Blog
If you do not have an appreciation for Persian carpets you will by the time you finish Lucy EM Black’s novel Stella’s Carpet. After reading Black’s vibrant descriptions of their artistry and rich history, I found myself searching the Internet for images of the patterns she writes about. But this is not a novel about carpets. At the heart of the story is a dysfunctional family with many secrets.
When I was the managing editor of a national infertility blog, the Executive Director gave me free rein to highlight voices as I saw fit. I created the schedule, coordinated the topics, and nurtured the writers using editorial experience, empathy, and compassion.
She left me with one stipulation, however. “We don’t publish anything that discusses politics or religion.”
I was crushed. Not simply for the writers but for myself.
The first time I heard the term “voice” in relation to a book was in high school. The definition remained fuzzy, far harder to pinpoint than theme, setting, point of view, and characterization. A writer’s voice seemed somehow part of her style, but I didn’t really know what that meant, either.
Mostly, an author’s voice seemed extremely important: Voice helps distinguish one writer’s work from another and makes a writer unique.
Okay. But what is it?
If you’re like me, your favourite summer activities include: reading on the beach, reading by the poolside, reading in your sunny backyard, reading in the park, and reading on the couch during rainy days. With all that reading, it’s easy to run out of material. I’ve compiled a list of my favourite reads that I think everyone should check out this summer. Without further ado, here they are:
Everyone has parents. Everyone’s parents die. Yet the stories where parents and death intersect are unique.
George K. Ilsley’s recent memoir tells one such story. As a young adult, George left his Nova Scotia home, heading west, eventually landing in Vancouver—as far away as he could get while remaining in North America. Then, as he turns 50, his father turns 90, and his father needs, but doesn’t especially want, Ilsley’s care.
I usually pride myself on the organization of my writing. My mind typically flies all over the place, and writing is where I sort out those thoughts into coherency. But for this blog, I wanted to share a sort of messy array of various writing tips. They all pertain to writing and they are all (in my opinion) very useful, though other than that they share no unifying quality to make an articulate blog post.
Right before I wrote my first university exam, I felt extremely shaky and weak. I stood next to some classmates discussing some of the study terms when I realized how unbearably hot the basement was. I tore off my coat, but it wasn’t enough. I kept sweating and my throat kept restricting. Feeling like I was about to throw up, have diarrhea, faint, or all three, I went to the bathroom. I crouched in the bathroom stall, not knowing whether to put my head over the toilet and hold back my hair, pull down my pants and sit, or shut the lid so I didn’t drown when I fainted. Tears welled up in my eyes as I thought, I’m going to die.
Good writing is extremely hard to define as there’s a level of subjectivity to it. It’s easy to know what good math is, because you either get the right answer or you get a wrong one. But writing is different. I could read a book and think it’s the best thing I’ve ever read, and you could read the exact same book and think it’s the worst thing you’ve ever read. So, was the book good or bad?
Seeing as we’re pretty late into the fall season now, chances are you’re pretty well-adjusted to a routine. It’s likely one slightly different than you’re used to, but it’s a routine, nonetheless. Much like how school, jobs, and chores sink into monotony, your process of writing does too. There are lots of different ways to write a text and writers usually find themselves sticking to a specific method.
What I’m about to say is going to sound strange coming from a creative writer, but it’s the truth: I’ve never really liked poetry. I’ve always preferred a straightforward narrative to an abstract piece. In elementary and high school, the meter and rhyme of poetry confused me, and I could never grasp the themes as quickly as I could in a novel or short story. In university, I wrote a few poems when I had to, but I always dreaded them.
Writing is a skillset. And like all skillsets, writing takes time to perfect. You’re going to make mistakes, especially at first. But when you understand those missteps and adapt your craft accordingly, you will become a stronger writer. I thought it would be helpful to highlight common writing mistakes to save you some time in the learning process. Here they are:
Phrases like “stop watching that TV, it’ll turn your brain to mush” are extremely common, especially amongst parents. And parents do have a point, you need to exercise your brain with complicated tasks that help you improve your overall intelligence. But the more interested in writing I got, the more engaging I found TV to be.
