I’m Trying to Be a Writer Because I Think I Screwed Up My Kids…

I am mother to a soon to be 7-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy. Like every parent, I started out wide-eyed and hopeful, convinced that my kids are special. They can be anything they want to be, I thought, watching them as little babies, their bright little eyes looking into mine. Being the open-minded parent that …

Writing Milestones: When I Stopped Giving a Fuck and Started Enjoying My Craft

In retrospect, being old(er) is kind of fun. You get to discuss boring shit like politics and actually understand them. You don’t feel obliged to stay out until 3 am getting shitfaced with strangers (okay, so I did this just the one time…). I am not ashamed to say that 10 pm is a legitimate …

Raw Honesty, and Why Writers Who Want To Do This Right Have No Choice

At its core, writing is not an exhibition–not something you do to show people that you can, in fact, do it. I think that this is something a lot of people get wrong. I’ve seen writers who relish in their wordcraft, enjoying how they’ve, say, reduced a reader to tears. They throw out a cornucopia …

When Everything You Write Is Shit: Why Young Writers Should Not Give Up

A while back, I posted a link to fanfiction I wrote when I was 14. I’m not going to do it again; I’d like to spare you from further eye-gouging opportunities, especially in the likely scenario that you’ve never read any of my stuff before. I’ve improved, I swear. I think people have this image …

Old Age

This is a scheduled blog post. I’m supposed to be out this weekend, exploring the Purcell mountains and the Okanagan with my family, so if a bear hasn’t eaten me or something yet, I should have turned 30 by now. 30 is a crazy number for me. I dealt with a lot of depression in …