on the writer’s life – Page 17

Characters for Company

August 31, 2020August 31, 2020 Bernice Connell 1 Comment

I miss people. I miss spontaneous get togethers, unannounced summer visitors and the fun of planning birthday celebrations. Inevitable, I suppose, as a result of months-long, pandemic-induced, relative isolation. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

Letting housework slide and lounging for too many hours in front of the television have lost their appeal. Puzzling to me is why even reading is less pleasurable lately. I’ve chalked it up to the fact that it is such a solitary activity and what I want these days is more connection with live people.

Amid my somewhat limiting day-to-day routines, something promising has happened that has me excited about writing again.

The Year of Unmasking

August 17, 2020August 24, 2020 Andrée Levie-Warrilow Leave a comment

Ah, 2020.

So much mis- [ and dis!]-information! And still so much truth remains unknown. So much has been conveniently hidden. Masked.
Let me give you an example. Yesterday I learned the street I lived on in Toronto was named for a ruthless slave trader. What a shocking revelation for a very exclusive Canadian neighbourhood!
So now that city officials have that knowledge, what will they do with it? Change the name entirely? Leave things as is? Put up an educational plaque to remind people of a dark and cruel part of Muddy York’s history? We’ll have to see. Meantime, for a murder mystery, what a great motive. Imagine a respectable leader of the community learning the family’s fortune has been based on slave-trading. What would that person do to keep that knowledge form being widely spread? And on the other side, how tempting it might be for someone to try and blackmail the respectable citizen! Another motive!
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The Curve Ball

August 10, 2020August 9, 2020 Joan McAndrew Leave a comment

I’ve heard about the Curve Ball being delivered by famous pitchers to equally famous sluggers. Some people watch baseball games just to see it thrown. Apparently, you have to be ‘really good’ to throw it and ‘even better’ to hit it. Why World Series Pennants have been won or lost because of it.

Now each and every one of us get to check our own score at dealing with the Curve Ball that was thrown into our personal game of life. Mine arrived on March 10, 2020 when the Canadian Government said don’t leave the country. Poof, the vacation to Cuba vanished. Two weeks later I was told to shut down my private practice in psychology. Poof, done! Then my three times a week fitness routine ended. No more socializing with my friends and family. My arm and shoulder began aching from all the ‘woe is me’ commiseration phone calls. Traffic ground to a halt. Virtually everyone in my neighbourhood actually listened to the guidance and abided by the rules. Those that didn’t were easy enough to avoid.

Press On Writers!

July 20, 2020July 20, 2020 Donna Judy Curtin 3 Comments

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.

Books in the Time of Covid

July 13, 2020July 11, 2020 Tracey Richardson 1 Comment

The Covid-19 pandemic has stripped away the veneer of convenience, has altered what is important to many of us. One of those things that has become even MORE important to people like me during Covid is the reading of books.

Reading is the perfect escape from the stress of the pandemic, but the irony is that bookstores and libraries were closed for months, and online ordering was (is) as slow as the Pony Express.

This is where my Little Free Library comes in.

A Grateful Activist

June 29, 2020June 29, 2020 Bernice Connell 2 Comments

In spite of these uncertain times, I am beyond grateful for so much; to live in rural Ontario, to have enough hand sanitizer to share and for virtual goodnight visits with my grandson. I am grateful too for this moment in history as we witness the world on the cusp of, what I have to believe will be, radical social change.

Hardship has not been part of my own experience of the pandemic. Inconvenience, yes. There have been brief bouts of panic, fear, emotional ups and downs and worry about family certainly. But being able to connect through technology with a small but mighty circle of dear ones has kept me afloat. I have been able to work while quarantining and have a two-person isolation bubble and a full cupboard. These are but a few examples of how my privilege enables me to weather this storm unscathed thus far.

Hardship and heartache are indeed the experiences of so many people world wide and we recognize the roles that inequality, oppression and poverty play in countries’ varying abilities to fight this common enemy.

The Love of the Challenge

June 22, 2020June 22, 2020 Lori Twining 6 Comments

Believe it or not, we are presently living in a significant historic moment.

Eventually, generations to come (our grandchildren) will be learning about our lives in History class. The teacher will talk about a time period full of a coronavirus that spread like wildfire, borders closed to travellers, businesses closed to shoppers, schools closed to students, protests of police brutality on minority groups, the want and need for diverse literature, leaders struggling to keep their tweets politically correct and kind, people struggling with anxiety and depression… and novelists who could not write.

These are frightening and uncertain times for many of us, so novelists not being able to write is not the end of the world. If you are one of them, just relax. Instead, concentrate on trying to work from home, while teaching your kids new Math skills, while making supper, while doing dishes and laundry, while cancelling all your travel plans, while telling your aging parents you can’t visit just yet. Honestly, you don’t need the added pressure of trying to create a novel.

But, what if you are lost without your writing? You need to write, but can’t?

WRITING IN DANGEROUS TIMES

June 15, 2020June 15, 2020 Joan McAndrew Leave a comment

I always thought I knew a lot about danger. Like what part of New York to avoid at night after the Theatre Production ended. How to be wise when traveling in a foreign country like Britain or France or Spain with a Canadian Flag on my back pack. How to recognize scam phone calls: especially the ones that begin “Don’t hang-up”.

I also believed I had experienced just about everything there was to experience; marriage and divorce times 2, childbirth times 2, and cancer (only once thank goodness). I had started over many times, moved into and out of a myriad of homes and apartments and always made the transition eventually. So just what made these last 12 weeks so damned hard?

Category: on the writer’s life