Recently my vocation turned away from career towards writing. Despite my company’s support with workplace accommodations, in 2021 I stopped working altogether, due to worsening and persistent symptoms from Multiple Sclerosis (MS). I could no longer manage the pace, or the intensity of my job as a Vocational Rehabilitation Counsellor, so I went from being…
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I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have, were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath. Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred. -Tich Nhat Hanh My daughter and I were in a…
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When I answered the phone, my heart dropped. Upon hearing it was not Mom, but Dad, my first thought was “Who died?” I noticed the time, too. Mid-afternoon is the most expensive time for long-distance calling in my father’s mind. Despite a decade of phone companies offering free long-distance calling anytime anywhere in Canada, Dad…
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Be careful that you do not write or paint anything that is not your own, that you don’t know in your own soul. — Emily Carr My writing instructor’s comment landed the kind of blow that knocks the wind right out of you, leaves you sucking for air, and a suitable response. Regardless of the…
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Click on the link to download your free copy of Lana’s newsletter. The Wandering Writer in Residence Newsletter #2
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Literary citizenship is a term that has been around for at least a decade or so. I first encountered the term within The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman, although Jane credits Rod Spillman, a cofounder of the literary magazine Tin House, for coining the term. No matter who originated the term, I…
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Click on the link to download your free copy of Lana’s newsletter. Wandering Writer in Residence Newsletter #1
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What is the difference between people who have spiritual experiences and writers who have spiritual experiences? This is a question often mulled upon by those who seek to write about events that fall into the categories of spirituality, faith, religion, and the sacred. How is it that writers translate lived spiritual experience into understandable text,…
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What becomes possible when music infuses your writing craft? “An ordinary life is full of musical rhythms, episodes, and cadences. The themes of our work, play, families, and geographies are like melodies that come and go as though in an elaborate fugue” (Thomas Moore). Why do so many writers forget to include musical references in…
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