Category: Life

I broke. But I’m not broken.

Stefanie Snider

I broke.

There’s a difference between breaking and being broken. To break is to fall apart. To shatter. To BE broken is to linger in that state: pieces on the floor, jagged edges sharp and untouchable.

Picture… a teapot. Sure, why not. This teapot seemed perfectly fine when it left the factory. In fact, it was very valuable; when it was brought home the whole family came to admire it.

But maybe the teapot came with an issue no one could see. Maybe its walls were a little thinner, less resilient than the others in its lot. Maybe it was unevenly manufactured. Imbalanced.

Over time, the porcelain began to discolour. It retained the memories of all the tea it has made. You can’t see this darkness unless you look inside. But it’s there.

The teapot isn’t flawless any more.

At first the problems are small; tiny spider web cracks lengthening and connecting, forming spots that can’t be trusted to be strong. You can see them if you know what to look for: hair-fine fault lines marring the rest. You might make a note to yourself to be gentler, not to put too much pressure on something that is already falling apart.

The word for cracking porcelain is crazing.

Then one day you pick up this teapot, just like you have every day of your life, and it shatters in your hand. Everything it held inside bursts out, making a mess so big it seems it will never be cleaned up. Some pieces will cut you when you try to retrieve them. Others don’t seem to fit anywhere. It’s overwhelming. You gather the pieces up as best you can and dump them in a box to deal with later.

Months pass. You take up cross-stitch, you knit, you watch terrible reality TV just to keep yourself distracted. You stay up all night because every time you close your eyes you see those broken pieces and you can’t imagine how you’ll begin to put them back together. And unless you’re willing to throw it all away you’ve got to fix this at some point.

You learn to ask for help. Someone to help hold the pieces together while the glue dries. You learn to accept the pot’s new limitations. You handle it more carefully. You let yourself appreciate its imperfections, its tiny missing chips. And while you worry every day that it may shatter again, you wake in the morning and use it anyway. After all, it’s the only teapot you have.

I broke. But I’m not broken.

If you are struggling with mental illness, you are not alone. Today is Bell Let’s Talk Day, a day to raise awareness of mental illness and to support those affected. For every post today on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram with the hashtag #BellLetsTalk, Bell Canada will donate 5 ¢ to Canadian mental health initiatives that support people like me.

First Signing of 2018!

Stefanie Snider

 

Indigo North London

 86 Fanshawe Park Rd, London Ontario
January 27th
12-4 PM

Are you in the area? Come say hi!

Updates and news (and an excerpt!) can be found on my Facebook page.

Guess What Came in the Mail…

Stefanie Snider

Crooked Little House

Crooked Little House comes out on Tuesday!

I’ll be doing a giveaway on Facebook, and you have to be a fan of my author page to enter. Swing by and show me some “like”; giveaway details to follow once I climb down from this cloud.

It’s finally here. I’m finally a novelist.

Brave New Novel

Stefanie Snider

novelpic

This is it.

My novel is DONE.

What you’re seeing here is my baby, all dressed up and ready to go. I’m lucky enough to have a good friend editing (and as an indie, helpful friends are EVERYTHING); this is the copy I’m giving to her tomorrow.

The formatting is arranged. The cover is designed. I feel like it’s a good, clean copy.

This is happening.

IT’S ALMOST HERE, YOU GUYS.

Horror’s Not Dead

Stefanie Snider

horror dead

 

…is it?

I like to read horror novels (shocker, I know). They’re my favourite night reads, nestled under the covers and with a hot cup of tea on the nightstand. And though I don’t read horror exclusively, it’s fair to say that as one honing my writing craft, I tend to focus on my own genre.

So I went to Chapters the other day, looking for a few fresh reads to see me through my week off from DayJob. I beelined to the horror section, which has recently been relegated to the far back corner.

There used to be a whole horror aisle: shelves on both sides piled high with scares.

Then horror was squeezed to one side of the aisle, with a shelf or two of overflow on the other.

But now it’s dwindled even more. The horror section is now being encroached upon by true crime, and sports some unsettling bare spots to boot.

