WritingTag

What's Beyond: Writing as an Actor, Part 2

One of the important exercises we do in theatre is called “What’s Beyond.” It’s a Viola Spolin exercise to help actors understand the full, inner life of their characters. Viola Spolin is credited ...

Writing as an Actor

I went to theatre school when I was 18. In many ways it was the worst choice I could have made. I was not temperamentally suited to the life of an actor. But the lessons I learned in theatre school have ...

Writing as a Calligrapher

The word calligraphy comes from the Greek. Kali, meaning beautiful, and Graphos, meaning writing. Beautiful writing. It’s a term that was coined after the invention of the printing press, after the ...

Writing What You Don't Know

Write what you know. It’s an adage you are always told as a beginning writer.My first book was definitely written because of what I knew. I had been teaching a studio course on the development of Western ...

Making a skating rink, and other tricks for stepping away from a work-in-progress

On a particularly cold Friday morning, I piled my kids in a car with snow pants and skates and a pile of books and we headed to a cottage rental. We all were desperate for a change of scenery, and I was ...

The Writing Moment with... Spooky Season

I love and dread the fall. The appeals are many: the crackling, fiery colours, the beginning of a new school year, Halloween’s ghoulish joys, the growing chill in the air, and the attendant comfort ...

Introduction to my Residency: On Walking, Emergence, and the Weaving of Story in Place (or Wander with me to the River)

This is my first residency, so in preparing for it I did what I know how to do — began researching what others had done before me to get an idea of how things are done. I spent some time looking through ...

LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID: The writing process Part 9 of 9

One thing about the pandemic is that it has changed how we socialize and interact with other humans. Even before the pandemic people seemed to be becoming more engaged online and less actually connected. ...

Grinding Out a New Novel

Writing a novel is a grind. It’s an arduous, meticulous, and often repetitive process that can take years. There’s the actual typing of words onto the page, and then come the edits and rewrites, which ...

LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID: The writing process Part 8 of 9

What happens when the unexpected occurs. As a writer, I like to throw unexpected elements in when things seem to be progressing smoothly. The same way I don’t conceive of a beginning or middle before ...