grandfather’s garden

Crash landing – into a children’s picture book!

Two years ago, I attended a workshop with two of the literary greats of children’s literature in Canada – Humber School of Writing’s Cynthia Good and Rick Wilkes of Annick Press. This cute little book was partly the result!

excitement rising for release of Unpacked

Things I’m feeling are: terror, excitement, cautious enthusiasm, and more terror. In today’s marketplace, being a writer means being an entrepreneur. There’s the blogs, there are interview to organize, photos to paw through, and web pages to update. This is the total opposite of sitting in my office, in candlelight, finishing the intimacies of my memoir.

FurtherMo turns five

Well, it’s happening folks. FurtherMo turned five this summer with very little pomp and circumstance. I feel like I’ve spent the last two years lost in my obsession to publish that i’ve ignored the roots and groundings of these journalistic posts. Maybe I should re-name this blog to FurtherMo: The Diaries.

Lobster Fisher For a Day

It’s still dark when Captain Lori Clark picks me up in her white half-ton truck — just after 4:30 am. The first time I met Lori, it was behind a gorgeous blush and eyeliner job and a glass of white wine. Today, she’s in her rubbers, and she tells me I’d better be in mine, too.

What were you thinking?

Something funny has started happening to me since I’ve begun writing full time. I live completely in my head, extending my week into one long metaphor, my perception jagging in every which direction as I shift the angles for a better view on the page, something more interior, something deepened. I don’t notice where i am in space, that’s too unimportant.

the birth of advocacy

Every time the world loses one more beautiful baby, I lose Tya again. And this is the third beautiful baby this year I’ve said goodbye to, before i got to say hello.

deeper into the words

am tuning in to the rhythm of my own creative process. I am learning character from Hemingway and style from Didion, delving into wildness with cheryl strayed and sitting peacefully on the fences of British churchyards with Bill Bryson. I am asking myself the traveller’s questions of Pico Iyer and am suddenly indebted to Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty for their courage and bravery to get up every morning and write.

Books are alive and well in Charlottetown

I gather books until my arms are full, and make my way down to the cash. Leila is hard to round up, now into a Ramona and Beezus collection on a shelf almost too tall for her. She hates to leave this magical place, where worlds open and close each time she twirls around.

a chance to refine the craft, chapter one

As Prince Edward Island welcomed its first rays of warm summer, ripe red strawberries, and car loads of families and travelers waiting for a glimpse of our famous Anne of Green Gables, I trotted off expectantly to Montpelier Vermont, and to my first Master’s writing residency at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

follow the breath

Folding tiny kid clothes? Meditation. Emptying the dishwasher for the fiftieth time this month, putting the groceries away or humming a song on a radio that you don’t even remember turning on? Meditation. Petting a purring cat and having a glorious, momentary lapse? Meditation. I bet Trungpa had big cats.