals – made me grin.If you could use a smile, or a nod of recognition, perhaps, read on….

~~~

I’m known for my cooking. How I wish that were not so.

My cooking skills are legendary for all the wrong reasons.

Of course I believe in miracles! I say that every time something I bake turns out well.

If I could, I’d have all-white furniture in my living room, and admire it from afar. I’d have to. I’m so messy at times, there’d be no real living going on in that room.

How do they do it, those people in the magazines? Their sofas and chairs are spotless, their kitchens – their entire homes and gardens — are immaculate. There are no books or magazines left behind on a comfy chair, no cushions fallen from the sofa to the floor, no threadbare old carpets, no signs of daily catastrophes in any of their rooms.

How do they do it?

“They don’t,” says my friend. “It’s just for the photos.”

“Then I wish they’d stop,” I replied. “They’ve given me an inferiority complex.”

A house can be a showplace, I suppose. But my home – now that’s something else. Though I am all for making a comfortable nest for my family and self, mine is a dwelling that shows the marks of living. By that I mean that items are often out of place, forgotten in one room on the way to another, left there till they become fixtures in their new location.

I’ve assigned a virtue to my brand of housekeeping. I call it the “lived in” look. Well, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. My home looks and feels lived in, with books, blankets and cushions comfortably misplaced and eyeglasses and notebooks in any room but the one where I most need them.

An interior decorator told me there’s a big difference between “storage” and “display”. My dining room cupboard was meant for display purposes, he said.

Oh dear!

One thing the catastrophes of recent years have done for me: I have shed most of my false pride and pretense. And I’m trying to stamp out the rest.

I don’t worry about impressing anyone. As long as the house is clean, as long as there are fresh sheets and flowers from my garden in the guest room, and people have enough to eat, I’m content. But this attitude of mine didn’t happen overnight. It took years.

Blog Photo - flowers white daisies in vase

The wisdom that age brings is knowing that we don’t always have to accept what others think, or what they do…especially when we have experience of our own and some commonsense too.

I hope your new year is off to a good start!

A Good Home

The Kindness of Other Authors

January 8, 2024January 8, 2024 Cynthia Reyes

Happy new year, friends!

We all need help and support along the way. As we start 2024, I decided to reblog a post about the authors who helped me in my early days – before I published my first book, A Good Home.

First, Louise Penny. This Canadian author is known for her Inspector Gamache/Three Pines mysteries. Her lyrical, emotional, insightful writing has won several big awards and put her books on the New York Times bestseller list.

The day I discovered my first Louise Penny book was shortly after I’d turned in my latest feature for a magazine. That story – written several years before – was titled Possession. It was about the deeply rooted hunger to possess precious things. Louise’s book, The Brutal Telling, was about a deeply-rooted hunger to possess precious things. I was amazed by the serendipity.

Louise bravely explores that borderland place where the unexplained and the divine intersect with the here and now, the temporal. It’s something I try to do in some of my own writing.

But it was Louise’s own back story – and the similarities between her life and mine — that most surprised me.

We are, I discovered, both Ryerson graduates, both former CBC journalists. But that’s just the stuff that goes into resumes. As I read about her, I realized that we’d both also known what it was like to hit rock-bottom. I was still going through a harrowing fight against painful injuries from a car accident and the very painkillers that were meant to help me cope. Louise had fought a lengthy battle against alcoholism.

I took all these similarities as a sign from above – one of those borderland moments where the divine intersects with the temporal. It was time, I decided, to get serious about the book I’d started writing a long time ago. But first, I wrote to Louise herself.

“The publisher sent me the story layout for my final sign-off just one day before I started your book”, I wrote, referring to Possession, the magazine story, “and as I read your novel, I thought – with a shiver – ‘this is another of my life’s unexplained coincidences’.”

She wrote me back right away: “We seem like sisters,” she said. “I’m glad you’ve discovered my books – and suspect you are a gifted, fabulous writer.”

Such kind encouragement. Louise’s next email contained advice for me as a would-be author. Before you send your manuscript to a publisher or agent, she urged, polish, polish, polish. It’s your one chance, so make it the best it can be.

As I neared the completion of the manuscript, other authors helped.

Yvonne Blackwood, author of Into Africa: The Return, repeatedly helped me polish. She suggested small improvements throughout the text.

Lee Gowan, creative writing professor at the University of Toronto and author of Confession, paid me a precious compliment: he read the manuscript to his mother.

“It was a very moving experience, I can tell you,” Lee wrote. “Often had a tear or two in my eyes and a hitch in my voice as I was trying to read through.” Lee also stopped me from editing out a whole section of the book that, it turns out, readers love.

When the book was completed, and in the hands of the publisher, I wanted to find out from an author what this next period would be like. Given my need to pace myself, and still attend therapy for long-term injuries, I wanted to make the best of limited resources. Enter Ann Preston, author of The No-Grainer Baker cookbook.

She was introduced to me by a friend. Ann became a guardian angel, telling me what to expect, and, with her own book on its way to becoming a bestseller, sharing tips by the week.

Jan Wong (who self-published her most recent book, Out of the Blue) had experienced both traditional and self publishing. She openly shared her experience with promoting and distributing her books, while I made notes of everything from postage rates for books to dealing with invitations for book readings.

Authors Merilyn Simonds, Olive Senior and Donna Kakonge also encouraged me.

With wise words of support, small notes of caution, and precious bits of common-sense, these authors helped me to make A Good Home a success. Bravo and Thanks to them all.

~~~

May 2024 be kind to you and your loved ones.

Cynthia.