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March 25, 2024On Finding Inspiration Through Deconstruction
In my last column, I talked about the unexpected rewards of returning to the same themes and subject matter in your work. But there’s a related facet to this that I feel deserves its own examination—the ...
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March 28, 2022What's Beyond: Writing as an Actor, Part 2
One of the important exercises we do in theatre is called “What’s Beyond.” It’s a Viola Spolin exercise to help actors understand the full, inner life of their characters. Viola Spolin is credited ...
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July 01, 2024Spencer Gordon Bends Form to a Wondrous Breaking in A Horse at the Window
As an author who has been part of the CanLit scene for over a decade, Spencer Gordon has experienced and observed a world in flux through the sometimes hopeful, and sometimes necessarily disillusioned ...
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October 28, 2016
Poetic Inspiration IV
This is the fourth in a series of posts highlighting inventive poems that have broadened my sense of what poems can be and do, and sparked me to stretch further in my own work. (The previous instalments ...
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July 28, 2017the book of ayâs: the importance of nêhiyawêwin (Cree)
kinêhiyawêwininaw tâpiskôc kakîkêkamik[our creeness is like a forever house]itê kaki-kakîkê-pawâtayahk[where we can forever dream] I wrote this today, thinking about old stories, and old places. ...
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June 03, 2022On Becoming an Acquiring Editor
For thirty years I was on the other side of the desk: submitting books to editors who didn’t reply or who took six months to reply, who replied with no-thank-you formulae, or who replied with suggestions ...
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February 26, 2021Grinding Out a New Novel
Writing a novel is a grind. It’s an arduous, meticulous, and often repetitive process that can take years. There’s the actual typing of words onto the page, and then come the edits and rewrites, which ...
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October 28, 2020In good company
So, you finished your novel and sent it off anticipating it’s publication. Bravo! If you get a “No thanks, this isn’t for us” note, then consider yourself in good company. Many an author’s ...
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October 17, 2020Fertile ground
Sometimes story ideas seem to come from out of the blue.“I don't know myself where the ideas really come from, what makes them come, or whether one day they'll stop. I used to tell people the not very ...
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September 15, 2021Indigenous Storytelling Shines on the Powerhouse 2021 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction Shortlist
This morning, the Writers' Trust of Canada announced the five 2021 finalists for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the $60,000 award that has quickly come to be the defining nonfiction ...
