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September 24, 2014
Which ‘I’ This ‘I.
After my second book, Post-Apothecary, came out, I was given the chance to read at some of our writers’ festivals. One event in Ontario had three poets and a host who introduced us and facilitated the ...
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July 19, 2015
At the Start of a New Creative Writing Class
I’m about to teach a new class, “Writing That Resonates,” starting tomorrow at Haliburton School of the Arts and, as happens each time, I pause.The students in the room will be diverse. Some will ...
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May 18, 2016
Faking It
Writers' early careers are characterized by a sort of inconsistent confidence, a herky-jerky belief in themselves and their divinely appointed mission interspersed with paralyzing instances of clarity ...
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July 11, 2014
A Story That No One Owns
I’m sure my point is only too plain… Lizzie is not dead, etc.—but there is a “mixture of fact & fiction,” and you have changed her letters. That is “infinite mischief,” I think…. ...
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July 25, 2015
The Anti-Block
People like to talk about writer’s block, the horrible dead end feeling of a blank page and nothing to write, or of a work in progress that has lost its energy and for which the writer can find no direction.But ...
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October 05, 2015
Why You Need a Creative Manifesto (And How to Write Your Own)
I wrote my first creative manifesto in 2011, inspired by author and blogger Justine Musk’s own efforts to do the same after she wrote about the competition for a writer’s attention these days.It isn’t ...
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March 29, 2021
Writing/Not Writing
Some language cracks the shell of a thing open, so we can newly see what’s being described. And some language forms a perfect egg shell around what it aims to describe, obscuring more than it reveals. ...
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April 24, 2014
Poetic
Tell a classroom of wannabe writers to try their hands at a poem and the stilted, strangely wrought language that ensues can be alarming. It’s like they’re being told to write in some World War II ...
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September 04, 2014
Resurrecting past Seasons
A note written for a Pedlar Press panel held last fall in St. John’s, NFLD, and in tardy response to a query from Robert Kroetsch:I have a crush on Robert Kroetsch. I’ve had this crush for a very ...
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April 26, 2015
Anna Karenina, Dance, and Relief
Last week, I saw the Eifman St. Petersburg Ballet perform Anna Karenina. Before the performance, Julia Zarankin gave a lecture on the novel to ballet-goers. She said that Tolstoy was deeply interested ...