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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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February 26, 2019When All Your Faves Are Problematic
Recently, at a dinner with several writer friends, I learned that a writer I’ve long admired has been known to behave rather smarmily around young women. This writer is now on the list of names that ...
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December 29, 2023When Life Influences Form
What’s the best form for your next writing project? Often, this is decided by the sort of thing you want to write. Your sprawling epic fantasy idea likely won’t work as a short story, for example. ...
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May 08, 2020When My Mind is Frenzied, I Don’t Read—I Listen
Being read to is a luxury.Growing up, there were no bedtime stories in my household, at least none that I can remember. There were true stories traded around dinner tables of course, but there was none ...
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November 30, 2020When old ways, thoughts, beliefs, and people no longer serve you
“Every moment is a fresh beginning.” —T.S. EliotLately I have been thinking about the act of releasing the things in my life that no longer serve me. When I revise a piece of writing, the first ...
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June 07, 2023When Readers Write
Whenever I do a book event, people tell me things. Sometimes they tell me a bit about themselves or their families. At other times, they disclose traumatic experiences. I respond by holding the moment, ...
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January 03, 2017Where Are the Classmates Now?
I met Rebecca Rosenblum in the Advanced Fiction Writing class during my undergrad in Creative Writing - at Concordia University, in Montreal. But Rebecca did not go to Concordia - she went to McGill - ...
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May 09, 2016Where We Do What We Do
The first stories of any quality that I produced were written at an old white melamine desk in the windowless furnace room of my future in-laws' house in suburban Ottawa. The hot water tank clicked and ...
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May 02, 2023Who Gets to Tell Stories? Deborah Dundas Challenges a Collective Reluctance to Talk about Class
These days, Deborah Dundas is known as an acclaimed editor at the Toronto Star, a fixture in the literary and journalistic communities, and a beloved figure who is an insightful, tireless supporter ...
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August 21, 2020Why Bother Writing?
A few nights ago, I woke up to the sound of a wolf howling into the bowl of the sky. We all know the sound, I’d heard versions of it my whole life, but I’d never actually heard one in the flesh like ...
