Living the Questions: Should You Have Children if You Want to Write?
Years ago, a science-fiction writer named Judith Merrill told me she couldn’t write after her children left home. Without the structure children imposed on her day, she was lost. My daughter Sam transformed my day too. In order to raise her and write fiction I had to learn to say no to other people’s expectations. …
Living the Questions: What Advice Gives Writers Confidence?
Ignore the advice to write about what you know. Write about what obsesses you and what you know will transform every word you say. Why? Because what you know will come into play naturally and that’s the best way to write.
Living the Questions: Where Do Writers Live?
Anywhere that’s cheap. Writing is a lifestyle and luckily, it has perks. People often rent to writers at a discount because writers are quiet. (Well, most writers.) That’s how it was for me at the Hotel Chelsea when Jerry Weinstein ran the desk. There’s a Jerry Weinstein for every writer if you keep an eye …
Living the Questions: How Do Writers Make a Living?
This new series on the blog is inspired by the poet Ranier Maria Rilke, who wrote in a letter to a toiling poet: “Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, live along …
Why Start a New Literary Prize for Women Writers?
When my friend Janice Zawerbny asked me to help her start a literary prize for women, I had no idea what I was signing up for. Zawerbny is a Toronto editor and she was upset by the grim statistics about women’s writing that I brought to a Vancouver Writers Fest panel in 2012. Like people …
Why don’t more Canadians know about Constance Beresford-Howe?
When you think of the giants in Canadian literature, chances are you think of writers such as Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro or Margaret Atwood. Few readers these days remember Constance Beresford-Howe, who wrote ground-breaking novels about the struggle of women to be autonomous. You may not know about her because she was shy. Or because, …