Today I turned 45. I didn’t know how old I was. My husband told me.
My-husband-told-me.
He’s 44, so by association, he knows I’m 45. I have a son turning 16 this summer and a daughter who is 14. I’ve got a 4 year old dog and an 8 week old puppy. The chicks in our barn are 5 days old and we’ve been living in our home since 2007. I have 3 more years to pay off my business loan and I started writing my first novel while I was on maternity leave with my son in 2005. Read more
How do you take an eight by ten foot room above an unheated garage, still holding the remnants of a boy growing into a young man, and turn it into a writing oasis? With spider webs, discarded nerf bullets, spilled chocolate milk curdled into the hardwood and holes punched in the dry wall from baseballs, hockey sticks and frustrated elbow jabs, this room was far from my imagined writer’s nook.
When my son moved downstairs, I sensed an opportunity. Not unlike plotting a novel, this idea of having my own writing space, started with a question—what if I could create a space all of my own?
If you’ve never heard of Pitch Wars, then this is the blog for you.
Pitch Wars is an online competition where published and experienced authors/editors volunteer their time to give back to the writing community. How does it work?
An amazing author, Brenda Drake, came up with the idea—a way for those who’ve landed on the shore of success, in some fashion, to put up a light house for other aspiring novelists. It’s a huge online and Twitter event with an organized writing community of positive energy. Basically, authors apply, mentors pick and they work together on a manuscript for 3 months and then the author posts their log line, in the form of a Tweet, during a Pitch Wars agent Pitch Fest, hoping and praying an agent will ‘like’ their Tweet—which is basically an invitation to query the agent directly.
Before Covid-19 hit, one of my favourite writing spots was the local café. I loved seeing friends and neighbours, watching people chat and order their coffee, while I wrote. I have this unique skill, this ability to ignore everything around me and get fully engrossed in my own made up world. I took pride that some of my scenes were so engaging, I could disregard the rest of the world and fully immerse myself. I remember these times fondly.
Since March, with the cafés closed and my writing space stolen, I’ve been displaced. I’m nothing if not persistent and so I took to writing at home. The best time was early in the morning, before my family arose. I would claim the couch in the living room, coffee in hand, doing my best to shoo away the cats and dogs vying for my attention. This was heavenly, until my teenage children woke. Then they invaded, turning on the television, complaining about missing laundry and overall… just being their noisy selves, so I would stop writing.
This summer, my teenage son decided to move downstairs, leaving his bedroom upstairs empty. So… I’ve begun to dream of a writing space. Read more
Everyone’s path to publication is different. We’ve all seen the success stories–author’s publication tales–tweeted out to the world, where an author shares their journey to publication. I like to think of it as the Chilkoot Trail during the Klondike Gold Rush.
Some adventurers make it over the pass, find a parcel of land, strike gold, make it rich and head home. I’m not naïve enough to think they didn’t sacrifice and work hard and have in equal measure talent and good fortune, but that isn’t every prospector’s story.
While I’ve recently had more time on my hands, staying at home and practicing social distancing during this pandemic, I decided to tackle our spring pruning. With my brain relaxed and hands engaged with this down to earth task, I couldn’t help thinking about the similarities between editing and pruning trees.
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My head is a jumble. One would think threatening confinement to your home for an extended period of time in order to be socially responsible and slow the spread of COVID-19 would be a positive thing for a writer… but I’ll be sharing my confinement space with two directionless, out-of-school teenagers and an over achiever, restless husband. Read more
At this summer’s Muskoka Novel Marathon, I placed a bid (all proceeds supporting adult literacy) for a package of support with a professional writing coach. And I won!
I’m a motivated person. I’ve set goals in my life and achieved great things; becoming a veterinarian, surrounding myself with wonderful family and friends and writing a novel… but now the time has come to get published.
So, with this goal in mind, I started the coaching services.
Wow.
I can’t tell you how great it is to have a skilled and supportive person push you to set your goals, to schedule your time and then to cheer you on.
Initially, we started with a conversation, where it was clearly identified how my greatest enemy was time. Specifically, time management. I needed to give myself permission to set aside the time to write and then to follow through.
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