Beet Juice

Create a character, I said last night, during a class I’m teaching called Write Your Heart Out! (from Joyce Carol Oates’s advice to writers). A picture of feet was up on the screen. Red converse sneakers, legs in jeans, gender-neutral. Paint what you can’t see. Follow the pen into backstory, emotions, relationships or simply a […]

On Showing Up

The other day, I was talking with a friend about showing up. Just past blue Monday, in a frigid winter that’s kept us inside for days, some mornings the best that you can do is stumble over to your desk, sit there, and wait. Not for the green thrust of spring. Not even for epiphanies. […]

How To Keep Your Irons In the Fire

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. […]

Finishing

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 […]

Shoe Horn

Here it is. Late winter. The time of year when the landscape alienates with its constant blankness and, as a self-employed artist, I find myself having to drink copious amounts of tea and engage in regular heart-to-hearts with the bathroom mirror about self-care and commitment and forgiveness. Okay, not really. Well, sort-of. I know I’m […]