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June 03, 2020
Hello From My Big Comfy Chair
I didn’t set out to be a kids’ writer. At first, I wrote parenting articles, travel pieces, government brochures, whatever I could get paid to write. It turned out my most successful efforts were ...
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September 02, 2014Hello, My Name Is Diane! (Part 2)
Some say that exposure helps dissipate the stress for people with performance anxiety—that old adage which claims the more you do the one thing that provokes fear in you, the easier it gets to manage ...
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November 13, 2019Home
This October I travelled to Calgary from my home in Kingston to do some book promotion and to catch up with my family and cherished friends. It had been a little over a year since I’d returned home, ...
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January 20, 2025House of Anansi Press Contest! Enter to Win Safekeeping by Chelene Knight, and More!
House of Anansi Press, one of the leading independent publishing houses in the country, has teamed with Open Book to celebrate the launch of Safekeeping: A Writer’s Guided Journal for Launching a ...
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February 04, 2020How Ableism Stopped Me From Writing
“When will your novel be ready to send to agents?”Maddy asked this question as we lay on the beach. It was a hot August day and we were looking out at the water and eating cherries. I smiled and put ...
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September 27, 2017How I Learned to Write What Scares Me
Three years ago, I wrote a poem.Back then, a few very big things happened in my life. My marriage died. I found a new publisher. And, perhaps most importantly, I started teaching.For my entire publishing ...
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April 28, 2022How I look at a map (part two): found poetry
In previous posts you’ve seen some of the things I’m thinking through when I’m creating visual poetry. And in the last post we got started working on a new piece by looking through archival material. ...
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October 17, 2024How I’m Adjusting My Writing Routine for Autumn & Winter
Many of us in the Northern Hemisphere are now well into autumn coolness. As I write this I have all the windows open and I actually feel chilly—an unfamiliar, almost exciting feeling.To me, fall feels ...
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October 27, 2017How My Version of the Canlit Community Sustains Me
Two months ago, one of my best friends was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. She is a mother. She is a prolific, brilliant writer. And she was my very first writer friend.We first met working ...
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April 03, 2025How to Avoid Blank Page Syndrome: The Jar Method
When I’m editing, there are specific problems to tackle, and I find I have a clear to-do list. Even if there’s a lot to do, I have a road map, but at the beginning of a project, I get so easily daunted ...