One Writer on Vacation

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:

Read more

The End of a Decade: Glancing Back, Racing Forward

Lori Twining writing in Hotel Heaven

It is hard to believe, but another decade is ending in 16 sleeps!

Glancing back over the last 3, 650 days, I wonder what the hell I have been doing with my life? How did ten years just disappear in a blink?

Sure, as a mother, I’ve raised three wonderful children and sent them off to University: one is married and has a job, one is almost married and has a job, and my baby is currently wading through a whole bunch of biomedical science jargon that I can’t even begin to understand and always has a summer job. Obviously, education and jobs are important in this household. All three kids are smarter and more respectful than their mother and can handle the world without me. What more can a mom ask for? Seriously, that means I did my job as a mother.

But, as a writer… hmmm, that is a completely different story.

Read more

Not-so-Happy Endings

Beginnings and endings are arguably the most important and memorable parts of our reading journeys. “How does it end?” is a familiar question when sharing what you’ve read or recommending a book to a friend.

In an effort to hone my writing skills, I’ve been paying closer attention to what I’m reading; studying what I love about an author’s style, thus inspiring my own writing. Readers are frequently able to anticipate twists and turns and to occasionally predict the ending, but primarily, we are willing participants in the suspension of belief and enjoy being taken on an adventure. We take the storytelling at face value and enjoy every moment without ‘reading’ too much in to it.

Admiring an author’s style and thoroughly enjoying the story only to be let down by the ending is disappointing. The relationship between writer and reader is symbiotic and there’s a sort of mutual trust that what has been promised will be delivered. Read more

The Love (And Hate) Of A Great Book

As writers, we love to read good books. We appreciate them, we celebrate them, we admire them, we lose ourselves in them. Why, then, does reading a good book sometimes cause our writing insecurities to rear their ugly little heads?

One of my writing acquaintances recently complained that while she was loving a book she was reading, at the same time she was finding it discouraging. Why? She elaborated, saying it made her feel like she could never write something that great and so why the hell was she even trying.

Read more

Under the Influence

Under the Influence of Nick Petrie ~ Photo by Lori Twining

As writers, our job is to create stories. Unique stories. It doesn’t matter whether they take shape inside poems, short stories or novels, because either way, we are still developing distinctive characters and a plotline. We are telling a story from beginning to end. The question is, how do you come up with the uniqueness of the story, when there are already billions of stories in existence. How will your story stand out from the rest? It may not be that unique after all. Or is it? Read more

Take Me Away, Books!

By Tracey Richardson 

This summer has been hard on my nerves. And I don’t think I’m alone.books
Global tragedies have abounded, starting with the shooting deaths of 49 people at a gay club in Orlando in June. In early July, five Dallas police officers were assassinated by a gunman who wanted to avenge a couple of high profile police shootings of black men in the United States. A week after that, it was the vehicular rampage in Nice, France, that killed almost 100 people. On the immediate heels of that tragedy came a bloody coup d’etat attempt in Turkey. Read more

Writers Can Make A Difference

2015 Muskoka Novel Marathoners at Nuit Blanche in Huntsville - Photo credit: BL Storrie
2015 Muskoka Novel Marathoners at Nuit Blanche in Huntsville – Photo credit: BL Storrie

I AM A WRITER! Or so I tell myself, almost every day.

That doesn’t sound like a problem, but it is. My dilemma is I don’t always write every day. Sometimes, I can go a week or two, without writing a single word of any real relevance to my current work-in-progress. Instead, I’m using my spare time to help other writers in a very unique way, by making decisions, by composing emails of encouragement, by pumping up the writers and getting them excited. You see, I volunteer as the Muskoka Novel Marathon Writer Liaison, and if that’s not enough, I also do all their social media postings and tweets, plus take care of their website for the whole year. I encourage the 40 participating writers to fundraise for the YMCA Literacy Programs, because I believe strongly that everyone should be able to experience the Magical World of Reading. This year, we raised over $29,000 for these programs that help people who are struggling with basic reading, writing, math and computer skills. This makes me feel pretty good. That’s over $6000 more than last year’s amount. I’m definitely smiling.

This past weekend, we finally experienced the moment, where all 40 writers gathered to spend 72-hours straight in one room… TOGETHER! Seriously, it is one of the best writing weekends of the year for me. It is an experience like no other adventure that I’ve ever taken part in. 40 people that range from quiet and non-social, to wacked out crazy people, who will light their hair on fire, just to get a few laughs (see picture above). Besides writing, we hug, we cry, we laugh, we walk barefoot, we sing, we dance, we scream, we whisper… and most of all, we have fun together. What’s not to love?

Read more