Five Years a Writer

I’d like to be an ostrich. All around the world, people are casting their vote for political leaders promising easy answers to complex problems. Democracies everywhere are at risk from populist politicians and far-right-wing ideologues. What a troubling thought for those of us who want to believe in the goodness of our neighbours and the wisdom of our political leaders. However, with each autocrat or hard-right-wing leader elected, I lose another glimmer of hope. I am not an ostrich. I cannot bury my head in the sand. I must pay attention to the world around me. Turning inward and ignoring what is happening out there does not make it go away or diminish the harm being done to our democracies. At the very least, I tell myself, I must know the days' headlines, which, last week, included news of right-wing conservative Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu being returned to power in Israel and Jordan Bardella being elected as new leader of France’s far-right Rassemblement National (R...

In my Sunday afternoon writing group, this image was the prompt for our weekly writing task. Interestingly, some of us saw a squirrel where others (me included) saw a bunny. The picture inspired me to write this fable. “But who are you if you cannot burrow?” asked the bunny. “And who are you if you cannot fly?”, asked the bird. Both creatures were resting on the cold white snow, so recently fallen it was unmarked by humans’ grit or grime. They had come face to face, quite unexpectedly, these two quite different beings, though both quite beautiful. They had been surprised to see each other on that hillock of snow, but not shocked. While not yet old, they were wise enough to know that any day can bring surprise and joy or grief and sorrow or all those feelings in any combination. While the one hopped and the other flew, they both were part of their surroundings in a way that human animals rarely are. The bunny asked, “What is flying?” And the bird replied, “It is soar...

“Lady, get a hobby!”  “My dear, you should volunteer. Giving back is very rewarding.” “Good grief, what a problem to have: Too much time on your hands.” “Love your work not your job.”  These comments and variations on them came my way recently after my personal essay about my first year in retirement was published in The Globe and Mail. While I had titled it “Beyond 9 to 5”, the paper’s title is “I was struggling with the new-found freedom that retirement brings” — less oblique, better search-engine optimization. Fine, the editors know what they’re doing. And, as evidenced by some of the 80+ comments posted in response online, many readers of my essay know what they’re doing in retirement and are free with their advice to me about it. See above comments.  Of course, in any group of people, there will be those who know it all and have the answer for you — cannot imagine why you even have to ask the question. But there are also those who share your question and considerat...

Dear Hey you! Covid: Please GO AWAY! I’ve had enough of you and your insidious presence. Lurking in the background everywhere. Masked or not, we are vulnerable to your incursion. I am tired of tiptoeing through life. I want to feel the joy of going out and about without worry about who will cross my path and breathe you out into my presence. I want to meet and congregate and share time and space with others without concern for the danger you present. Alas. You are dangerous, Covid. And you continue to lurk in the corners and spread in the open. So I will continue to live with caution, to avoid the crowds, and to mask (in the age of Covid, a noun that has become a verb). It is a fine line between friendly and foolhardy, between cautious and captive, and I walk that line. Every day. Once the real cold comes, with snow and wind and ice, then I will be truly tested. For now, I go out and about, but I am trepidatious and I wonder, constantly, about how sensible I am being: Should I take ...

“Are you Katy’s little sister?” “Are you related to Katy?” “You look just like Katy!” I heard these comments for much of my early life. It wasn’t until I spent a year in France after high school, on my own, no family with me or gone before me where I was staying, that I realized it was possible for me to be me without my older sister as reference point. That year, I stepped out of the shadow of comparison and came into my own. An associate of mine told me of a horrible experience she had had with a professional writer whose feedback to her on a short story was, “This is terrible writing. You may as well give up right now.” My associate put down her pen for several years before having the courage to once more pick it up, and it took more time still before she dared share her writing with anyone for feedback. When I was about 11, my French teacher was Monsieur Caillé . I loved him more for his red hair and beautifully groomed beard than I did for his classes, but when my best friend’s m...

I had returned the students’ assignments and was back at my desk at the front of the room awaiting their questions. What came, almost immediately, was a shriek from one student — one of the most promising students in this particular class: “You tore my work apart!” Ah. Oops. Yes. This is sometimes the reaction to feedback on writing that demands respect, to writing that is clearly going somewhere but hasn’t yet arrived. I talked with the student and persuaded him that my detailed comments were an indication of the quality and potential of his work. It took quite a bit of talking on my part, but he was, eventually, persuaded. In the long term, that writing helped him win an award. At the ceremony, he told me he had realized how valuable my feedback had been for him. I’ve been remembering this particular experience recently, because I have dived into the public pool of writing in two ways: my piece on Brevity Blog was published last week, and this week I’ve signed up for a month of writ...

Netball: like basketball, only harder No one would call me athletic these days, but in my middle school years in England, I loved to play sports: tennis, field hockey, and netball . I enjoyed the fun, the energetic running down the pitch or across the court with my teammates, and even the occasional victory in a match.  One time, my class was practising netball in advance of a competition and I was scoring lots of points, which means I was getting the ball into the hoop that does not have a backboard . My performance was good enough that the coach picked me to be the goal shooter in an upcoming match. This turned out to be unfortunate, as my performance during the competition did not match my scoring streak during practice. What might have been skill turned out to have been pure luck.  These days, my sport is writing, my moves are fingers on a keyboard, and my performance is more even. Unlike netball, which I abandoned after that school year, I have persevered with my writing,...