on the writer’s life – Page 19

Information Overload

March 23, 2020March 23, 2020 Diane Ferguson Leave a comment

I like history; I like to understand why the world is as it is. I like to make sense of things. I like to learn. I like to read. These times feel unprecedented and I’ve found myself caught up in the 24 hour news cycle. Before the internet and social media, I always read the letters to the editor, hoping it would shine a light on what my fellow Canadians were really thinking. Now this has exploded with facebook and twitter, where I can read what hordes of people think. Some of it scares me and some of it brings me comfort, but all of it is way too much distraction. I have to limit myself.

I’ve worked from home for a long time, so this new paradigm of social-isolating is not so strange to me. Saying that, I had a busy life with skating lessons, hockey, choir, writers group, book group—which are all things that feed my soul and exercise my body. In other words, necessary.

Home Isolation or Writing Opportunity

March 16, 2020March 15, 2020 Donna Judy Curtin Leave a comment

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

Romance novels — peoples’ favourite punching bag

March 8, 2020March 8, 2020 Tracey Richardson 1 Comment

Do you roll your eyes when someone says they read or write romance novels? Do you find yourself thinking or saying that romance novels are second rate? That they’re nothing but fantasy, that they have nothing to do with the “real world”, that writers who write them are second rate and readers who read them have boring, unimaginative lives?

Unfortunately, those thoughts/judgments are all too common. And they’re rife with ignorance.

As a writer of lesbian romance novels, it bugs me when people don’t take my genre seriously. Insults me, to be specific. Because you know what? I’m not a second rate writer. I can and do write fiction other than lesbian romance. Nor do I have a boring, unimaginative life. And hey, why would a romance novel be any more unrealistic or predictable than a mystery or suspense novel, never mind fantasy or sci-fi? Read more

Opportunity Knocks on a Holiday Monday

February 17, 2020February 17, 2020 Lori Twining Leave a comment

Seana Moorhead & Lori Twining writing short stories at a Writescape Writing Retreat

Today is not a national statutory holiday in Canada, but in Ontario, Family Day is celebrated on the 3rd Monday of February (and many of us have a holiday away from our daily jobs). This holiday was originally created for people to spend time with their families, however, it also allows a day off between New Years Day and Good Friday (which are three months apart). These three months are a loooooong stretch of time when the sunshine goes on vacation to Florida (to hang out with my parents). When this happens, the Canadians end up battling snowstorms every other day and need to deal with the extremely cold winds whipping through the land freezing our facial expressions of sadness until mid-April.

Family Day is great for people who have young kids that want to celebrate by playing board games all day in their jammies by the fireplace, or going snowshoeing, skating or skiing together in the -35 degree weather. But, if you don’t have children, or if you are like me, your kids have grown up and have moved out, Family Day becomes more of a “Catch-up-on-all-the-other-stuff-you-have-procrastinated-doing” Day.

If you are a writer, it also becomes a “Finish-My-Novel” kind of day or a “Let’s-Write-A-Short-Story” kind of day. After reading Seana Moorhead’s blog post on 10 Reasons to Write Short Stories on January 27th, I thought I should investigate all the possibilities of where to send these newly-created short stories. Then, I decided to share the information with you. There is no better feeling of sending out your work and having it be a finalist (or a winner) in a contest.

Okay, that was a little lie above…

Scheherazade’s Heirs

February 3, 2020February 4, 2020 Andrée Levie-Warrilow Leave a comment

I sit here with my coffee, watching the snow outside my den window softly falling. The usual street noises are muffled by the downy blanket settling on everything, and there’s a sense of time standing still this quiet February morning.
It is a good day to hunker down inside and pass the time. And what are our favourite ways to pass the time? Stories. We like to follow as the stories unfold on TV, in theatres, in books, on our computers. Sometimes, we even still tell our stories orally. All humans do this. It is our way. Read more

One Writer on Vacation

January 20, 2020January 20, 2020 Diane Ferguson 2 Comments

There’s nothing better than lying on a warm beach with a good book and your bathing suit on. A rare treat in the midst of a cold Canadian winter. I just returned from Cuba where we had days filled with sunshine, crystal clear waters and some of the best reading I’ve done in a long time.

To have that kind of time and space for reading was something I wasn’t even sure I could manage anymore. There’s alwasy so much that needs to be done at home, my days of reading for hours seemed long ago. At night, I’d be a few pages in and falling asleep.

And I couldn’t imagine a week of vacation without some writing in there, but I didn’t want to bring a laptop. So I took my fountain pen, my spiral-bound notebook and Sarah Selecky’s deck of writing prompts and Robert Olen Butler’s book on writing: From where you Dream.

But my biggest writing lesson was falling back in love with reading. Here’s my reading list and how I saw these novel’s from a writer’s perspective, in the order I read them:

Writing Goals; As Good as Words on Your Page

January 13, 2020January 13, 2020 Donna Judy Curtin Leave a comment

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.

The End Is Nigh

December 30, 2019December 30, 2019 Kelly Babcock Leave a comment

That’s right. I said it. It will all soon be over. The end is coming faster than you think. And there will be no way to stop it, and no way to save yourself from its coming.

The end of 2019 is just a day and a half away.

And when it gets here, you are required by tradition, and by your anxious nature, to take stock of your declared resolutions and admit failure and defeat.

It’s okay, it happened to all of us

The thing is that you didn’t fail so much as you miscalculated.

You swore you’d have written that book. You resolved to have submitted a short story every month. You decreed that you would create a schedule and then stick to it.

There’s your trouble

No, not that you made resolutions. Your trouble is that you worded them wrong.

Listen, you’re a writer. How many times have you rewritten some sentence or paragraph or even just a phrase or a word? Read more

Category: on the writer’s life