Adaptability – An Essential Author Trait

I was listening to a podcast this morning while engaging in forced labour. By forced labour, I mean working on my husband’s half of our aspirational weekend job list—the list longer than we have the time, physical endurance, equipment, man power or complimentary weather complete.

Photo credit Donna Curtin

My husband grumbled all this winter about how he wanted to cut down the creeping branches along the edge of his fields. Many of our fields are surrounded by bush and eventually, the trees stretch into the unencumbered space to steal sunlight from his crops and barricade his combine.

So, following my husband along the edge of the field as he sawed off pesky new growth, it was my job to drag the bud laden branches into the bush and away from his crops. On the podcast I was listening to, they said we writers need to lean into learning and be willing to grow… to adapt. And this got me to thinking about how, if mother nature can adapt to find the open spaces, surely, we as writers can as well. Read more

Essential Ingredients for a Writing Retreat

The Modern Schoolhouse in Pinkerton.

Planning to set aside the time and space to write new words can be one of the best ways to amplify your creative process. Whether your space is an early morning coffee shop, an Irish pub, or a planned writing retreat–scheduling the time to write is essential. For myself, working full-time, raising kids, attending figure skating & hockey with family, and carving out time to cook healthy meals… tends to demand most of my daylight hours. Therefore, dedicating the time to write must be deliberate.

Over recent years, I’ve been blessed to join a couple of writers who similarly battle with this time crunch challenge. We’ve found that planned writing retreats with chunks of undisturbed time, are paramount to moving our writing projects forward. The following is a list of key ingredients to a successful writing retreat.

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In the Event of My Death: Burn Everything… or Steamroll It!

Over the Christmas holidays, I decided to declutter my basement office. The task had been on my To-Do List for far too long. I procrastinated because it was a BIG job, which ultimately took me seven days to complete. Sad, but true.

While sifting through the stacks of papers, books, and file folders, I found some personal notes full of secret information. Information that I don’t need or want anyone else to know about. What if someone else had seen them? What would they think? What would they say?

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A New Year: time for new writing goals and charting a path to success

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

It’s a new year and a perfect time to think about writing goals for 2023. There are four approaches to setting new years’ goals:

1.  Set multiple goals but break them within minutes, hours or days because we never had any true intention. This is more a “wish” list of wants / desires rather than a true goal setting.

2 . Set one or two goals and managed to keep it until around Ground Hog’s day and then give up because honestly, keeping to your goals is hard work.  

3.  Refuse to set goals at New Years because either we know there’s no point (because we won’t keep to them), feel it is too cliche or we are completely content with our present life so we need no goals.

4.  Set actual achievable goals and keep to it, even if the the goal is not ultimately achieved, the steps and habits get developed over the year.   

How do we get to number 4?

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Call Me the GRINCH

Tis the season of stress. The season of hunting for that perfect precious gift while you get your elbows up to wrestle for that last sale item on your list. Not only do you need to tackle your regular laundry, dusting, vacuuming, dog walking, work and dishes… but now you need to clean your house before you can hang up those pesky decorations and Christmas lights (fit in the marital spat over the lights, apologize and then make up for your poor behaviour), drag out and dust off the ol’ Christmas tree, and then somehow remember to move the freakin’ Christmas Elf every night before bed. Read more

It’s All About Temperature

Photo credit with thanks to Sarah McCraw Crow. @sarahmcrow

Blink and their gone.

What am I referring to?

Fall leaves.

It seems that one day I’m trying to remind myself to appreciate the stunning red and yellow canopies and then suddenly, the trees are bare, and snow begins to fall.

Photo credit to Donna Curtin.

But I’m determined this year to slow the clock, to breathe in the leaves fermenting on the ground. Is that what makes that smell? Rotting leaves? Mold? Mushrooms? Some magical combination of rain, cold nights, and the sap draining from the trees and into the ground to hide away until maple syrup season? Read more

Do you have enough space for creative thought?

From Pixabay, StockSnap

I caught three minutes of a radio documentary exploring the concept that to foster creativity, a person needs both time space and physical space. The time space seems obvious – the freedom to allow a mind to wander and explore— would help any creative spirit. Who doesn’t need more time to allow themself to write, paint or basketweave with pine needles?

But in the few minutes I heard of the documentary, it also discussed the idea that a person would be more creative working in an open air or high vaulted room. Is this true?

Time for research!

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