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August 03, 2017
Improv Taught Me How to Craft a Story
I know a lot of people who want to write books who don’t actually do any writing. It’s a curious thing to want to do something you don’t do. I used to be one of those people, so I say that with ...
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June 01, 2017How to Find Your Material -- and Mike Babcock
So there I was last Friday, landing in Phoenix with my hockey team, heading for a recreational hockey tournament. Ice hockey, I should specify, since we’re talking Phoenix, temperature 34 degrees C ...
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May 20, 2021
Toilets and the Research Iceberg : Bringing History to Life
The best and worst part of writing historical fiction is research. The best and worst part of research is that chasing every bright and shiny object – oops, I mean fact – can be so addictive that ...
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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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February 26, 20232 dreams
The last dream I had about working at the coffee shop, I met one of my coworkers in a park that never existed. It was behind the Safeway up the street from our work. We talked a bit about how our lives ...
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April 10, 2024Mentorship: Part I
I’m deep in the weeds on a WIP and have been struggling to figure out what it needs, and what I need to get it to where it needs to be. My writing group is amazing, and I’m so grateful to my beta ...
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November 02, 2021"It Was Time to Say It" The 2021 Weston Prize Finalists on Why and How They Wrote Their Acclaimed Books
Tomorrow, Wednesday, November 3, the Writers' Trust Awards will take place via livestream, with six of Canada's biggest and most prestigious literary awards announced. One of the most hotly anticipated ...
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November 18, 2020"As If You Were a Bird, Too" Read an Excerpt from Nina Berkhout's Stunning Novel Why Birds Sing
In poet and novelist Nina Berkhout's Why Birds Sing (ECW Press), opera singer Dawn Woodward has had a pretty tough week. First she melted down completely on stage, her voice failing her and her career ...
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February 14, 2022
Valentine's Day! (and one or two other things I don't really like)
Hello, Open Book reader. Glad to have you back. So…remember that promise I made early on to curb the sass mouth? Well, apologies in advance because I’m breaking that promise today. Originally, I wasn’t ...
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February 17, 2022
Where the magic happens...sorta? Kinda? (Sometimes?)
Warning: I fully embrace my nerd status in this one. If I remember correctly there's a Latin term for this...yup, found it:Hey there, Open Book reader. Welcome back! Hope you've been having an awesome ...
