I'd been hearing about Elizabeth Gilbert's book Big Magic for a long time, about how wonderful and inspiring it was for creatively-driven people. I'd even heard that it was life-changing. And, I admit, when I hear something is life-changing, I tend to shy away. I have a natural distrust of things that…
In 2010, I completed NaNoWriMo. I wrote a novel called Practice, which was accurate. It was practice. I'd written two book-length things as a teenager - and I don't say this to make myself sound impressive. One of them was basically the plot of The Outsiders, except the Ponyboy character…
Maybe. Can one quit being a writer? This is a post I've wanted to write - and dreaded writing - for a long time. For about as long as I have no longer considered myself a "writer," at least outside of my freelancing career. How long has that been? It's…
My friend Teri has an article in the latest Ricepaper, titled Between Representations: Filipinos in Canadian Literature. Teri's one of my favourite writers so I am always eager to read anything she writes, but I was especially excited to read this. She and I are both half-Filipino, and have talked in…
Some of my fondest childhood memories are of playing Nintendo and Super Nintendo games with my brother, and making that long suburban walk to the arcade on summer afternoons. In high school and my early twenties, I dropped the hobby for a while mainly due to lack of a console…
