Writing and Painting

What activities do you lose yourself in?

By Tracy Schruder

My favourite activities that I always lose myself in are writing and painting. Whenever I’m writing fiction, horror or poetry, I’m gone. I’m inside fantastic worlds, with endless possibilities. I let my mind open wide to receive new ideas, scenes and characters. I build each story through my reaction to my fantasy.

Sometimes I feel the butterflies of excitement, dancing in my guts. I feel the shivers from within, from my deep, gut-wrenching fear. The kind that makes your hands shake, like a junkie in the first 24 hours of detox. There are times where I’m so entrenched in my character that I feel I’m being watched or stalked by them. My senses go into high gear. I’m triggered into suspicion from the most innocent sounds.

Something like a heavy thud from the cat falling off the table, cracking the boards in the hardwood floors, or the incessant scratching in the litter box – those noises lift the hairs straight up on the back of my neck. “What’s that?” I’ll mumble to myself, heart pounding up into my throat. “Is it a murder breaking in?” I whisper to myself. “Why do I write about such ungodly people?” I whisper again, with my hand on my chest and head shaking. “What’s that noise? It’s that monster in the walls trying to scrape through the drywall to suck the life out of me, I just know it is.”

So much fun! I have a love-hate relationship with fear. Yet, I’m completely lost when composing a terrifying tale. One night, I was hammering away at my laptop, composing a terrifying scene where one of my characters is forced to beat a suffering animal to death with a crowbar. I’m not me, in that moment, I am her. She’s terrified and disgusted, trembling with emotion, hands aching from the tightness of her grip on the rusty old tire iron. Knuckles ghost-white…

When all of a sudden, my cat reaches around my chair and digs her claw into my shoulder. I jumped a foot off my seat and screeched so loudly that I startled the poor kitty, and she darted out of there at lightning speed. My face, flushing with blood, and my hand dug into my chest, I bellowed out in a huge laugh. Oh my gosh, she got me, hahaha!

I get equally lost in memories when writing true stories about my life experiences or those that I witnessed. Every sentence is lived and relived as if it is happening in that moment. Same with my research projects. I am fascinated by what I discover. Such as the novel I’m writing about the unsolved murders in my hometown. Or the murderers in my own family history.

Days can go by with me knee-deep in missing persons files or transcripts from the court trials and convictions. My interview notes and the photographs. The murderers that I knew personally and the victims that I knew. It’s the unsolved ones that get to me the most. I have to get to the bottom of it. I go all private investigator and dig as deeply as I can into each case. It will be Monday morning, and before I know it, it’s Friday evening. Now that’s lost!

When I paint, the essence of being lost in it takes on a new meaning. It’s a completely different kind of escape from reality. I become the paint. It’s an extension of my imagination, and I’m leaving it all on the canvas for the world to see. I go to a place where only I exist until I bring into it the characters and landscape locations to join me in my creative journey.

Some days I don’t even know what I’m creating until it’s finished. I’m usually covered in various colours and mediums, spattered water, and strong fumes of paint thinner fill the air. Fingers and hands greasy with oils, and smock covered in hand swipes and finger wipes. Hair flickered with tiny balls of paint spray, tied in a messy bun. The day only just started, but now the sun is gone. A beautiful piece lay on my painting easel, I sign it, and it’s done.

I’m still buzzing from the experience, but I’m able to simmer down and get some rest. The next morning I awake and rush into my studio to verify that it wasn’t all just a dream.