Writing LifeTag
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September 21, 2018A draft
For years my partner and I lived in a condo, one of the four sides of which was flanked by windows, only one. The world was out there and we were in here, boxed, safe, separate, tucked away in the proscenium. ...
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September 02, 2018Show Me the (Writing-Grant) Money!
Hello, and Happy September! Thanks to the excellent folks at Open Book for inviting me here, and thanks to you for tuning in, lovely readers-who-I’m-guessing-are-mostly-also-writers.All right, let’s ...
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August 17, 2018Form as Home
Every time I sit down to write, I find myself exasperated by the considerations. The considerations of who will be reading it, how it’ll be interpreted, if it’ll hurt someone within or outside my ...
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August 13, 2018Defending your writing
Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. As a kid, I read everything in my library from A – Z. I was the secretary of the Library Club and loved my after-school gig of sorting the books according ...
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July 31, 2018Tanis MacDonald on How We Can Expand Our Idea of the Writing Life to Include Smaller Communities
The stereotype of the artist and writer tends to be an urban one - tiny apartments; cigarettes and whisky; gritty, loud, and busy streets outside the window. But where do these pictures come from and, ...
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July 31, 2018On writers, politics, and when to just stop talking
Once upon a time, before the age of social media, Canlit was inclusive and kind, and political differences were settled amicably over whisky in private festival hospitality suites and the kind of dark ...
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July 25, 2018How to Make $3000 a Month Writing Children’s Books: A Case for Day Jobs
When I was a teen, I thought that every children’s author got to sit at home alone and undisturbed, joyfully tapping away at a computer all day and night. Before I went off to university, I learned ...
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July 16, 2018Why It’s Okay If You Haven’t Finished Your First Book Yet
I thought I would finish my first novel by the time I turned 25.I laugh at the absurdity of that now. But in my early 20s, I believed it when people told me that anything was possible with hard work and ...
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June 21, 2018On the business of writing
In 2002, when I formed my writing group (still going strong!) with June Hutton and Mary Novik, we made a promise that we would always, always share our experiences with the business of writing—the shadowy ...
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May 21, 2018On racialized motherhood, writing, and sleep deprivation
The day before my son’s due date, I sent what I thought was the final draft of The Better Mother to my editor. The baby’s bedroom was finished: yellow walls, penguin stencil, gingham curtains. My ...