I’ve written before about how annoying I find the (not so?) subtle pressure writers face to be writing daily to be considered "real writers." But I do believe in the power and necessity of writing consistently, which in my world comes down to scheduling ideally both Short and Long writing sessions each week.

Here are the 3 most important reasons why I believe this to be true:

Writing consistently keeps you connected to your current writing project for the next writing session.

Whether you write in short forms like stories, essays and poems, or in longer forms like the novel or memoir, writing each week means that you immediately recall where you last left off and can start up again in your next session without needing quite as much time to re-enter the world of your current work. What’s great about that is that it can make your Short Time writing sessions even more productive.

Writing consistently keeps you connected to your current writing project when you’re...

Who are you anyway? One of the biggest struggles for emerging writers is how to find your voice as a writer, or more precisely, understanding your true voice.

The quick answer here? You don’t need to do anything special to find it, it’s already there. Just write. Write a lot. Your voice will become evident only in retrospect.

I believe that a writer’s voice just emerges, and it emerges more quickly and clearly the more you write.

One day you are able to look back at your body of work and see the patterns -- in how you use language, the images that show up consistently, the rhythm of your line, the themes that just show up for you again and again.

It took me a while to realize that the process of finding my voice as a writer was closely tied to finding my voice as a human being and, specifically, as a woman.

In my first book of poetry, I wrote from a specific character’s point of view (Cassandra of Troy). I thought I was inhabiting her as a character in order...

“How do I even know if my writing is any good?”

At some point or another, every writer asks themselves this question, in the general sense about themselves as a writer, as well as about specific pieces of work.

In my experience – both with my own writing and for students I’ve worked with -- I think the question has its source in two separate desires:

1. a) a genuine desire to improve the work (craft)
2. b) a genuine desire to be told we’re brilliant (ego)

True confession:

Secretly, every time I’ve given work to someone and asked them to comment on it, what I want to hear, deep down, more than anything, is that the story or poem I’ve given them is an absolutely riveting, perfectly realized, work of art worthy of my (ahem) considerable talent as a writer.

Ideally, my idealized reader would say this a whisper of awe in their voice.

Just me? Damn, this is embarrassing…

OR, if you let yourself get in touch with what you really want to hear at...

Multiple and simultaneous submissions: ever wondered if you should do this?

Short version: Yes.

Need more? God, yes!

A student of mine is dealing with this dilemma right now. She has work she feels is finished and ready to publish, but feels a bit nervous about submitting to more than one place at a time.

But let's back up and start with the basics -- what's the difference between the two?

Multiple submissions refers to sending multiple pieces to literary magazines at the same time. This is standard for poetry, but can also work for short fiction or essays, and certainly can be a good strategy for contests -- if you're willing to pay the additional contest fees.

Simultaneous submissions refers to sending one piece of work to several different places at the same time. (I like to refer to it as "papering the country!)"

In both cases, you do want to check the specific rules for the journals or publishers (or agents!) you're submitting to, but increasingly both multiple and simultaneous...

My "To Be Read" Pile is a bookstore, LOL

For most writers, reading is like breathing, something we do constantly in the background without thinking much about it. Some years I enjoy setting formal #readinggoals and try to get through a certain number of books in a year or to read outside of my usual comfort zone.

Last year, I read more mysteries. I’m loving anything by Laurie R. King right now, or a good historical mystery that does setting really well. This personal trend was kicked off a few years back when a friend recommended the Quebec writer Louise Penny to me and I discovered the “cosy” mystery. Prior to that, I’d avoided the genre, scared off by some teenage reading that was more in the horror range. Sometimes, there’s nothing better than learning how wrong you can be.

Right now, I’m reading more books by women of colour, from my own country and from further away. This is what I most often want from reading: to be shaped and re-shaped...

Rejections are one of the hardest parts of writing. We tuck our fragile writer egos into manuscript envelopes and send them out to be dismissed by the cruel, cruel world. Or that’s how we used to do it – now we just load our files and dreams up into Submittable and hold our breath for 6-8-12+ months.

