Five Years a Writer

I don’t much like the dark. My mind conjures endless bad things that might be, could be, likely are, lurking in its depths. Give me a light, even a sliver of light, and my breath comes easier, my pulse slows down, I can deal with the lesser dark that that sliver of light creates. So it is with the winter solstice: In the northern hemisphere, every December 21st brings with it that teeny tiny sliver of additional light and the promise it holds. I wrote last year about how, incrementally, the light returns to our days after we mark this point in the year. With each year that passes, I appreciate this day more. And, as the years pass, I am learning that light comes into my life in many different ways. Yes, the sun, of course. But also an act of kindness brings light into my day. Or a meaningful exchange with someone well known or not so familiar to me. A laugh brought on by smart humour. Or a moment of joy from the power of music to move me. All these experiences can bring if not actual...

Let’s play school for a moment.  Today’s assignment is to answer the question, Who are you?  You’re welcome to treat it as a deep philosophical consideration or as a superficial ‘cocktail party’ game. Regardless of how you approach the question, though, I am willing to bet two things: One, it’s not that easy to answer. Two, your answer will shift and change — if not quite with the wind, then with the time, the place and the person asking the question. Oh, and also, there is a word limit: no more than 65 words, please.  It’s challenging to encapsulate ourselves in a mere few words. Sure, we can offer a slice into our identity with just one word: Teacher. Wife. Father. Sister. Lawyer. Doctor, etc. But that tells the world only a role we hold or a relationship we have relative to another person. What does that one word actually say about us as a person — a wholly formed, fully complex person with history and credentials and experience and longings. Not much, right? Not nothi...

Today, a moment of silence to honour the 14 victims of the 1989 Montreal Massacre:  Remember their names . Work to end violence against women .  ———— I had such a good thought the other day on my walk that it was almost brilliant: Writing is like making sausages. What a perfect way to open this week’s post on the writing process. But then I googled the phrase, just to see what might come up, and discovered that, far from original, the idea of comparing some process with sausage making goes back two centuries and brings up more than two million hits — including countless ones relating writing to sausage-making . Oof. And there, dear reader, you have the foundational fear of every writer: Our idea is un-original. Our other ideas have already been thought of, been written about. Go back to the drawing board. Start over. Again. Oof. And so we do. Precisely because no idea is wholly new, we dig deep to weave our own originality into it through the words we put on the pag...

About a month ago, memories of my father listening to music came flooding back to me. They were triggered by having had delivered to our house the sound system on which Dad would play his CDs. (It had been taking up room in Mum’s suite and she was happy to gain the space by sending it along to us.) Dad loved classical music, often playing Bach, Vivaldi or Mozart at a volume the rest of us did not necessarily appreciate. But he persisted and he enjoyed every note. In among the boxes was also a pottery container with a wooden lid. This item brought to mind memories of my mother cooking. Mum used it to hold salt and it always sat on the counter beside the stove: She would flip open the lid, dip in with her fingers and add the pinch or two of salt to whatever she was making. While I’m not sure that Mum loved cooking as much as Dad loved listening to music, she was a wonderful cook and prepared countless delicious meals that her family and friends enjoyed with good conversation around the t...

Way back in 1997, when I was mid-career toiling in the trenches of corporate writing, I was desperate for some professional development. I wanted a shot in my career arm by learning from someone with deeper skills and broader experience in the writing field than I then possessed. It was a tall order, because I didn’t want a full-length program; I didn’t want a PR, marketing or advertising focus. I wanted the teaching to be laser focused on the craft of writing. Where to find that in a market of certificate- and diploma-length programs, all of which danced around the edges of capital-W writing? What is the perfect course for a writer? When I eventually landed on two options, offered through a local university’s continuing education division, I was afraid my no-nonsense boss would turn down my funding request. Would she see the transferable value — for both me and the organization — in a creative writing class and a creative non-fiction class? As it turns out, she did, signed off on both...

The film She Said , which depicts the work of journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey to break the story of Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct allegations, will be released in Canada later this week, on November 18. It is not necessarily easy to put words to emotion, to describe a horror experienced, but it can be made possible if someone is willing to listen. My post today is a tribute of sorts to the women who have spoken out, indeed, to all women everywhere who speak their truth into this world, who have the courage to say what happened. #mfgp Why not say what happened? Well. A thousand reasons. You don’t want to hear. You don’t want to know. You cannot listen. You will not listen. But it happened. To me. Blood and wounds and rape and fear and loss and theft and hurt and pain. It all happened. If not to me, then to someone. To some woman.  It happened. Listen or not, I say it happened. But words bring shame. Words build walls. Words can wound and maim and kil l —  the sp...

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...