A few years ago I complained to my doctor about the arthritic pains I feel at times. His response was: "Well, you're eighty years old. What do you expect?" (In defense of my doctor, my arthritis pains have never come to stay in any particular joint, they come and go in different places.) Perhaps Saskatchewan … Continue reading Scattered thoughts on a rainy Saturday morning
writing
Birds, tractors and writing
We hang birdfeeders from a post that is visible from our dining room window. There was not much traffic at our goldfinch feeder last year and I wondered why. This spring, when I got that feeder out of the garage I decided to give it a thorough cleaning. I soaked it, scrubbed it, and then … Continue reading Birds, tractors and writing
Canadian Writers Should Write About Canadian Places and People
I listened to Jake and the Kid every Sunday afternoon on CBC Radio when I was a young lad (I was 14 when the series ended). These were people that I knew. Jake, the Kid, and all the other characters could have been people in my home town. The grass, the fields, the sky, the … Continue reading Canadian Writers Should Write About Canadian Places and People
Getting out of a writing rut
Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped. Lillian Hellman Image by StockSnap from Pixabay Literature makes one sensitive, sensitive to people, to their dreams and to their ideas. Sanghamitra Iyengar The art of newspaper paragraphing is to stroke a platitude until it purrs like an epigram. Don … Continue reading Getting out of a writing rut
My writing life
Image by David Krüger from Pixabay Yesterday’s post (Cornered by God) is at the intersection of the two books that I have been working on (actually there are three, the third is in French and I’ll get to it at the end of this post). Or perhaps it’s a fork in the road. I have been stalled in … Continue reading My writing life
It’s not our truth
The truth of the gospel is for everyone, therefore we must write so everyone can understand. We have no title,We have no copyright,We have no patent,We have no registered trademark. The gospel has been around a long time, but has not grown old. It is as alive and relevant as it ever was, but some … Continue reading It’s not our truth
Moses learns to read and write
God had a message that was essential to the well-being of all people, throughout all time. The starting point was to take a group of people and teach them a phonetic alphabet, a set of characters where each character represents a specific sound and those characters can be put together to form words. Nothing like … Continue reading Moses learns to read and write
The story arc
Have you ever read a book which follows the life of a main character, yet there doesn't seem to be a story? This character does a variety of things, things good and bad happen to him or her, but they are just disconnected happenings without a point. Evidently, the writer had no idea how to … Continue reading The story arc
Thoughts on the craft of writing
Image by eroyka from Pixabay Here are some reflections after reading books that were interesting and others that could have been interesting if the writer had known how to tell the story. Read books of the kind that you would like to write. You can’t be a writer if you are not a reader.Research thoroughly. What was the … Continue reading Thoughts on the craft of writing
The art is in knowing what to remove
Michelangelo, when asked how he managed to create such a lifelike sculpture of David out of a block of marble, replied “I just removed everything that was not David.” Chaim Potok, who wrote novels such as The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev, said something much the same: “I think the hardest part of … Continue reading The art is in knowing what to remove
Flatlander Faith 