Daily accountability quadrupled my word count
I finished my 16k word novella in 2024. I sent it to a bunch of agents who had no interest, and I didn’t know if it was about the length of the story, or about the story itself. I’ve been…
submit your writing to higher ranked litmags
In 2020 I started submitting a creative nonfiction story about me and my much-missed mom. It’s a story that encompasses so much of who my mom was and why she means so much to me, and I was sure it…
How I Successfully Traded Screen Time for Writing TIme
I have a complicated relationship with technology. For a really long time I was an early adopter. I had my first PC in 1986, I met my partner online in 1991, I had an online journal in 1995 and a…
I’m in an amazing craft book
Author Lindz McLeod asked me to be part of a new kind of writing craft book. I was like, YES, she was like, did you want to know what it is? and I was like WHATEVER IT IS YES. I’m…
It Only Took me 5 Years To Get Into Fractured Lit
In November I opened a rejection from the flash litmag Fractured Lit. This was the 26th time I’d opened a rejection from Fractured Lit, over the course of 5 years, and I yawned and read it and then stopped and…
3 tools to help you write convincingly from a child’s point of view
In 1979 I got a pen pal through the TV show The Big Blue Marble. It was the 70s, so there was no effort whatsoever to make sure either one of us was a child as we gave each other…
How I Made Literary Magazine Rejections Into a Game
About a year ago I was at the best sushi restaurant in Toronto. It was my birthday. I was there with my family, and the unagi was so good my mouth is watering as I write this sentence, and I…
How My Terrible Photoblog made me a better writer
When I first moved to Canada, long before Instagram existed, I started a photoblog. I went out every Saturday with my digital camera, and I took photos of the pigeons fluttering around Bathurst station, the ice waves on the shore…
Dallas Won Because Its Characters Had More Than Hairspray in Common
I love watching terrible 80s TV, so recently I sat down to watch Dynasty for the first time. It’s a show about rich oil barons and their families. Like Succession, if Succession was set in Denver (DENVER) and everyone was…
Unlock Better Plots with Tricks from Musical Improv
I was so excited when I saw a poster for a new musical on the subway. I’ve loved musicals all my life, and the recent crop of “based on a movie” and “jukebox” musicals have been a massive disappointment. But…