When I was seventeen, I decided I was going to be normal about hugs.
Hey, everyone! I’ve been off in Las Vegas and Phoenix, AZ watching the world premiere of my play Bitch of the Baskervilles, starring Socratic Theatre Collective’s talented Liz Bragg as Watson and Amanda O’Halloran as Holmes, and directed by Current Theatrics’ Ruth Pe Palileo. Brilliant show, brilliant cast, and brilliant…
(But first: Calgary congratulations to my cousins V and M on their lovely wedding this weekend, and a beautiful Berlin birthday to my littlest cousin. Many happy returns for all of you!) Me? Revising right now? Hahaha, why would you think that? No, I totally decided to make this list…
Quick question: what do Harry Potter, Batman, Cinderella, and Oliver Twist have in common? Hopefully, you answered something like this: their parents are deeeaaaaad! Family, dead or otherwise, often plays a role in main characters’ fictional lives.
Dear blog, I’m sorry I’ve been away these past two weeks. It’s not that I didn’t want to pay attention to you, it’s just that I was a bit pre-occupied with re-locating all my worldly possessions 6km away from their original positions. But things are better now, and, like Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a…
(early post — chag sameach, happy Passover!) Literary theorist and critic Roland Barthes once wrote that the author is dead.
Yes, writing is a lot of work. Yes, it can be for very little gain. Yes, carrying your notebook everywhere can strain your arms (OK, not really that last one). But let’s be frank: I (and you and a ton of other fantastic people) do it, even when we know…
Writing a story is like old-school Tetris. And we’re talking Game Boy Tetris here. Grey pixels on greeny-yellow background. No block “ghosts” to show you where your drop will end up. None of this T-spin-to-win nonsense. Back in my day, the tetronimos were heavy and froze the instant they even looked…
One of the many valuable experiences of my high-school education was being part of my school’s improv team. The Canadian Improv Games are a tournament for high school students who perform improvisational theatre. Teams of students compete in four out of five 4-minute-long events in which they’re given prompts from…
Everyone knows that romance novels are for women. And so are stories that focus on who’s hopping into whose bed and which couples will end up together. Everyone also knows that those kinds of stories are inferior. Why would anyone who’s not a woman want to watch (ugh!) The Notebook…