Ever finished a book and wished it had never ended?
All the writers I know also happen to love reading books. And the great books we’ve read are our inspiration to write. You know the kind I mean: the ones that you close after the last page with a sigh because that’s the end of a visit spent totally immersed in a time and place. Read more
More than one blog posted here at Ascribe has dealt with the importance of reading books. How reading books makes one a good writer. So much enrichment: escape, inspiration, entertainment, information, healing – all the “tools” someone who hopes to one day write a good book needs.
Then there are the books you don’t really want to read, but know you should. The books that tell the stories of the Other, the disenfranchised, the exploited, of terrible events, injustices, of awful lives lived far away, of miseries lived just down the street. The books that teach hard lessons.
It’s Spring! And the urge to clean and declutter comes over many of us. I’ve already made one run to the dump, and there will be more, along with side trips to the Sally Ann with surplus household items. This may possibly include rooster – themed dessert plates and tablecloths from well-meaning kin who thought my appetite for rooster collectables is limitless. It isn’t.
For the past few years I have been posting a salutation on International Womens’ Day to women in my circles, chronicling how they meet the chores and challenges of daily life in important ways, mostly unsung, but nevertheless persisting.
This year was different.
Like everyone else, I have been feeling horror and helplessness as the war in Ukraine has unfolded. And what of the women of Ukraine? They were in my thoughts before the 8th of March, and will continue to be for a long, long time. With your indulgence, this is what I have written in my blog.
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Old Québec by the author
Ah, the memories we writers carry from all our Decembers Past: how those who loved us would spend hours preparing special foods only eaten at this time, presents, decorations, catching up on family gossip, watching favourite seasonal movies. For me, I especially loved the stories, the family memories.
Now, as my father loses his grip on his memories, his stories, I will catch and hold them for him.
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“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers,” Dorothy Parker once wrote, “the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style.The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.” Read more
Sometimes crap just happens.
Three weeks ago, I was happily enjoying my time in the Laurentians with people I had not been physically near to in two years. It was a beautiful day, I was striding along, possibly humming a happy tune to myself – until suddenly I wasn’t. Faster than it takes for you to read this, I flew off a ledge I hadn’t known was there, landed hard, and just like that, broke a bone in the middle of my foot. A spiral fracture. The first day of vacation! Read more
