Ariel Dawn : My writing day

It begins at three a.m. with jazz, blues or classical, candlelight, black coffee. Merlin is rather nocturnal, he says goodnight to my morning. Angel sleeps well, yet blankets and Jellycats fall away, I tuck her in until seven. Cat, our grey kitten, joins me now, to climb walls, velvet drapes, bookshelves and towers of books, stare outside, dream. I write in my bedroom by a tall casement window, the oak tree, the streetlight, a south-west corner behind a folding screen of torn rice paper, an old dark desk. My chair was taken from the head of the dining room table. I write in my nightgown; smoke hawthorn, rose, motherwort, rosemary (Green Moon Herbals); burn cedar, sandalwood, frankincense and myrrh; drink from bone china cups; journal and work on prose poems with a black Parker fountain pen, Moleskines, Rider-Waite Tarot cards, Froud and Rackham faery oracles and a MacBook Air. I type out notes, condense, extend, whisper lines under my breath. When it’s light I’ll read the cards of the day and wander Victoria’s heart or practice yoga before returning to bed with books. At noon I may nap; then, with black tea, return to poems, printing any that feel done, revising them on paper, until Angel returns from school and there is life to take care of and any submissions or letters or more reading. This is a lovely writing day; other days I remain in bed with a novel and only write a little in the margins.

Ariel Dawn lives in Victoria, British Columbia with her son and daughter. She spends her time writing, reading, studying Tarot, and working on her first collection of prose poems. Recent work appears in Guest, Train, and Litro.