Category Archives: Writing

A Stormy Day with the Mad Trapper

The storm the radio had been threatening me with came last night. It began yesterday afternoon, but when I woke this morning there was at least seven inches of snow on the ground, which means travel is slightly more difficult. … Continue reading

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The Palimpsest that is Our Lives

I was listening to the radio today before I got out of bed and it was one of those days of poor reception. I was tuned to CBC in the foreground of the transmission, while in the background, for all … Continue reading

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News From Beyond the Cabin

I was up late last night, listening to some music on my mp3 player and feeding the fire. It was chilly by comparison, and when I checked the water barrel I have outside, it had a centimeter of ice on … Continue reading

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Settling into the Cabin

Today seemed to breeze past. I woke four or five times in the night to put wood on the fire; the last time was likely around seven or eight in the morning when I built up the fire, went back … Continue reading

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Writing and Editing in the Woods

I must be getting used to waking at night to feed the fire, for it is automatic enough now that I cannot count the next day how many times I rose in the night. Last night I had a fire … Continue reading

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First Night in the Cabin

I guess last night was my first night in the cabin alone in the winter, if we disregard that frantic time in November when I was building the shack quickly enough that I could sleep in it instead of my … Continue reading

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What Do You Do for Fun?

One of my students asked me what I did with my time and he was at first aghast and then dismayed at my response. In the beginning I didn’t know he was asking about leisure time, so I described marking … Continue reading

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The Word

When I was young I thought a single word could change everything. As I grew older I thought I needed to instead depend on collections of words, and hoped that by their jostling Brownian randomness they would somehow settle into … Continue reading

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Writing the Police

I sometimes imagine telling the story of a cop in a police state. I think about what goes on in their head, whether they are merely following orders, like the Nazi underlings claimed at Nuremberg, or whether they are so … Continue reading

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November is Novel Writing Month, Not Short Story Writing Month

As many of you know, November is the month that many people around the world put away the procrastination and pick up the pen, or more likely keyboard, to expand a late night idea into a novel. The challenge is … Continue reading

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