I made a list of all the projects/jobs I’ve got on the go while J. and I were camping this summer. I stopped counting at six. I didn’t include the dozen or so hats I’m hoping to knit in time for the pre-Christmas craft sales or walking the dog, making soups and generally having a life. […]
J. and I have this thing we do. We move through the (sometimes) long months of the school year by breaking them down into days of the week. May and June are Friday. January and February are Wednesday. No doubt, you’ve already figured out what this means but I’ll spell it out anyway: September is […]
Last week, in the woods, I became reacquainted with my brain. I remembered who I am. The paddling was tough. Every time we hit a lake, the wind bore down like a creature, pushing two-foot waves at us, and we had long distances to cover. There were whole days of paddling, when my shoulders smarted […]
By the time you read this, I’ll be in the woods. Off the Internet, paddling the Grass River as my Blackberry battery slowly dies. Three books (a novel, a poetry collection, and a book of essays), my own ongoing poetry project and my latest knitting project (a sweater for Mo!) secure in Ziploc bags, waiting […]
Life has been busy since we got home from Scotland. We’re finishing renovations that won’t get done during the school year (we, as in J. and some hired help), I’m working a lot at the library and we’re squeezing in trips on the weekends. This past weekend a friend who lives on Rocky Lake invited […]
In Glen Affric, at the end of our third day on the trail, we stopped to camp beside the Allt Coire Ghaidhe waterfall. Since that morning, when we’d woken up in a lovely campsite overlooking Loch Beinn a’Mheadhoin (which translates to loch of hill of the middle), we’d hiked about 15 kilometres, pausing at gorgeous Dog […]
It took about two minutes of talking to a few writer friends at the Canadian Writers’ Summit last weekend before I began realizing what might be wrong with my novel. I felt like a sponge, soaking up thoughts, ideas, writerly conversations while wandering between tents and event rooms at a muggy Harbourfront Centre in downtown […]
I’ve been on a reading blitz lately about residential schools. I’ve read a couple novels that address this atrocious time in Canadian history, and I’m deep into volume one of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, a text that every Canadian should read, and which many will read, thanks to […]
I looked up the etymology of tenacity this morning, and discovered that it comes from the Latin tenax which means ‘holding fast’ (the original meaning of fast being ‘to hold firmly’). I like this. I like the idea of holding one’s dreams and intentions and desires firmly in one’s heart. Because that’s what I’ve been doing, […]
I can tell when the writers I’m coaching are starting to catch fire. It’s when they write to me, bubbling over with the work they’re doing, whether that’s revising or writing hundreds of words a day when before they were sluggish, not wanting to start. There’s an energy in their emails that wasn’t there in […]