A few weeks ago, J. and I went to the boreal. We traveled east, out of the Prairies, until we hit shield country, then drove north to Black Lake in Nopiming Provincial Park. The landscape was perfect: just like home with rocky granite outcrops, water tinted a tannic red, red pines twisted in the wind. […]
….for the many emails, comments and congratulatory messages after my news last week about my next novel. This Has Nothing To Do With You is the title but, of course, it has everything to do with you: the readers, the ones who will bring the story to life! I would have liked to respond to […]
Well, it’s official! News about my next novel has hit the internet…. This Has Nothing To Do With You will be published by Freehand Books in Fall 2019! Here’s the tweet from Freehand, making it official (click on the image to go to the announcement on my agent’s site). I’m so, so, so (SO) excited […]
Thanks to all of you who commented on Jennifer Farquhar’s guest post last week. I love to hear what you think about the words shared on this blog, and about your own experiences with your writing or other creative practices, so I value all of your comments! This morning I did a random draw (which […]
Magical Juggling by Jennifer Farquhar Mother to three kids, one of whom is a night-nursing toddler. Half-time elementary school teacher. Squeezing in work late at night until my eyes burn, because there’s no other time to do it. Every single one of the readers here can match, if not trump, my busy-ness, am I right? […]
It’s been hot here in Manitoba. Forest fires are already raging north of us and the birds regularly stop by to take sips out of our birdbath. Meanwhile, down in the U.S., the government recently decided to do away with all the regulations that were put in place following the subprime mortgage crisis and subsequent […]
Day after day of dazzling sunshine has lately lifted my spirits. It helps too that I sent off my poetry manuscript to the publisher this week and that the birds are back. Purple finches and dark-eyed juncos at our backyard feeder. White pelicans crowding the Red River. Hawks, eagles, and, of course, robins. A multitude […]
Despite the Arctic airmass that’s been hanging over us, plunging temperatures into the minus double digits, spring is coming. The snow is ever-so-slowly receding towards the forest shadows, the geese are returning, and the other day I saw a seagull soar over our house. Mowat is also fully spring fevered, visiting Gus, the golden retriever, […]
For the past few nights I’ve been waking up at 1:13 a.m. In the spare room, I’ve kept a sort of vigil – reading, thinking, crying, making lists of things I have to do, trying to make plans. If I’m lucky, I’ll write. On Saturday night, I re-wrote the whole plot line of my current […]
I’ve been returning to the roots of writing practice lately. To the book I bought and cracked open as I was crossing the Georgia Strait between Tsawwassen and Vancouver Island on my way to Salt Spring Island, circa 1993. Back then, as I read the first pages of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, a pair […]