You can read all the writing advice in the world, but in the end, it all comes down to how YOU approach the page or the screen. To help illustrate how we’re all just a little bit different, I’m taking a standard list of questions about writing and posing it to dozens of different writers. As you scroll though their answers, I think you’ll see we’re all as individual as fingerprints or snowflakes. And if you’re a writer who’d like to participate in this questionnaire, please email me.
Reading time: About 1 minute When asked to choose a motto for writing, Iris Hattersley picks: “Keep going when the going gets tough.” Iris Hattersley says she has always enjoyed the study of the English language, and a day doesn’t go by that she doesn’t read. While working on her […]
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Reading time: About 2 minutes Jean M. Roberts says that writing is easy. She’s written 11 novels. It’s the selling that’s hard! Jean M. Roberts makes her home outside of Houston, Texas. Her experiences as a military brat, a serving Air Force officer, and wife of an Air Force pilot
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Reading time: About 2 minutes Rod Baker firmly believes that rewriting is the single most important step of the writing process… The last full-time job Rod Baker held was as the executive director of a branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association. While he liked the work, he hated writing
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Reading time: About 3 minutes Sonia Garrett says that if she can’t write, she can edit. And if she can’t edit, she can outline. And if none of that works, it’s usually because she needs more sleep. Sonia Garrett is the author of five middle-grade adventures: Maddie Makes a Movie,
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Reading time: About 2 minutes Raw storytelling is what you get with the first draft, according to writer Bill Koch. Engaging storytelling requires revision… Bill Koch is a retired psychologist and clinical professor emeritus at UBC. He graduated from SFU’s Writers Studio in 2021. His fiction examines mental health, legal
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Reading time: About 2 minutes Isabella Wang says she originally thought one successful publication was the finish line — but now she understands it was only the beginning… Isabella Wang is the author of November, November (Nightwood 2025), Pebble Swing (Nightwood, 2021), a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize,
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Reading time: About 2 minutes Writer Phebe Ferrer believes that writing poetry is a skill that can be taught and learned. And that anyone can write poetry… The poetry of Phebe Ferrer appears in Qwerty Magazine, Marias at Sampaguitas, and Chinatown Stories, among others. She has edited creative anthologies featuring
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Reading time: About 2 minutes When struggling with writing, Natalie Southworth will sometimes tie her Ethernet cable into a complicated knot to keep herself off the internet… Originally from England, Natalie Southworth has lived all over Canada, where her stories take place, and today she lives with her husband and
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Reading time: About 2 minutes Edythe Anstey Hanen takes inspiration from the words of Toni Morrison: “Don’t try to write through it, to force it…Just wait, it will come…” The short fiction of Edythe Anstey Hanen has been published in literary magazines, anthologies and in the Globe & Mail, National
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Reading time: About 1 minute If she doesn’t manage to write on a given day, Lucille Guarino tries not to be too hard on herself. Sometimes, she’ll even give herself a pass, she says. The author of Elizabeth’s Mountain, and Lunch Tales: Suellen Lucille Guarino lives in Lexington, South Carolina
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