Category: On Writing
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The World Is Better On Coffee (But It Won’t Make You Write Better)
“Many people claim coffee inspires them, but, as everybody knows, coffee only makes boring people even more boring.” – Honore de Balzac, On Modern Stimulants Coffee won’t make you write better, but it might make you feel better. A large cup of coffee every morning, laced with cream and sugar and carried with me in…
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Slow Blogging, And Why You Should Blog Less
This post was planned to be an announcement of Stories and Stuff going down to one post a week for the next month or two, to give my blogging muscles a rest and to focus on fiction writing a bit more. Well, think of my surprise when I came across this slow blogging manifesto. Author…
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Why Do Writers Write?
“Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.” – Thomas Berger, apparently There never are enough good books out there. Good books exists, but once they’re read it’s hard to find another one – so I do write to fill the gap in books I love to read. On reflection, this is maybe one of…
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Be Still and Write
“Many of the aspiring writers I know talk about writing more than they actually write. Instead of setting free the novel or short story or essay that is sizzling at the ends of their fingers, desperate to set fire to the world, they fret about writer’s block or about never having the time to write.”…
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Who Says I’m Qualified to Contribute to Academic Conversation?
So I am in middle of writing a twenty-page paper about Woodstock, which means my writing muscle is pretty occupied right now. (Though seriously, the organizational disaster that was Woodstock is an incredibly interesting topic, and it’s worth reading and laughing about sometime. 400,000 hippies hanging out in the mud, with almost no food and…
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The Crime of Re-Using Plots – Is It A Crime?
Oh no, it’s another mad dash to the airport, where the girl swears she will leave the country forever and the guy insists he’s in love with her, you sigh to yourself. Everyone knows romantic comedies all have the same plot. Why do they even bother making more of them? Well, how many plots do…
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The Debate: Literary vs. Genre Fiction, and Is There a Chasm Between the Two?
When I began submitting stories to fiction magazines, I was amazed to find there was a large gulf between “genre” fiction and “literary” fiction, and that literary fiction was usually considered to be the superior kind. As a person who enjoys reading all types of books, I’d always thought a good story was a good…
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A Call to Creativity
What do the pyramids, the MineCraft Earth, and my short stories all have in common? Hopefully they’re not all insane projects, though piling virtual block on top of virtual block inside a video game is only slightly weirder than piling actually physical blocks into a tall, pointy shape. They’re all made by people, of course.…
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Share the Love (of Writing)
Today I am talking to a Grade 9 class about writing. I have a friend who is a teacher, and he asked me to come in talk about what exactly you can do with your writing other than hand it in for marks in English class. And I think that is a really good idea,…
Hmm... 