Today the trees are coming down

The old silver maple God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, “Ah!”- Joseph Campbell This morning I woke early, made a cup of strong, fortifying coffee, and went outside to say goodbye to some friends. In about an hour a troop of men with chain saws will come and cut down…

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You're wrong! I'm right!

I will not stand and fight all night. I will not shout, YOU’RE WRONG, I’M RIGHT! A few years ago, my Best Beloved and I had an argument. It was a real corker, a rip snorter. Tears were shed and doors were slammed and some very unhappy things were said. My Best Beloved had, some…

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the Truth has a Price

I am most grateful to the Globe & Mail for publishing my essay, THE TRUTH HAS A PRICE, wherein I discuss the responsibilities facing writers and how memory and the truth may be far more fluid things than they appear. You can read it here.

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The Magic (Music?) of Storytelling

Where do you get your ideas from? How often I’ve been asked that. How do writers begin? How do we get past the surface of the blank page, down to the place Robert Olen Butler calls “From Where You Dream”? Which is the name of his excellent book on the process of writing fiction. In…

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