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March 13, 2021
Permission to dream
When I started writing, I didn’t understand the invisible work. The models of labour I was most familiar with—whether in a coffee shop, at a hotel, in a firehall, or at a construction site—were, ...
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November 01, 2021'Write when the baby sleeps' and other impossible writing rules
Years ago, long before I had any kids, I read that Alice Munro wrote when her baby napped, so when I was pregnant with my first kid, I told myself I’d do the same. It was 2015, six years before my first ...
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December 18, 2020I Wrote 100,000 Words in a Month: Or When Productivity is Really Crip Grief
(This is not a ‘How To’ article. This is also not an inspiring story about a disabled person doing an extraordinary thing. There is nothing extraordinary here. There is only a dispatch from a place ...
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June 23, 2022Cut Road Author Brent van Staalduinen on the Books That Became His "Masterclasses" in Writing
Hamilton author and writing coach Brent van Staalduinen has a long list of honours for his writing, with three novels under his belt and more than a decade of publishing short fiction in some of the ...
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December 12, 20237 Writing Lessons I Learned from Gardening
I am by no means a capital G Gardener, but planning and tending to my little patio garden brings me a lot of comfort and satisfaction. While getting my garden ready for winter, I found my mind wandering ...
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September 07, 2016Scotiabank Giller Prize Announces a Powerful Longlist for 2016
The Scotiabank Giller Prize remains as the titan of fiction prizes in Canada, with readers and industry followers alike awaiting the long- and shortlists every year with bated breath.This year's list ...
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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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August 21, 2020Why Bother Writing?
A few nights ago, I woke up to the sound of a wolf howling into the bowl of the sky. We all know the sound, I’d heard versions of it my whole life, but I’d never actually heard one in the flesh like ...
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May 29, 2018What I Wish Every Aspiring Children’s Author Knew About Publishing
It seems like book publishing is a mysterious, captivating industry to many people. It barely gets represented in pop culture and when it does get featured (Elf and Fatal Attraction come to mind), ...
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March 05, 2021
Writing Time
When it comes to writing, I have a hard time wrapping my head around some of the basics—namely space and time. I find it easy to imagine myself into a character’s head—to project myself into a character’s ...
