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November 14, 2018On Fairy Tales
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live…[w]e look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition ...
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March 08, 2021On Giving Myself Permission Not to Write
I know I have to write it. The essay I’ve been trying to write for a year and a half.I will be in the grocery store or out in the muck of a hike dripping with sweat and a sentence of it will come to ...
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June 27, 2019On Hanging Laundry
I have an obsession with laundry hung on lines. The image literally stops me in my tracks. There’s so much thought put into the way the sleeves of shirts are pinned just close enough to the hem of a ...
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July 09, 2020
On Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city
Music has always been part of my DNA. I consumed it with the same intensity as I did literature, and at no less voracious a rate. Large swaths of my adolescence were spent lying on the floor, eyes closed ...
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June 05, 2015On Making Sausages
June is the month of graduation. On campus, SFU students seem happier, despite impending midterms. Relatives in high heels are carrying peonies. All parking lots are full.As I pass by the Convocation ...
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January 15, 2018On Margaret Atwood and the new Canlit
It’s nine o’clock on a Sunday night and my son is asleep. This is a time reserved for me, a time when I usually don’t work or think about work, when I sometimes watch Stephen Colbert videos, or ...
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September 28, 2023On Motivation
I’m a person who gets called “very prolific” a lot. I won’t get into what I think about that or whether I agree or if I think it’s even remotely good for my mental health or personal relationships. ...
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May 01, 2019On Perfectionism: Stop it Right Now Thank You Very Much*
“Once you have realized what you need to improve in your piece—either from a writing partner's helpful responses or your own insights—you're ready to begin revising, a process you would be well ...
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August 04, 2017On Productivity
A few months ago I quit my safe, reliable customer service job at Starbucks to focus on writing. I’d just received a grant and I was ready to go full-throttle towards finally writing a book. Those last ...
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October 08, 2020On Querying into an Apocalypse
"I feel so cooped up in my house with this smoke and the moths that keep flying by my window. Is a weekend really a weekend in 2020 if it doesn't include plague, pestilence, and Hell fire?" - @a_h_reaumeI ...
