Five Years a Writer

Updated with live link; see below It starts with an idea. If you’re lucky diligent, the idea grows and morphs and attaches onto other ideas…and so it goes, until you have something worth writing about. It starts with a blank page. If you’re lucky diligent, the page becomes populated with words that grow and morph into sentences and paragraphs…and so it goes, until you have a piece of writing.   It starts with one reader. If you’re lucky diligent, that reader, over time, multiplies into others…and so it goes, until you have many readers, some of whom are friends, some of whom you don’t know and are not even related to.  The more you nurture ideas and fill blank pages with words and send them out into the world of readers, the better chance you have of being read and of finding more readers.  Self-evident, of course, so what’s the point? There are three:  One : Ten and a half years ago, I had a personal essay published in The Globe and Mail, which was a lovely unplanned achievement fo