Things You Don’t Have to Be Sorry For

🌓 Have you ever felt silenced? Invisible? Small? That your thoughts and opinions didn’t matter? That what you were feeling was embarrassing? Have you ever started a sentence with, “I’m sorry ...” (to bother you/take up your time/for being emotional/I’ll just be a minute ...?) Who told you your time isn’t as valuable? your thoughts…

Wonderful Magic in Unknown Places

And today, the mortician’s daughter is (finally!) on submission. Writing — never mind publishing — is a long, often difficult journey, mostly endured in solitude. The fear and grief and now languishing of Covid has made it that much more difficult for many people to create, but I do take some solace in remembering how…

Literary Collective Nouns by Tom Gauld

This was just too fantastic not to share! credit: Tom Gauld

Hard Lessons Learned on the Road to Representation

On February 17, 2021 (I Read Canadian Day, at that!) I received an agency agreement from Ammi-Joan Paquette of Erin Murphy Literary Agency. And I could barely believe it was real. But no matter how many times I tested it, by closing my email and reopening it, it didn’t disappear. It was still there.  It…

Aweedz

Sometimes I feel like my daughter did one evening when she was about 5 years old. We were having dinner that night when she said this word: “aweedz.” She must have really liked the sound of it because she kept repeating it with increasing exuberance: “Aweedz. Aweedz. Aweedz. Aweedz!” I finally asked her, “What’s aweedz?”…

#accessiblementalhealthcare

Lets talk about accessible mental health care ... Talking isn’t enough. We need to do better. (click on title to continue reading)

#whosSherman

I usually have a general sense of where a scene is going while I’m writing. But sometimes lines like, — her vision was a blur as she rounded the fence and ran up the driveway, kicking up dusty gravel behind her. She didn’t even hear Sherman call, “Hey Rosie —!” before she dashed behind the…