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February 01, 2016
Well, hi.
Well, hi. How’s it going? What you up to? Are you having a good evening?I’m talking to you from Open Book: Toronto as the Writer-In-Residence for the month of February. I’ll be taking you through ...
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April 25, 2019What Agents Are Looking For: Interview with Marilyn Biderman
One afternoon, when I was feeling particularly angsty, I tweeted out to my followers, “How do BIPOC writers get agents?” I received some encouraging responses, as well as some that had me questioning ...
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November 29, 2019What Does Work/Life Balance Look Like for Writers?
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”This is a question children are often asked with a bemused smile by teachers, family, or friends. They expect that you’ll reply with some fantastical thing: ...
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June 19, 2019What Kdramas Taught Me About Storytelling
OK so first I feel like I should explain that literature and TV/film motivate me in different ways. I like to see it as craft vs. content. Books I love or respect teach me about word choice and pacing, ...
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June 26, 2021What Makes a Good Writing Routine?
As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm fascinated by other people's writing routines. Not only am I just a somewhat nosy person (as many writers are, I imagine), but I don't have much in the way of a ...
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September 21, 2020What Timothy Findley Taught Me
Unfortunately, it isn’t often that a major biography of a Canadian writer is published. Such a book takes years to write and costs the author a great deal, not only in work time but also in research ...
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March 12, 2020What Wolves Are You Missing? How Writing Communities Improve Our Writing
“The Yellowstone river is healthier today than it was in 1995. The wild part about this positive ecological trend (which cuts against so many other ecological trends in the world) is that we understand ...
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May 29, 2015What’s Your Vision: Publish or Perish?
Note to self: forget the zeitgeist. Trends are for dolts. What I mean is that when it comes to some writers and their embrace of social media, e-book culture and new audience development there seems to ...
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September 20, 2019When History and Fiction Collide: On the Necessity of Irreverence
A week before I attended my first writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity last month, a historian in Vancouver gave me an envelope containing a strip of negatives. I developed them ...
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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. ...
