WritingTag

A 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. ...

Why 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 ...

Writing What You "Know"

I’m one of countless writers who found his way thanks to this old standby, and having just published a book of stories set in small Southwestern Ontario towns a lot like the ones where I grew up, it’s ...

On 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 ...

Behind Every Story, A Less Interesting Story

Lillian is trying to write a good play. When progress alludes her, she tears the false starts out of her typewriter, scrunches them up into balls, and kicks over the wastebasket that brims with bad drafts. ...

Dear UBC Accountable

Dear UBC Accountable,It’s been one year since you released your open letter to UBC, and Canada, and the world. I don’t want to wish you a happy birthday, because it’s not happy. Not for me, and ...

So You Want to Write About Race

Somehow I have become on expert on writing race.This was not something I planned for. When I started publishing, I was writing fiction about Chinese Canadian characters, about families who had been invisible ...

On Being an Ill Writer

Every day for a few years now, I’ve had to navigate my fatigue. Sometimes it’s only subtle, tugging at my consciousness as a toddler might. Sometimes it’s pervasive and insistent: clouding my thoughts, ...

The Writer in the World: Coda

When I became that book all those years ago, the effects of art in my life were not definable. I only knew that I enjoyed storytelling and later I would appreciate that my relationship to story has everything ...

The Writer in the World: On Beauty and Poetry

A Conversation with an anonymous poet.For this part of The Writer in the World, I am honouring the request of a poet to keep their identity undisclosed. Canisia Lubrin: I've been asked whether the tension ...