What happened? In my personal life alone, I know a handful of horror fans. I know more online (and I’m lucky enough to interact with a number of them, here and through Facebook). I know we’ll never be as big a market as, say, romance, but come on. It was 75 percent Stephen King and the rest was mostly stuff I’ve already read, by a very few authors.

Is it the paper book itself that is suffering, accounting for that tiny sliver of (physical) shelf space? Is it the genre? There are new horror movies out all the time; it can’t be the scares themselves. So what gives?

You’re here, and that almost certainly means you’re on Team Spooky. So where the hell is everyone else?! Should I feel excited at the apparent lack of “competition”, or should I entertain this soul-crushing doubt that tells me the good ol’ days are over?

If you’re out there, speak up! Come say hi! Tell me you exist! Us weirdos need to stick together.

IT’S ALIIIIIIVE!

Stefanie Snider

…by which I mean, I’m alive. How the time flies when you’re slacking off on your blog.

Sorry ’bout that.

So. Uh. Long time no see. Since the last time you saw me, we’ve welcomed a new niece into the world. I’ve started a new DayJob (same company, but I moved on up to the fourth floor). Oh, and I wrote my first novel. It’s still in the roughs, but as we speak I have a real, live, full-length novel sitting on my desk. It’ll be out in the next month or two.

I’ve done some deep thinking about where I want my writing career to go, and about what that looks like, in terms of the day-to-day. I think what made the blog fall apart before was that I was focusing so hard on new content that the actual writing stopped. It stopped for a long time, actually. Completely. Cold. I have never felt worse about myself; conversely, while I was writing the novel this past Fall I was the happiest I’ve ever been.

So, a balance. A fresh start. I have no idea how often I’ll be blogging; I have zero schedule in mind. Because at the end of the day, the effort needs to be about the writing, not the talking about the writing. That being said, I think I can pull off more than once every two years, if I hold my tongue just right. Who’s with me?

 

-Stef

 

 

This Week in Sniderville: 22

Stefanie Snider

It’s been a while, yes?

I feel a little rusty, coming back to the blog after letting it languish for so long. When I was keeping up with the Sniderville posts it was easy to update you: I may have a memory like a goldfish, but I can remember all the goings-on of the past week. But I got busy doing everything else, until it all became a blur. I’m probably missing a ton of news, but here are some highlights:

– I knit half of a blanket that proved I should never do math unattended: rewrite the pattern? Sure thing, easy peasy, oh shit this thing is huge what am I doing. Let’s just say the width is longer than I had intended the length to be. Swatches are for sissies.

– I experienced my first Black Friday sale, wherein I gained a tablet for wondrous write-anywhere purposes and (temporarily) lost the feeling in my toes. Turns out it was -14 degrees Celsius that morning. Toes, schmoes, now I can write in bed while my husband sleeps!

– I picked up my long-dusty Tarot deck and have begun doing readings again.

I can’t promise I’ll be around much until after the holidays: I’ve pledged myself to an absurd amount of baking and knitting and might not sleep until January. But I wanted to stop by and say hi to you guys.

How was your week?

This Week in Sniderville: 20

Stefanie Snider

I am beat.

I had the most pleasantly productive week! A quick rundown, since it’s Saturday night and this is a long weekend and I got shit to do:

I wrote an entire short story, from scratch, front to back, in one three hour sitting this week. I’ve never written so much so quickly in my life. It’s still in its rough stage, of course, but still… I was riding high after that one. Expect it soon!

I’ve been on a mad “homeowner” kick: rearranging our family budget to reach our financial goals for the next house, and doing lots of little things around our current house in the meantime. I’m planning on using a chunk of my upcoming vacation to paint the front porch, and I stayed home today to “putter around the house”, which makes me feel old. But you know what? I’m loving how things are coming together.

We donated a ton of old clothes, talked over our Big Plan for the next few years, and next we’ll start the conversion of our front bedroom from ill-used waste of space into our dressing room. I’m just a tad excited.

I swear there was more, but between the fireworks outside and the cool breeze and the siren song of the alcohol in the kitchen, I’m feeling a tad distracted.

How was your week?