Five Years a Writer

I do not sew and would not contemplate making a quilt, but I understand the concept: create something from smaller pieces by stitching them together to make a beautiful new whole. The other day, it came to me that this is how I approach life writing. It is how I am approaching writing about my life. Not for me a linear path of carefully planned chronological tales. No. My approach is to keep my eyes open for prompts that spark a memory. Nurture that spark, and tease it into a story. Safe-keep that story in a metaphorical box or actual drawer. Keep being open to prompts and alert to sparks; keep writing them into stories; and keep saving the results. One day, sometime, will be the right time to take those bits and bobs, those scraps of a life lived presented as story, and stitch them into a whole of some sort. This, then, you might call a memoir and you might give it a title and others might read it. What a day that would be! In the meantime, it is both fun and valuable to be prompt...

The Le Rougetel family circa 1965: Anne, Charles, Amanda, Katy, Colin I recently attended the celebration of life for a friend’s father who had died at 95. The service was bright with song and lively with memories, and it got me thinking about how we wrap up a life with stories. Stories of fun and adventure, success and achievement, of impact and wisdom. Or maybe stories of hardship and pain, of loss and lack, of hard luck and sorrow. Or, likely, a mix of all that. Regardless, at the end, we celebrate a life in story. It got me thinking about how my story might be told when my end comes. That’s a long way off, I hope, but in the meantime, I pulled out an activity that Deborah and I have used in one of our writing workshops . It’s a variation on the “I am from…” prompt developed by George Ella Lyon , and it’s surprisingly thought provoking. It asks you to dig ever deeper about where you are from — while the cheap answer is Toronto (city where I was born), the richer, more valuable answe...

I love a good conversation. A vigorous back and forth of ideas and opinions between people who think and ponder and wonder about the world and how to make it a better place for more of us. Sadly, as the infamous quote from Canada’s first (and so far only) female prime minister, Kim Campbell , goes, election campaigns are not the time for robust discussion of serious issues. Even if the issues are raised, debate — real debate, grounded in evidence-based reasoning and articulate arguments supporting policy promises — is very, very rare. And what a loss that is for the voters. From the door step to the TV lecterns, very little real debate happens. On the TV, it seems scripted and vicious — often it’s jabs that are delivered at the opponent more than persuasive arguments against their positions. On the doorstep, it’s a challenge to even get the door open.  And, once open, it’s rare, these days in my experience, to encounter an individual interested in an exchange of viewpoints no matte...

for me, hair over my ears = too long!! My hair is eight weeks past its last cut. It is wild and bushy, and I am the only one who cares. I can do what I like with the hair on my head. On Saturday, I attended a rally in support of the WOMAN * LIFE * FREEDOM movement in Iran that marked the one-year anniversary of the death-in-police-custody of Mahsa Amini , a young woman arrested by that country’s morality police for allegedly not covering her hair appropriately. At the rally, the local Iranian community leader made a statement and closed by asking us to “say her name”, so we replied, three times, chanting her name MAHSA AMINI . It was a powerful way to pay tribute to this woman, silenced by forces that seek to restrict and restrain women’s freedoms in the 21st century. Say her name The first time I was in a crowd rallying in support of a missing female was in the early 1980s, in Edmonton. Six-year-old Tania Marie Murrell had been abducted, a crime that remains unsolved to this day. We ...

I do not own a magazine. I am not an editor to whom writers submit their work, hoping I will publish it. I am the writer who submits her work hoping it will make the cut with the editor to whom I have submitted it; recently, I have done this without success. But, hang on, what is success for a writer? What is success for any of us? Last week, my writer friend Finnian Burnett made it onto the long list for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction prize . A friend’s success is happily celebrated, so a big HOORAY for Finn ! Reflecting on the meaning of this accomplishment, Finn spoke of feeling proud for having written a piece and thinking it was good enough to submit and then actually submitting it. That is an achievement of which to be justifiably proud, said Finn, because so many writers don’t ever make it to the end of the finish + polish + submit stage. They give up somewhere along the line or disappear down a tangent or never even get started. Finn’s perspective gave me pause and has me reconsideri...

If July is like the Saturday of a weekend and August is like the Sunday, then September is definitely Monday! I can feel the ramping up of the fall agenda already, but I am choosing to linger a smidge longer in the Saturdays of summer… Coyote pups: Four of them gambled on our cottage lot in July.  Lovely to see them — at a distance.  I’ve seen them again in August: They are bigger!   Summer unfolds in its own time, with long days of light and ease. At least, my best memories of summer are of light and ease. Quiet mornings and lingering evenings, made easy by the light that breaks early and stays late. I am a morning person, so I love the peace and solitude of just-past-dawn cups of tea, my own thoughts, and the open possibility of the day that stretches ahead. There are always chores, of course, but my summer memories from the city hold fast to bike rides, ice cream and time outside on the new back deck, reading, writing, talking. At the cottage, the best days are those ...

Val (left) and Amanda, before they knew each other Once upon a time, two girls were born — in different decades, in different countries, to different sets of parents. One was an only child (Val), the other a middle child (Amanda). Both grew up in families where the love was sound, the home secure, and the future confident because the parents made it so. These two little girls knew love as they knew air to breathe. So, when they met in Winnipeg, many decades later, on a mutual friend’s introduction, they recognized in each other their equal and their combined potential. While it wasn’t quite a coup de foudre (circumstances were too complicated for that), love found its way and, this year, they mark 30 years of building a life together. ——— Hard to believe, but true. Thirty years. Wow. While I think it’s wrong to glorify the longevity of a relationship for its own sake, it is definitely not wrong to celebrate the relationship by marking the anniversary of its beginning. Val and I didn’t...