A Conversation About Being Busy, Broken, and Beloved
“My copy of Linda Hoye’s The Presence of Absence is studded with bookmarks so I can return to some of my favourite passages in her wonderful new book. I had to smile when she buys a new Moleskin...
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I'm a checklist person through and through. Sometime late last year I began drafting a project plan for launching The Presence of Absence to capture all the little details I needed to tend to before...
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Saturday, March 2, 2019 – Chipping Away
It comes to me in the first waking moments of the morning: the first chapter is not the first chapter. The second chapter is the first chapter, and the first chapter is the fifth chapter. This, after...
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Tuesday, February 26, 2019 – But, Writing
The sunshine makes it easier to bear the cold weather. So too, does the fact that I don’t intend to leave my house today. I’m hunkering down with words, and a blanket of melancholy that came in with...
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Monday, November 26, 2018
Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail. Ernest Hemingway Unexpected, and distressing (to me) news last evening, and I am . . . something. I’m...
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Exquisite Torture
"A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a...
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Friday, November 23, 2018 – Writing Life
I wake late, groggy as a result of extended middle-of-the-night reading time, and the day feels like it’s getting away from me before it’s started. Fog winds it’s way through the valley below. It’s...
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Friday, November 16, 2018 – #amwriting
You don’t put things down on paper to produce masterpieces, but to gain some clarity. Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life I spend the day in the woman cave tapping out words, writing and rewriting....
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Friday, November 9, 2018 – Distracted
She stands In tattered gold Tossing bits of amber And jade, jewels of a year grown old: November. Zephyr Ware Tarver The forecast was for snow overnight. I have not yet looked out the window, so I...
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Wednesday, November 7, 2018 – The Writing Season
Writing is an unfolding of what’s going on inside me as I talk to myself on a pad of paper or a computer, a version of talk therapy that requires neither appointment nor a fee. Parker J. Palmer, On...
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Tuesday, September 18, 2018 – Fear Is A Liar
Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith Six-plus years ago when my book, Two Hearts: An...
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Friday, September 7, 2018
Photography is the art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. Elliott Erwitt I spend the morning in my manuscript crafting, if not...
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Tuesday, September 4, 2018 – Feels Like Fresh Starts and Words
Be willing to be a beginner every single morning. Meister Eckhart Even now, when it’s been many years since this first Tuesday after Labour Day was a first day of school for me, this morning feels like...
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Monday, September 3, 2018 – Magic
Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can,...
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Thursday, August 30, 2018
It has always taken me a long time to think of something to say, and then more often than not I say it to myself. Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow Sometimes it feels too loud and busy, even when it doesn’t...
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Wednesday, August 1, 2018 – Ten Year Blogaversary
We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. Anaïs Nin Ten years ago. I consider it for a good, long while, then one August afternoon decide to just do it. I start a blog. Over time,...
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Saturday, July 7, 2018 – The View From Here
The first draft of anything is shit. Ernest Hemingway Pardon the language, but Hemingway sums it up well. I’m 90% finished the first draft of my new book. With Gerry teed up for some serious hiking...
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Thursday, June 28, 2018 – Recalibrating
The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true. John Steinbeck I’m back in the woman cave...
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Tuesday, June 5, 2018 – A Second Memoir
. . . writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. Julia Cameron It was inevitable that someone would ask, now that I’ve put it out there that I’m working on another book. “What’s your book...
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Friday, May 25, 2018 – Plotting Murder
I am intrigued by writers who garden and gardeners who write. The pen and the trowel are not interchangeable, but seem often linked. Marta McDowell I’m approximately one-quarter of the way through,...
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