I’ve never liked answering the question: “What do you do?” It makes no sense, because I worked hard to become a lawyer, and I like my job, but admitting to it to strangers has always made me feel uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the inevitable follow up scorn (for the profession), excitement (for the prospect of free …
Category Archives: amwriting
Feedback and Feels
I’m always honoured when other writers ask me to read or edit their work. As a writer myself, I know exactly the time, energy, and willpower that went into a manuscript. I also know how it feels to have someone tear it to shreds. When the time comes to give feedback, part of me is …
Goals, Goals, Goals
I started this blog last November to help motivate me to write my second novel, which I’d just started. Spending some time chronicling my journey and getting my fingers on the keyboard when my #WIP wasn’t speaking to me DID help motivate me, but more importantly, it connected me to a community of writers. I …
WhySoMillennial on Aging
That’s right. I’m aging. I’ll admit it. Tomorrow is my thirty-FOURTH birthday, meaning I’ll be undeniably in my mid-thirties. Besides finding this unacceptable given my current state of adolescent behaviour, I’ve been reflecting on some of my key accomplishments and failures. Accomplishment: Some letters after this old name of mine. I don’t think it’s a …
Finding Your People
I started this blog last November partly as an accountability check for my writing. I had begun drafting my second novel and was having trouble finding the motivation to work on it regularly; finding it difficult to sit down in front of my computer each day. My rule was that if I didn’t get to …
Holiday (Lack of) Productivity
Yesterday I started a month of holidays. In a fit of overzealous optimism, I mentally committed myself (ha! not that kind of committed, although probably not the worst idea) to reading and writing a LOT every single day. I went to Chapters and bought two new books (Women Talking by Miriam Toews and I’ll be …
Know Your Writing Style
My business partner Debbie is an amazing writer. Her memoir-in-progress is absolutely incredible and literary. Her voice when she writes can break your heart. Soon I’ll interview her on my blog and maybe get her to share an excerpt, so stay tuned for that! I love reading her stuff, and I love reading other literary …
Writing Targets and Self-Trickery
Getting back into writing after a long break is actually harder than I thought it would be. I gave myself permission not to write so many times that I conditioned an avoidance response… And now I have an uphill battle making my brain feel excited about it. When I first started writing, the excitement came …
Miracles Won’t Happen
There’s a type of cognitive bias that’s studied in psychology called the “optimism bias”. It basically says that people tend to believe they are more likely to have good things happen to them than the average person is, and less likely to have bad things happen to them. Clearly, that’s impossible, but too many of …
Rita Davie 