Tag: writing

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A different way to start the New Year

Sometime in October I got scooped up in a so­cial whirl that kept me go­ing from birth­day parties to con­certs, dinner’s out and more day after day. That ended in mid-December when I headed south to spend two weeks cel­eb­rat­ing the hol­i­days with family.

So much fun! So much good food! And it was won­der­ful to spend time with fam­ily and friends! But, of course, the busier I got, the less time I had for writ­ing. Each week I thought that would change but it didn’t. By the time I flew home on the last day of 2025, I was ready to get back to work.

The last leg of my jour­ney was delayed for hours due to a thick shroud of fog draped over Vancouver Island. When the plane fi­nally touched down in Comox, I was giddy with re­lief. I just wanted to get home and back to “my real life.”

The cab dropped me off at 12:10 a.m. on New Year’s Day. As I stepped into the near black­out of my front door, I felt some­thing sub­stan­tial, yet squishy, un­der my feet. My im­me­di­ate thought was dead an­im­al.

I fumbled for the small flash­light I’d at­tached to my keyring. I didn’t find it but did man­age to open the car trunk and ac­tiv­ate the car alarm. Looking around at all the dark win­dows in my com­plex, I giggled and called out “Happy New Year!”

When I fi­nally got in­side and was able to shed some light on the mat­ter, the dead an­im­al turned out to be a large wreath someone had left on my door­stop. What a relief!

I love the New Year and the op­por­tun­ity it of­fers for big dreams and in­tro­spec­tion. I usu­ally spend about an hour plot­ting out what I want to ac­com­plish in the up­com­ing months.

I fully in­ten­ded to do that when I woke up the first morn­ing of 2026. But both my body and brains said no. I was tired, so de­cided to wait a day be­fore dash­ing off a list of projects.

The next day’s re­peat re­bel­lion of body and brain made me real­ize my en­ergy bank was empty. I de­cided to give my­self a couple of days to recover…which stretched into a week!

I ate and slept when I wanted, puttered, went for sol­it­ary walks in the woods and, aside from a few short emails and texts, com­mu­nic­ated with no one.  I was sur­prised to find it not bor­ing but relaxing.

When I did sit down to form­al­ize what I want to ac­com­plish this year, I spent a few minutes con­sid­er­ing what gave me en­ergy in 2025 and what drained it.

The an­swers were ob­vi­ous: en­ergy and joy came from writ­ing, tai chi, mu­sic, and spend­ing time in nature and with fam­ily and friends. The drains: too many ap­point­ments and too much socializing.

I love hav­ing fun with friends and fam­ily but, as a writer — and in­tro­vert — I alsoPaula and Shannon Bailey at Nuchatlitz Provincial Park. Photo by Dodie Eyer need alone time. I ad­ded “fix the teetertot­ter” to my 2026 list. I’m not cut­ting out any so­cial activ­it­ies out, just mak­ing sure there’s more balance.

And you know what? I found my mini-re­treat so be­ne­fi­cial, I ad­ded it to the list too.

Top photo by Rick James

Bottom photo by Dodie Eyer 

 

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My favorite part of writing a book – it’s not what you think

A laptop in the woods, waiting for a writer.

 

Writing a book can be a lot of fun but it also re­quires a lot of hard work and dis­cip­line. And each au­thor has their fa­vor­ite as­pect of the task, which may shift over time.

I’ve usu­ally thought about a top­ic for a long time be­fore mak­ing a com­mit­ment to write 60,000+ words about it. So, that gen­er­ally means I have a good idea of how the be­gin­ning and end will be shaped.

These sec­tions are ex­cit­ing and fun to de­vel­op. I also really like in­ter­view­ing people, tap­ping into their ex­pert­ise and learn­ing about their ex­per­i­ences and perspectives.

But then there’s the muddled middle, which seems to quickly turn into a bog of en­nui that is im­possible to es­cape. I have clear point A and C but where oh where is the all-im­port­ant point B to join them in a co­hes­ive man­ner? This is my least fa­vor­ite part of writ­ing a book. Inevitably, there are many false starts, gnash­ing of teeth and mut­ter­ing or worse be­fore this sec­tion comes together.

And then there’s the edit­ing. My fa­vor­ite part of writing!

Why? Because I have a frame­work to build on, adding, de­let­ing, re­fin­ing and mov­ing text as needed. It is cre­at­ive, fun, and a re­lief to fi­nally be on semi-sol­id ground.

A page edited with red ink.My edit­ing takes place in a vari­ety of ways. I usu­ally be­gin re­view­ing the text on my com­puter, then shift to hard copy as the eye picks up dif­fer­ent glitches in dif­fer­ent me­di­ums. Reading the story aloud is an­oth­er way to make sure every sen­tence is up to par and cre­ates a co­hes­ive, dy­nam­ic whole.

I will re­view the ma­nu­script many times, hope­fully mak­ing few­er changes as I pro­gress. When I think the story is as good as I can pos­sibly make it, I send it to my publisher.

Then things get even bet­ter as the pub­lish­er as­signs one or more ed­it­ors to go over the ma­nu­script with me. People ask if I get up­set when someone sug­gests chan­ging, adding to or even de­let­ing parts of some­thing I’ve worked on for years.

The an­swer is a re­sound­ing no! By this time, I’m so im­mersed in the story, I can no longer tell what its strengths and weak­nesses are. I need a pro­fes­sion­al to look at the ma­ter­i­al with fresh eyes. This is a vi­tal com­pon­ent of a good book, so if I was go­ing to self-pub­lish, I would hire an editor.

Now back to the cur­rent muddled middle….

 

 

 

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Light on the Serengeti

 

A few people have asked why I have a pic­ture of the Serengeti plains on the bio page of my website.