My friend Frances Boyle received over 100 rejections of her writing this year.

On purpose. (I know, right??)

Frances is an award-winning poet and fiction author, living in Ottawa, Canada. Her most recent book is a novella, Tower. We are in the same short story group together and when I heard about this project I was a bit stunned that she’d go asking for that much rejection. I asked her to share how it all happened and what she learned along the way.

Spoiler alert: it turned out pretty well.

Ottawa writer Frances Boyle

Q: Frances, how did you come across the #100rejections idea?

A: It was some time in 2016, when I read Kim Liao’s article on Literary Hub...

Wondering how to choose your next writing project from among every note you've ever scrawled sideways in a journal?

This is a place where writers often find themselves circling. And by circling I mean stuck.

Can science help us here? Social science fascinates me, I must admit. Sometimes I have to read it twice (3x?) to understand it, but I am a sucker for a good research study, especially in the area of creativity. I’m constantly on the lookout to learn new things I can apply to my writing life.

Recently, I’ve been reading up on personality and how that might affect the choices I make as a writer.

Apparently, contemporary psychologists take the Big Five personality traits as a given at this point. Their focus is now on whether the traits are on a spectrum, or within a range, whether they shift depending on environment or over time, and whether our behaviour is biologically determined.

(You can read more on The Big Five here, which is a useful summary and provides...

I’ve just landed back at home this week from over a month of work-related travel. I love my work but I’m not gonna lie: four weeks of travel still feels like a few weeks too many.

The last week was part vacation and my daughter was able to join me at a game reserve in South Africa for 3 days. We had a great time (Lions! Giraffes! Elephants! Sunshine! Oh My!) and I’m super grateful that we were able to have the time together.

But in the end: 32 days away, and not a single typical writing day in the mix.

There’s a dangerous myth about writing that I think does real damage to our sense of ourselves as writers. It’s (repeat after me): Real Writers Write Every Day.

You and I know that’s just 100% fresh elephant dung, but the myth still persists. I think it’s connected to the myth of the Big Man, or the Great Writer. Hemingway standing over his typewriter in Key West, working away for HOURS at a time, shifting his weight from one leg to the next....

Look! Squirrel!

Distracted is my middle name.

Or maybe it’s more of a problem than phrasing it that way let’s on. As in: “Hello, my name is Rhonda and I am distracted." But in all caps: DISTRACTED.

Not all the time, but I do watch for the signs.

Today, before sitting to write I did the following 7 things:

1. Made coffee (essential)
2. Checked Instagram (clearly not)
3. Ate some toast with peanut butter (essential)
4. Cleaned last night’s dishes (not right now)
5. Checked FaceBook (sooo not)
6. Took the garbage out (not right now)
7. Checked CNN (definitely not)

That’s about 90 minutes of flaffing about before I made myself start my writing ritual and get down to it. If I’d spent that time working on my novel, I’d probably have 3 more pages done.

Sometimes I get to the page out of sheer boredom with my own monkey mind and ancient patterns. And I’m okay with that.

I’ve been at it long enough now to know that it’s possible to settle the mind to...

Writing retreats are hands-down my favourite way to make substantive progress on a manuscript.

At one point in my life, I was a single mother of a young child, doing a Masters degree part-time and working a full-time management level job in the non-profit sector. People would say to me “I just don’t know how you do it!” and I would secretly think “Gah, I don’t know either!”

But it’s also true that I had discovered a secret weapon.

I would organize writing retreats for myself.

Not the kind where you spend a month or so in the woods with a group of fellow writers, where there’s a lunch buffet every day (Hello Banff Centre!) or someone brings lunch to your studio door (Hello Yaddo!), but private self-directed retreats that gave me some much-needed alone time with my writing project. 

Organize Your Own Writing Retreats

Here's how I did it...

I would look ahead on the calendar, identify a time when I could arrange childcare for my...