The Power of 10 Minutes

Ten minutes. Start with that. Last month, at our annual invigorating Wild Writing in the Boreal retreat, I found myself suggesting it often. One participant said, Yes, because then you’ll keep going. If you do 10, you’ll do 20, even an hour. Maybe, I replied. But you can also just fill those 10 minutes. It […]

Writing Through the Pandemic

So… how are you? I mean it. How are you? In my quiet household, where the animals don’t seem to be aware that anything’s wrong (except for Mowat’s amped-up need for evening cuddles as I watch The National), we are muddling along. Talking every day with my mom, texting with my mother-in-law who is in […]

The Magic of the Retreat

I’ve been lucky to attend lots of retreats. There was a silent, five-day Vipassana meditation retreat back home in Ontario a couple of decades ago, and the memorable Sage Hill Writing Experience in 2014, where I spent two weeks working with an amazing group of women and poet Jan Zwicky. At that one, apart from […]

Sticky

Once I coached a woman who could not bring herself to write. She spoke of her longing and of abstract story concepts but she didn’t jot down a word no matter what I suggested. Then, at the end of a couple of months together, her heart broke. Literally. She disappeared and when we finally reconnected, […]

Ramble

EDIT (03/16/2020): This group is now wide open to help bring together writers during these COVID-19 times of self-isolation… My creative and working life feels like a bit of a ramble sometimes. I mean, I’m walking a clear path, but I tend to branch off a lot. Grab that bit of sheep’s wool that’s tangled […]