When J. and I first moved into this house, as autumn crept into winter, we started feeding the birds and thinking about gardens. As soon as the weather cooperated, we carved out a small area of grass, ordered some soil and, as they say in England, got stuck in. We bought a selection of native […]
In the Whiteshell last weekend, at the gorgeous and oh-so-welcoming Falcon Trails Resort, I wrote with eleven other women during the Wild Writing in the Boreal retreat Donna Besel and I co-taught. I went a bit wild, too – thanks to a singalong, fantastic company, and too much homemade Hutterite Colony wine… Lucky for me, that […]
My brain has been a free-wheeling swirl of colour and ideas lately. Not sure why. Seems, though, like I’m constantly jotting ideas into my notebook – for visual art, fabric art (I’m learning how to crochet while also playing with needle-felting…), stories, projects to try to get up and running, new classes to launch…. Maybe […]
Last Friday night seems so long ago. Since then, I’ve been catching what I can of the events at our city’s extraordinary writers’ festival and also trying to negotiate the rising, rollicking tides of anger I feel at what’s happening in the U.S. (see my Twitter feed)… Looking back, last Friday seems like a respite, […]
The leaves are changing. Our yard is covered with curled, yellow maple leaves and fallen crab apples left for the blue jays and squirrels. The garden looks shabby, the muted purples and golds of narrow leaf sunflowers and purple asters punctuated by the crimson red Virginia Creeper crawling up the stick structure I built this […]
….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 […]
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? […]
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 […]