Since I retired (mostly) last year, I’ve been trying to find something charitable or community-related to do. This has been hampered by a number of things: the fact that I’m not good at all that much, the fact that the potentially useful things I’m ok at are not things I want to spend my time doing […]

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Saturday night was my second flamenco dance show. This time around, I was part of six dance numbers, did silent acting in a vignette about emigrating to Canada, and performed a somewhat sardonic monologue about Spartan women.  I was happy that I hit my marks, only screwed up once, and that so many of my […]

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Like the fey, especially amoral, untrustworthy, dangerous ones?  Then you definitely need this new Storybundle offering.  Why? It includes my own Cold Hillside It was curated by the amazing Sandra Kasturi: award-winning writer, editor, publisher (and my good friend) It includes such luminaries as Gemma Files, Jane Yolen, Lisa Goldstein and Nancy Springer It’s a […]

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I’ve been stalled on both the “real” thing and the “let’s pretend this isn’t real” thing because it seems I can no longer turn off my internal editor and everything is hard. This, naturally, means I have even less to say on this benighted blog than usual.  So today’s topic is: how to justify the […]

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I’ve been feeling stuck on the Witch Thing in Progress (see avoidance behaviour post) and so I thought “why not try writing something fun? Something silly and frothy and maybe a wee bit fanfic-ish and romantic and without world-building or pressure or magic systems or any of those things that scare you.” I dutifully hauled […]

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To clarify, the avoidance is all on my side.  The teachers on the Masterclass site are doing their jobs.  My husband decided to sign up for a year’s access to the online learning site, Masterclass, which features lectures from such luminaries as Ron Howard, Steve Martin, and Annie Leibowitz.  It’s not cheap but we figured […]

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As with most things, I came to the podcast world a bit late.  The first one I followed was Welcome to Nightvale, based on a recommendation from friends.  That led to Alice isn’t Dead.  Then to Writing Excuses, then to Revisionist History, and on. The first summer I was off after liberation from work, I discovered […]

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A number of year’s ago, after reading Sarah Susanka’s book The Not-So-Big Life, I adopted a year-end ritual that involves asking myself some questions from the book about what I learned, achieved, and failed to do in the previous year.  I’d then set out my goals for the new year.  I now have over ten […]

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I don’t keep lists or rate things in Goodreads (I know, I know, I should, but it seems like writing work and I try to save my creativity for my own stuff).  The only reason I know roughly how many books I read this year is because much of my reading comes via the Toronto […]

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I saw yet another writer saying “there’s no such thing as writer’s block” on Twitter today.  I almost replied … but I mostly just lurk on social media and so I thought I’d write this post instead. I’m not sure how all these other writers define writer’s block.  Mostly they seem to assume that it’s […]

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