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 […]
Last weekend, J. and I hauled our shabby little tent-trailer, purchased two summers ago from a guy in Thunder Bay with hardly any teeth, to Bakers Narrows Provincial Park near Flin Flon. We camped on the Canadian Shield. J. wanted to find the path in to One Portage Lake, which, rumour has it, is stuffed full […]
On the orange wall of my office, in black marker, I’ve scrawled the words: Don’t be careful! I got this idea from Sarah Selecky and when I first wrote it, I believed it to be about the writing, an instruction I could glance at, reminding me to go deeper, to not let that internal ever-cautious […]
I passed my one-year knitiversary rather quietly. Facebook spat up a reminder, showing me the blog post that I wrote about beginning to learn, after I started taking classes in Calgary last spring while living there on a residency. It was very strange to click back and see the image of that first cowl that […]
Christy Ann Conlin‘s brand new book The Memento “wields a strange power and force, both psychological and emotional” writes Robert Wiersema in The Toronto Star. Here, she shares the music and artifacts that helped breathed life into this “coming of age story with elements of ghost stories, haunted houses, family curses and folk tales.” It’s rare […]
Here’s a confession: I’m tired. Really tired. Exhausted, actually. I’m about fifteen pages away from finishing the latest in-depth edits of my book and have already told my agent to expect it in her email in-box on Monday. I’m nearing the summit, I guess, and feel oh-so-ready for a protein bar and a cup of […]
There’s a moment that often comes back to me. Early autumn of 2010, at a bed-and-breakfast in Ontario’s Muskokas. I was there on a solitary writing retreat and in the afternoon, at the desk, after a few days of hard work, I typed the last words and finished Swarm. I stood up, walked outside, and […]
The world up here is covered in slowly thinning snow; the ice not yet sliding down the river. The sun is warmer, the ravens are talking up a storm, the crows are back, and the magpies are busy building their stick-pod nests. It’s spring, that time when whatever you plant will start to sprout. For […]