A Perspective on Time
It was time. She’d fought against it for so long. She hadn’t thought that this day would ever come. She’d dreaded it, longed for it, prayed against it, prayed for…
Literary
Rough Cut
Here’s a little something I wrote for fun today as a timed exercise: The King Edward Hotel was not specifically fitted out for aliens, especially water breathing aliens, but fortunately,…
7 Habits According to Tolstoy
1. Keep an open mind 2. Practise empathy 3. Make a difference 4. Master the art of simple living 5. Beware your contradictions 6. Become a craftsman 7. Expand your…
Russian Letters
After ten years of research, and doing back and forth translations using google translate while scrutinizing its Russian/English dictionary, I am learning Cyrillic letters. I have to hope that this…
Two Jews
J and The Betrayers are both novels about antisemitism and social violence, both powerful. And yet who would talk about them in the same breath, one a dystopia, the other…
Review: Little Failure
Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a memoir about life as an immigrant child from the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s,…
Review: The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson My rating: 5 of 5 stars A book people seem to love or hate. I did…
Archie and Thanks for the Books
I use Grammarly for proofreading because I want Veronica to love me. – Archie We’ve been having an Archie issue in this house. Archie and his pals (my fave is…
Writers’ stimulants
I still think most of these would be whiskey, not coffee. (h/t to Mark Victor Young.) Alltop is a stiff drink of humor.
Postcard Story
After finishing Web of Angels, I did some writing exercises to get used to facing the blank page again so I could start something new. Recently, I re-read what I…
Joyce Carol Oates on 1st Draft
Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor. Filed under: Fun, Literary Tagged: Writing Life
What I Learned from Figure Skating
The figure skaters at the World Championship competition, held this past week in London, Ontario, are the top skaters in the world. And they fall. They fall on their bums…
Alice Munro’s Brilliance
I am reading Alice Munro because she is brilliant. In the mid 1990s, I studied her stories for “weather,” ie the external details that make a story come alive. In…
Looking Deeper
I was walking and saw a slight indentation in the sidewalk. It was the shape of an inverted V. I stood over it with my camera and took a series…
Literature Trumps Erotica
The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler is #8 in the top 100 books on amazon.ca, surpassing all three Shades of Grey. I’ve loved The Imposter Bride since it came out…
The Process: 10 Years Ago
As you’ll know if you follow my blog, I sent off the first draft of a fun new book to my agent. He is a dear as well as smart,…
Albert Nobbs
Glenn Close as Albert Nobbs and Janet McTeer as Hubert Page via Gallery for Albert Nobbs Throughout history, there have been women who have lived as men either because of…
Bravery: the Writer
I want to tell you about a writer who looked old in his mid-30s. He walked with a cane. He was overweight, lethargic, pasty-faced and depressed. It was no wonder.…