The title of Julia Cameron’s new book, Write for Life: Creative Tools for Every Writer (St. Martin’s Essentials, 2022) resonates with me as I lead women’s writing circles called Writing Life; we write from life and create writing lives for ourselves. And I’ve written a book I consider a writing companion and guide called Writing Home: A Whole Life Practice. I see writing as a (whole) life practice and as Julia Cameron does, I consider writing a spiritual practice. Julia Cameron’s Write for Life is called “A 6-Week Artist’s Way Program” as it relates to Julia’s The Artist’s Way published i ..read more

Dr. Sharon Blackie wrote about menopause in her latest book book Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life (New World Library, 2022), and described it as “a time between stories, when the old story fades and a new story is waiting to emerge.” (See my last blog about the book.) As a young woman in my late thirties, I had a hysterectomy which meant I didn’t go through the “time between stories” as Dr. Blackie refers to that particular time in a woman’s life, at least not in the way she is referring to it. I had though, definitely embarked on a new story. At this time, more than thirty y ..read more

“Hagitude, hags with attitude” Dr. Sharon Blackie says in the prologue to her latest book Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life (New World Library, 2022), as she refers to Cailleach , the Old Woman, in the Gaellc languages of Scotland and Ireland. Dr. Blackie is a psychologist “with a profound affection for Jung and his successors” as she says, as well as a folklorist and mythologist. She explores how the “wonderfully vivid and diverse archetypal characters in our fairy tales and myths might help us to recreate a map of what it is to become a good elder.” Rather than simple entertainme ..read more

That’s a very catchy cover and title for Margot Fedoruk’s memoir published this Fall by Heritage House. The cover illustration is by Setareh Ashrafologhalai who also designed the book’s interior. Margot, who lives on Gabriola Island, B.C., has lived in several places in Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia and has had several diverse jobs and trainings in her life. One of her BAs, with a major in Creative Writing, is from Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo. She has written some beautiful passages about her life from its early years in Winnipeg through to her years on the West Coast and s ..read more

No, this isn’t a blog about money. It’s about rest. The quote is from Virginia Woolf who wrote in her diary on February 16, 1930: “I would like to lie down and sleep, but feel ashamed. Leonard brushed off his influenza in one day and went about his business feeling ill. But as I was saying, my mind works in idleness. To do nothing is often my most profitable way.” (Love Letters: Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, Vintage Classics, 2021) We haven’t learned much since then about rest (Virginia died in 1941) and sometimes it’s illness that has us realize the benefits of rest. And when you ta ..read more

Eric Maisel who has written over 50 books on writing, creativity and such topics as establishing your own daily practice, and Lynda Monk, writer and director of the International Association for Journal Writing (IAJW), have gathered an exciting array of contributors for The Great Book of Journaling offering a myriad of innovative approaches to a personal writing practice. Both Eric and Lynda have contributed chapters to the book. Eric’s is “From Journal to Memoir” which will interest many readers as they think about what to do with their accumulation of journals. Lynda’s is “The Reflective Jou ..read more

I see I did another blog with the same theme and so I’ve added the year to this one. “The circle is open” is something I say at the end of a women’s writing circle: The circle is open but unbroken May the love of the goddess be ever in our hearts Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again. In fact we sing the words when there are women who have been in the circle for a long time and know the words and tune. I needed to continue offering writing circles throughout the summer for the grounding it offers to me and to others. I mean that literally as well because we walk the land as part of th ..read more

Zoe Dickinson, a poet and bookseller from Victoria, B.C., is the 2022 winner of the Raven Chapbooks Contest with intertidal: poems from the littoral zone. It sounds rather erotic doesn’t it, and definitely literary. (Zoe is also Artistic Director of Planet Earth Poetry in Victoria.) As Zoe, whose poetry is rooted in the Pacific coastline, explains: “The littoral zone in a coastal ecosystem ranges from the high-tide mark to the subtidal area, and is defined by the presence of sunlight at the sediment level. This zone of alternating intervals of submergence and exposure is home to abundant life ..read more

Lori Fox, based in Whitehorse, Yukon, describes her new book of essays, This Has Always Been a War (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021), as a “scrappy, angry little book” with its sub-title of “The Radicalization of a Working-Class Queer.” In an interview with Yukon News for which she has been a writer, Lori said: “The book is incredibly vulnerable. I’m incredibly blunt, and really upfront with some very difficult things. And I pull no punches.” Indeed, there is much to be angry about as Lori describes in their wonderfully written, often visceral, essays. The essays describe their confrontations “with t ..read more

Writing in community is something I’ve done for a long time – at workshops, retreats and in writing circles I’ve offered since 1997. Even during the pandemic, I facilitated weekly women’s writing circles via email and Zoom. It was a way for us to feel connected, part of a community, and grounded in the midst of it all. My contributing chapter to a new book that came out last week, The Great Book of Journaling, is “Journaling in Community.” Lynda Monk who is the director of the International Association for Journal Writing (IAJW) and Eric Maisel, author of fifty plus books, are co-editors of th ..read more