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Last week Canadian Christian News Service launched in Canada to great fanfare. Just kidding about the fanfare. Still, the mood was celebratory in three offices in far flung towns and cities. Years ago, I was struck with one of my best ideas ...

Writing honestly is the best way. Anne Lamott, one of my favourite writers (precisely because she is so honest) says: “If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk ...

I don't like being interviewed. That's the first thing I learned. A fellow writer came to our home for a short profile piece she is doing on the contributing writers for Focus magazine, the local Scugog magazine I write for every now ...

Not every lead introduces itself to the writer. Some do. There have been times I'm in the middle of an interview, or research, and the lead jumps out at me in a spangly pantsuit and yells "Start your article with me! I'm ...

Nothing beats the freedom of summer reading. One book after another. On the dock, in the hammock, laying down, sitting up, even walking from couch to fridge there is so much time, space and place to read. During my most recent sabbatical ...

It's been my experience as a freelance writer, especially in the beginning years, that there can be stretches of time between assignments that can be a blessing in a very good disguise. Those gaps  between projects used to make me nervous, until ...

"That is absolutely incredibly magnificent. I LOVE it!" That is stage one of a writer's group, usually for beginning writers who are building courage. It's a huge deal to read your writing in front of others. A safe group brimming over with ...

"Write in real time." That was Taylor Swift's writing advice to 45,000 (mostly girls and women of course) in Toronto's Rogers Centre last week. Clearly, writing is therapeutic to Swift. She didn't apologize. And she gave a prescription to her faithful followers: ...

Someday, I can write about this. That's what I thought as I flopped around like a gagging rag doll in my husband's arms as he performed the Heimlich maneuver-ish to dislodge the olive pit stuck in my throat. In the first five ...

The other day, I diagnosed a friend with OWS (Other Writer Syndrome). She was telling me that she used to think she would write a book, until she read the writing of someone else and grew discouraged. My friend is suffering from ...

Read this article on how to expand your giving, published in Childview.

A how-to on interesting your children in homework, including a look into the mind of a homework-avoiding mastermind, published in Childview.