Writing & Mental Wellness, Part 2
The internet is both a terrible and wonderful place.
The internet is both a terrible and wonderful place.
Mental wellness plagues society at large.
We truly live in an age of distraction. I’m young enough to dive headlong into the Internet and social media, yet old enough to pine for a simpler time. As...
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. Douglas Adams I’ve been managing work and people for 20 years. These are things...
Art is an interestingly human form of expression. Somewhere between the amygdala and the cortex, our brains can conjure the most amazing things. Artists and...
One piece of oft-spoken writing advice is to write every day. Every. Single. Day. Perfecting the craft of grand wordsmithery is not unlike anything else. I...
“How do you eat an elephant?” “One bite at a time.” So you’re sitting in front of a computer with a blinking cursor amid a vast emptiness of white. It’s...
“Okay, it’s time to write now.” Ten minutes later… “I wonder what’s happening on Facebook…?” We’ve become quite busy in our lives with all the beeps and b...
I can’t find the time to write. You see, I’m too busy this month. All that chaos of shopping and family. How could I ever be expected to squirrel myself aw...
Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and the second smallest. It is named after the Roman god of war. Then again, so is Tuesday. Known as the ‘Red Plane...
I don’t have a favourite genre. Not to read. Not to write. Well, that’s not entirely true. Because if ‘dark’ was a genre, then I guess that’d be what you’d...
Okay, you’ve written a beautiful novel and wish to unleash your wordbaby on the world. There’s no doubt about it: traditional publishing is a long game. A...
I love writing scenes and flash pieces from writing prompts. In fact, I’ve written hundreds of them. Pantsing out 750 words at a time is downright exhilarati...
So, I have to admit something. I enjoy binge watching TV shows. There is nothing better than curling up on the couch with my best girl on a stormy weekend a...
I spend a lot of time reflecting on my process: what works, what doesn’t. That kind of thing. Such naval-gazing is a wonderful alternative to actual writing....
Over the holidays, I was asked about the many characters in my stories and how I come up with them. I wasn’t able to provide a very good answer because I ten...
It goes without saying that being active on the Internet requires a thick skin. With social media tools like Facebook, we now all create content whether we r...
It’s easy to burn yourself out creatively when meeting writing deadlines or undertaking insanity projects like NaNoWriMo. Sometimes, it’s just mood and the c...
I don’t want to write this post. I don’t feel like it. Actually, I don’t feel like writing a cotton-pickin’ thing. Surely, there is something on TV? Nope. Da...
The impact of H.P. Lovecraft on modern genre fiction is astounding. While Edgar Allan Poe spun yarns of gothic horror and laid the groundwork for detective...
My friend Anisa hinted, prodded, poked, goaded and shamed me into entering the 3 Day Novel Contest back on Labour Day weekend. It was her second time and I s...
Let me tell you a story. When I was in high school, I remember when typewriters became computers and document processing a la touch typing became the darlin...
What keeps you from writing the story that’s been tumbling in your head forever? What keeps you from posting here? What keeps you from pressing that dreaded ...
When I was in Grade Ten, I performed in a one act play. I can’t, for the life of me, remember what it was called. Checks Google. It was called ‘He Done Her W...
Creating art is a curious and beautiful synthesis of observation and imagination. Too often, we focus on what what happens within our brain-case. The common ...
We’ve all been there: staring at the screen or notebook wondering how to write the middle of your story. You’ve built a wonderful world and crafted some deep...
Part of the whole writing gig is, well, writing. It’s pretty much a given that authors build a platform to market and promote their word-babies to the masses...
Part of the writing game is marketing (talking about your work) and publicity (getting others to talk about your work). And that generally means using social...
Oh, this is going to be fun! A couple of months ago I wrote ‘The (Not So) Definitive Guide to Romance Novels’ for Reader’s Carnival . It got me to thinking (...
Hello, fellow quill-bearers! For your mind-bending pleasure, here is another open-ended dilly of a question: We’re often told that to be great writers, we m...
Grok walked into the cave, tired and hungry. Today’s hunt bore little bounty and dusk quickly advanced into night. A solitary rabbit for his tribe would keep...
Last week, I posed the following to my fellow writers: I do most of my creative writing soaking in a hot bath with my head immersed and my editing liste...
Way back in January of 2013, I made a promise to myself to pick up my quill and start writing creatively again. In high school and university, I took to cra...
Writers, like many artisans, love to talk about the tools and techniques of their trade. Honing and tweaking their systems becomes a near-obsession in itself...
I’ve always been a fan of dystopian fiction. I remember one of my first experiences was with John Wyndham’s ‘The Chyrsalids’. From that point on, I was hooke...
Here’s a wide open topic: Do you choose a character’s name because it just sounds right or does it have to have meaning? Is a strongman named Sampson and a...
Let’s start with a serviceable definition of plot: A plot is the event or events that are used to insure that you get your story and characters from poi...
So, you’ve lovingly tapped out ‘The End’ at the bottom of your masterpiece. Huffing a breath of relief that you’ve done it: your word baby is born and you wa...
Part of the self-editing process (you do self-edit, right?) is to clean-up passive voice, needless adverbs and filler words. This is typically done in a pass...
Some of the best memories of my grandfather are of Robert W. Service. Gramp would, at every opportunity, recite from memory any number of poems. We’d goad hi...
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” — Dr. Seuss First up, when reading for pleasure...
When announced that Kelley Armstrong’s first book, ‘Bitten’, was headed for the small screen, fans were pretty darned stoked. Laura Vandervoort’s casting wa...
Your brave knight has journeyed over mountains, fought hordes of orcs and resisted the wiles of a sea-witch. He’s arrived at last to the mouth of a darkened ...
So, when I opted to write this article on romance novels, my first thought was that I had to ask for help. When I did so, I was swiftly told to hand in my ‘M...
The pursuit of happiness is not a fool’s errand, but what makes people happy? Consider the moment when you’re completely lost in the plot of a good book, on ...
Walk in to any bookstore or library and we are confronted by the ‘Genre Beast’. There are many ways to categorize books and genre is but one. Bookstores are ...
Do you love historical adventure sagas that span the centuries? Can the Arthur legends be true? What’s the real story behind the Knights Templar? Is there mo...
Why write? Good question. I have no idea. Perhaps, the answer for me is also a line of inquiry. Why not? Why not just pack it in and give up on any dreams of...
A writer’s heart is an untamed beast. Tho from his quill flows a reader’s feast, Not all words are diamonds written. Sometimes the author’s ego’s bitten.‎ ...