Trail Making and the Creative Process

Connie Miller 1 Comment


Many times the simplest things in life bring us great joy. For me, sharing time with dogs does that, and in particular, off leash hikes. Their pure joy in running and exploring is palpable, if not contagious. 

We walk the perimeter of hayfields adjacent to our home property. I stay to the fields’ edge to avoid damaging the plants. Even in winter, my snowshoe trail is along the outer edges of the fields, the trail followed day after day. Making a nice trail makes the next days’ walk easier, and provides an easier path for a dog needing a rest from bashing through the snow. It’s in walking these trails I have come to realize… SSDD. Same step, different day. 

This phenomenon is particularly evident in winter. If I walk randomly, the snowshoe falls in the same step as the day before. I’ve tried walking the opposite direction. Roughly the same thing happens. In summer, if I’m not careful I step in the same hole where there’s an underground rivulet.  I’ve realized I’m experiencing the manifestation of “muscle memory”, and all the frustration it can produce. I’m sure on some level in an evolutionary sense, muscle memory ensured survival in that one could hone their spear throwing skills and become a successful hunter.

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Words! Marvelous Words

Bernice Connell Leave a comment

“A gorgeous, aching love letter to stories.”

I bought a book based solely on reading this brief, beautiful review on the back cover.

These words comprised Christina Henry’s review of a novel by Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January. The intriguing title was a bonus.

What a challenge it is for writers to hit just the right note, find the perfect word in the hopes of moving a reader the same way this phrase moved me.

At the beginning of my very first creative writing class, the instructor made a pronouncement that I remember to this day.

“Success,” he said, “requires either the ordinary use of extraordinary words or the extraordinary use of ordinary words.” 

An oversimplified statement to say the least but it sounded incredibly profound to my eighteen-year-old ears. I decided at that moment that the extraordinary use of ordinary words might be achievable for me. Probably because the reverse inferred sophistication, academia and eloquence, all of which was unfamiliar territory to me at the time. 

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Opportunity Knocks on a Holiday Monday

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…

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Scheherazade’s Heirs

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

10 Reasons to Write Short Stories

Seana Moorhead 1 Comment

Confession: For many years, I didn’t like short stories. The concept conjured memories of high school English classes where we were required to create short stories, filling lines with sweet teenage angst like a Boston cream pie donut. I used to like those donuts when I was nine. I also adored the pink and blue bubble gum ice cream at that age. There are some things you grow out of and I had put short stories into that category.

Then I started taking my writing more seriously and I’ve come around to admiring the short story format. I especially like very short stories; those under 3000 words. And I discovered there’s a reason why many short stories don’t work well for me. It’s very hard to write a good short story. You have to pack everything you could put into a novel of 70,000 words and break it down to the essential and still write beautifully.  And make sense so you don’t lose your reader for lack of words.

When you find a good short story, it is like the scotch of writing.  There’s depth and multi layered flavours from the first sniff to the last lingering taste on your mouth. Like a good scotch, you don’t need a lot to appreciate its beauty.

Here’s my list for why every writer should strive to write a short story:

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One Writer on Vacation

Diane Ferguson 2 Comments
Varadero, Cuba

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:

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Writing Goals; As Good as Words on Your Page

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.

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