From the first word we ever typed, penned, or scribbled, all of us who have written anything have always dreamed of one day seeing our work published.
And that’s what happened this week for The Ascribe Writers: the book launch of the first anthology of our short stories, Beneath the Surface: A Collection of Grey-Bruce Stories. Read more
I’ve heard it a few times, but mostly from people repeating what they’ve heard other people say. And for the longest while, I thought it to be true.
It’s one of those things that people just hear and accept. Usually those things either seems logical, or they’re so far fetched that someone would have to be crazy to repeat them if they weren’t true, therefore, they must be true.
But sometimes the truth is obscured by the repetition of falsehoods to the point of those falsehoods becoming pseudo-facts.
The one I’m talking about is that oft repeated rule of writing, “write what you know.” Read more
I recently bought a pottery cup with the word “goya” written on it by a local artist. “Goya” is an Urdu word and has been described as an “untranslatable” word. Roughly, it can mean the “transporting suspension of disbelief that can occur in good story telling.”
This tiny word captures what I seek in my writing: to have a reader become enchanted by my story and feel transported into another world. This is the ultimate in literary escapism and all without drugs.
In photography, the golden hour (sometimes known as the magic hour) is a period shortly after sunrise or before sunset during which daylight is redder and softer than when the Sun is higher in the sky. In medicine, the golden hour is right after a traumatic event. The first hour after the accident is when the patient is most likely to see the greatest recovery. For me, the golden hour, or my magic hour is before sunrise, when the telephone doesn’t ring, the kids are still sleeping and the demands of email can be forgotten until after nine. Read more
Some people call me a Librophile and others stick with labeling me as a Bibliophile, but no matter how deep my love goes for books, I seriously can’t get enough of them. I have this obsessive compulsion to read ALL the books in this world before I die… I’m in panic mode, trying to make this happen. I buy them, borrow them, beg for them, and at the moment, I hesitantly draw the line at stealing them (although, I’d have a whole lot more time to read if I was sitting in a jail cell all day. This is quite thought provoking and I should investigate this).
Thirty years ago, when I was choosing my career path, I should’ve chosen to become a LIBRARIAN. That would have solved my fascination for wanting to run my hands along the spine of each book I come across, to sniff the pages, to read ALL the words… of course, I’m not sure if I would’ve been able to concentrate on doing any actual library work. I just would’ve wanted to READ. All day. Every day. I would’ve been fired the first day on the job. Yes, I admit I have a small problem. There should be a support group for people like me. Read more
Black smoke billowed from the car as we sputtered to a stop on the side of the road directly under the Kirkfield lift lock east of Fenlon Falls, Ontario. Hubby and I managed to move the vehicle to a shady spot in a restaurant parking lot a hundred yards away but it clearly wasn’t getting us any further. Not the best way to start a vacation.
The breakdown was a distant memory though as, several days and sixteen hundred kilometers later, we turned on to Took Titch Road in the northwest part of the province, and wound our way down a narrow lane to our own little beach on Rainy Lake. An old log cabin with red shutters and cedar deck would be home for the next week. Read more
If you’re anything like me, you have a life that keeps getting in the way of your writing. I have a job, two kids, other hobbies, and a house and property to look after. I try to balance it all out, juggle all the balls, but sometimes you’re thrown a curve that can keep you pre-occupied for months. Or maybe you’re even thrown three curve balls, at the same time, plus all the other stuff that comes up like graduations and birthdays. There are at least two reasons to keep a writing practice going even when it seems like you’ll never have more than half an hour to write at a time. Read more
About to jump into a new writing project, I find myself developing brand new characters, and I realize I haven’t really done this in a while. I’ve been working on one large writing project for a long time and have grown very comfortable and familiar with my main characters. Yes, there are new characters that enter the scene from time to time and have their roles to play, but the main characters remain constant. They grow and change along the way, but I see them so clearly. While there is a lot to creating any character, there’s something about creating a new main character and the world around them, seeing them begin to take shape and take on a life of their own. Beginning hazy, you start to see their faces, their bodies, their mannerisms. Their passions, views, and the way they look at and interact with the world take shape. You see their relationships and the way they connect with people, and how these interactions make them feel. I find it a fun and exciting process.