The an­swer is simple: this is my fa­vour­ite photo from a trip to Tanzania. In fact, I like it so much, I re­cently had it en­larged into an 18 x 36-inch can­vas wrap that now hangs in my house.

It was taken when our two sa­fari jeeps stopped lit­er­ally in the middle of nowhere, away from the kopjes where ex­tens­ive lion prides lolled and the life and death drama of wilde­beest and cro­codiles along the Mara River. I wasn’t the only per­son struck by the raw, open beauty; our little herd of thir­teen hu­mans was mostly si­lent, ex­cept for a few whispers.

Some people ask why I didn’t choose a pho­to­graph with an­im­als. Believe me, I have tons of pho­tos fea­tur­ing ele­phants, leo­pards, mon­keys and more. But, to me, the Serengeti im­age goes deep­er. It’s about the land and sky, the smell and feel of Africa, and the way the sun touches it all. It’s a place, once vis­ited, that is nev­er forgotten.

The im­mens­ity of this land­scape that can stretch be­yond hu­man sight vi­brates with a si­lence that is palp­able. Eyes scan the ho­ri­zon while ears feel wide open, hear­ing only the gentle rust­ing of golden grasses.

There was a sense of won­der and an­ti­cip­a­tion, know­ing that even though the land ap­peared bare of life, there was the pos­sib­il­ity that at any mo­ment, a lion, chee­tah, zebra or buf­falo could set paw or hoof in our viewscape.

Even though it’s hanging in the hall, I can see the Serengeti im­age from my bed. If I wake up at the right time, the sun shines in through a win­dow, high­light­ing only the sky por­tion of the pic­ture. It looks like the sun is rising in the Serengeti.

While the morn­ing light works its ma­gic, I of­ten con­sider the vast land­scape of my life – some be­hind me, some yet to come — and all the pos­sib­il­it­ies there are to explore.

As a writer, these of­ten re­volve around my cur­rent pro­ject. Will I fin­ish the chapter I’m work­ing on today? The en­tire book by the end of the year? Or will the story sud­denly fol­low a dif­fer­ent tan­gent, tak­ing me on a new journey?

The end­less po­ten­tial for com­bin­ing ideas and words is an as­pect of writ­ing that I’m par­tic­u­larly fond of. And now the Serengeti re­minds me of that every day.

Copyright on all pho­tos Paula Wild

 

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The pros and cons of writing with a view

 

Waves pound­ing on a rocky out­crop­ping, an eagle perched in a fir tree, the sky drenched in pink and or­ange as the sun slips be­yond the ho­ri­zon. Every writer dreams of a view like this. But is it be­ne­fi­cial? Does it beck­on the cre­at­ive muse? Nudge you into writ­ing faster and better?

In my thirty-plus years as a writer, I’ve worked in many spaces. The first was at a desk in the corner of the liv­ing room. My nine-year old step­daugh­ter had a tough time un­der­stand­ing why she wasn’t sup­posed to in­ter­rupt me.

But I’ve also been lucky enough to write where I had views of wa­ter, treed areas and wild­life. I fondly re­call the little sum­mer house I ren­ted as a private writ­ing re­treat from Shannon and Brian on their is­land sanc­tu­ary in the Nuchatlitz archipelago.

I loved my writ­ing re­treat in this little cab­in and spend­ing time with Shannon and Brian at Nuchatlitz.

My fa­vour­ite writ­ing space, how­ever, was in an Arts & Crafts her­it­age house I lived in for dec­ades. Two huge transom win­dows provided ex­pans­ive views of dog­wood trees, large flower­ing shrubs, and maple trees with leaves as big as din­ner plates.

Visual memor­ies in­clude a snow­fall of pink cherry blos­soms, a hum­ming­bird pier­cing a small owl’s breast with its beak, and a deer lick­ing the in­side of a fer­al rabbit’s ear.

This is where I wrote a weekly arts column for the loc­al news­pa­per, hun­dreds of arti­cles for main­stream and al­tern­at­ive magazines and six non-fic­tion books. But this was not my most pro­duct­ive writ­ing space. That was a tiny room upstairs.

An en­gross­ing book to work on, The Cougar de­man­ded my full at­ten­tion. The phone and even the sound of my part­ner walk­ing around in oth­er areas of the house were un­wel­come intrusions.

So I took my laptop to the grey room. The only fur­niture was a bed, a desk and a book­case. To my de­light, I couldn’t hear any­thing in the rest of the house. And I didn’t have ac­cess to the Internet, so an­oth­er dis­trac­tion was eliminated.

There was an un­ex­pec­ted quirk, though. The desk faced the win­dow, and I couldn’t work with the light shin­ing in my eyes. There was no room to move the desk, so I closed the blinds. Then I real­ized that light from the oth­er bed­room shone in the open door­way, cre­at­ing glare on my screen. I shut the door, only to dis­cov­er that the light from the over­head fix­ture also cre­ated screen glare. So, I turned it off.

I didn’t know if I could write solely by the light of my laptop screen. But strangely, it worked. I felt like a cap­tain at the helm of a space­ship ca­reen­ing into out­er space. I couldn’t hear any­thing, see any­thing, or google any­thing. It was just me and The Cougar. And I wrote up a storm.

The up­shot? Having a view to write by is lovely but not ne­ces­sar­ily the most effective.

That said, no mat­ter where you shape your stor­ies, it’s al­ways a good idea to peri­od­ic­ally give your eyes a break from the screen. That’s the per­fect time to find a win­dow with a view. And if you have time, to go out­side into it.

Top im­age is the view from one of the win­dows in my former her­it­age house.