--Threw on a flimsy cardigan over my spring dress and spent two hours' preaching service in beautiful Rosedale, strolling 'where the wealthy nobles dwell', almost giddy with the sensation of warm sun on bare arms.

--Went shopping and managed to find Shoemom the perfect white sweater almost on first go in the change room. Those of you who don't have ( Read more... )

Last night, just before I fell asleep, I suddenly found the key to my plotting troubles. It was the most wonderful feeling - like sailing into harbour at last. A whole glorious vista of meaningful hours spent tapping out the magnum opus of my life spread before me...

...and then I fell asleep. By the time I woke back up again, life had already ( Read more... )

I may....just...possibly...see the glimmer of a way clear to resolve my plotting headaches. Something someone mentioned in a comment here awhile ago, about telling the observer's story. More on that later, if it pans out ( Read more... )

--For those of you who haven’t read the little disclaimer at the top of Part 1, now’s the time. I can’t guarantee reading Part 1 itself will clarify matters any, but it can’t hurt.

So, as discussed therein, I have these characters. They are bits of my true authentic psyche, and I’d like to tell their story. Trouble is, I’ve tried using that as a ( Read more... )

So I finally heard back from PopMatters re: the column proposal - after a gentle nudge sent earlier this week. My idea is too unfocussed for their needs, they said. And that's all they said, leading me to believe there's a whole lot more they could've said.

Well...hey, it's an essential experience on every aspiring writer's resume, right? Right. ( Read more... )

--Note: I've been looking for a way of kickstarting my latest fiction project - the one where I 'find the story only I can tell' - and am thinking that sketching my jumble of organic concepts out on 'paper', in public, might help. So if the below seems like way too much information, not to worry, it's not really important to anyone but me and can ( Read more... )

[sigh] Were the back-from-vacation blues supposed to kick in this early? I was having a ton of fun yesterday, unpacking and looking at downloaded pictures and cataloguing smuggled American chocolates (oh, Dove, why must you stint the Canadian market so?)..then I woke up today, and looked out at the grim winter gloom, and suddenly...

I suppose it's ( Read more... )

I'm having a reread of Lynn Truss' delightful Eats, Shoots and Leaves, and it has done wonders in calming my inner Grammar Nerd. Semicolons forever!

I suppose I might as well make a clean breast of things and identify here as an Anglophile - albeit not the cozy kind. One of the loveliest things about being a Canadian is you get to pick and choose ( Read more... )

Robert Standish on antiquated British thriller author E. Phillips Oppenheim, quoted by Colin Wilson in Snobbery With Violence:

There was in him, as there has been in almost every man or woman who has found a place in tens of millions of human hearts, a wide streak of mediocrity.

...Or, as we post-millennial types like to call it, the American Idol ( Read more... )

Could you just please, as a small donation to the Save Shoe's Sanity Fund, for the love of Pete just STOP USING THE APOSTROPHE 'S' TO INDICATE THE FREAKING PLURAL, OK?! IT DOES NOT INDICATE THE PLURAL. IT INDICATES THE POSSESSIVE, AND ONLY THE POSSESSIVE.

...The preceding public service announcement was brought to you by a certain discovery within ( Read more... )