Our Blogging Challenge has made the Camosun website: on the School of Arts and Science and the English pages.

Some encouraging words for writers by Neil Gaiman

Velvet Verbosity, who dropped by to comment on my 100 words post yesterday, has more 100 word prompts, and tips for writing word portraits.

Crossposted to College EnglishEarly in the term, I asked my creative writing students to write 100 words exactly on either "lemon," "asparagus," or "bread." We were working on descriptions, and I thought it would be an interesting exercise in writing something precise and focussed (one of the things many students have trouble with is getting to ( Read more... )

Bloody CBC will keep on dredging up news clips of my last visit with bloody Diana. So jolly to be here with my darling Camsie.

Note to self: must remember not to refer to people in the north as Eskimos.

Still not King.

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of the imagination (John Keats)

My creative writing students are a passionate bunch, and many of them are activists and advocates of causes. Today, I asked them to think about things they are _not_ certain of, because they seem so confident in their beliefs, and ( Read more... )

Walking to work this morning, and noticing the autumn leaves, thinking that one serious winter gale and they'll all be gone ( Read more... )

I'm going to try nablopomo again this year. I've made it more difficult for myself, and added some incentive, by challenging my Creative Nonfiction students to take part, and together we're going to try and raise some money for the United Way. I've posted about our challenge in College English. I will likely be cross-posting some posts so that I ( Read more... )

I've created a monster. I was doing a photo-shoot for a Flickr group this morning and thought I'd let Tabs out on the deck because the light was better. I didn't think she'd jump off, because it's pretty high. After a short time, though, I decided not to risk it, because she was captivated with the birds in the garden and showed every sign of ( Read more... )

I didn't sleep well last night (isn't it always the way when you have to get up early after a lovely long weekend ( Read more... )

The second world war is very real to me. My parents were both around 16 or 17 years old when it started, and I grew up hearing stories about it. How it was a blazingly beautiful day on the day that war was declared, and how neither of them would ever forget clustering around the radio to hear the announcement, and how the announcement was almost ( Read more... )

You knew you wanted one ( Read more... )