Gates open - an Ice Cream summer & Gail's Last writing rule

Hello Writers

I write a story for my local paper every other week. The next one is called An ice cream summer. This is an excerpt from it that speaks to swimming and writing.

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I love ice cream, and chocolate is my favourite. However, a new second favourite has emerged: Moose Tracks. Yes, the best Haliburton ice cream comes from Kawartha Dairy, and I have decided this is my ice cream summer.  In the past, I would occasionally have an ice cream cone during the summer, and sometimes in other seasons as well. This year, I have two tubs in my freezer, and I alternate between my favourites. Most evenings, I indulge in a small cone at home. (1/2 cup is 200 calories) I love my ice cream summer. Maybe I will make it a summer tradition, or perhaps a bucket list item is a better way to look at it. Bucket list items seem more important, but then I don’t believe in bucket lists. I will call it “my simple delights not to be missed list”.

My ice cream summer has also been a reward at the end of a day of long summer swims in the lake and hours of editing my family stories book.

Recently, my usual 20 to 30 minute swim stretched to 40 minutes of “pushing it” among the strong waves from summer fun boaters. I am used to sharing the lake. Summer fun is for us all. It was not about the extra time it took. I can swim, albeit slowly, for a long time, but the extra effort and strokes in those waves were tiring. They were also well worth it. I remember thinking that my ice cream summer was well-earned that day.

Another of my ice cream celebrations came when I finished and presented my final project to a panel at U of T,  and received my Certificate in Creative Writing: six courses and a final project. Done. Feels good, but almost anticlimactic. It is so more than the certificate. I learned so much. I am a writer. I love learning, I love proving to myself that I am, indeed, not too old to learn and do new things.

More ice cream is coming my way. Soon,  I will also be a published book author. It’s done…sort of. My family stories book came in at 59,297 words and is now with my publisher. It feels amazing to have gotten to this point. I sent it in yesterday and have already thought of a couple of additional stories for it, but not going there.

So many thoughts along the journey to arrive here. What if my computer breaks or is stolen before I get done? Will I live long enough to finish it? When do I get to stop editing and write new fiction stories? When do I get to write a mystery novel? There is still more work to do to get to the final product. Oh my, there will, no doubt, be more editing. I need to start choosing pictures and thinking about the title and front, and back covers.

I will get it done, and my reward will be holding the book in my hands and giving copies to my children and grandkids (and an ice cream). This was why, at 73 years old, I said, “I want to be a writer when I grow up”.

My dad once said to me, “Gates, my mother would have loved you, and you would have loved her. You are a lot like her.”

I never knew that grandma who died before I was born. Not only would I have liked to know her, I wanted to know her story, her childhood and how she ended up in the small town of Quyon, Quebec, married to my grandfather. If even just one of my grandchildren, or as yet unborn great-grandchildren, wants to know about me, he or she will have my book and know my story. I hope that others will also read my book, and perhaps naively, I think other baby boomers will connect and enjoy the stories too, but if they don’t, that’s okay.

My published book, my ending will be a new beginning. There is so much more to write.

So, I am enjoying my ice cream summer, and I am having fun swimming and writing. These are good things when you are living on the senior side. I hope that you are having an ice cream summer and enjoying whatever that might mean to you.

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Gail’s Last Writing Rule for 2025

My life lived - a long life at that - is the seed of my imaginative and creative work. Use it.

It’s obvious that when writing my family stories, my life is not only the seed of my work, it is the work, but what about fiction: murder mystery, historical fiction, fantasy, etc. Should I remove this last rule? Will it continue to work for me? I am not sure.

Writing a Mystery Novel

I have written the first chapter of my mystery novel, and the location is similar to where I live, a small town in Cottage County, Ontario. I made a list of the character traits, and I wrote a background story that will come to light later in the novel. It is lightly based on one of my childhood experiences, so I guess the seeds are being used. Will I continue with more like this? I hope not, as it is time to stretch and leave the comfort of that life lived and venture into new, imaginative writing territory. I don’t know what this will look like, and I will let you know how it goes.

I don’t want to take any more courses for a long time,  maybe never. I did take a course in writing the novel, and now I need to find out more about developing a plan or using an outline when writing a mystery, so I’ll be reading and checking out what the pros say.

Write on and on and on….I’m heading back to my previous rules: 500 words a session and write in the morning. Writing the first draft is fun. Excited.