Marion Agnew

As I may have mentioned (a time or two) (often) (repeatedly), I have an essay in Best Canadian Essays 2012 . People up here in Northwestern Ontario are fine folks, and a couple of them have asked me about it. The anthology is available for purchase at Northern Woman's Bookstore , for one thing. For another, I'm currently featured blathering about my essay at Literary Thunder Bay , courtesy of its purveyor, Joan Baril. Susan Toy scooped that interview to her new site, Canadian author Reviews and Interviews . Finally, a review is due to appear in the local paper, the Chronicle-Journal , this weekend. That is plennnnnnty (for now).

One of my favorite places to visit is Indexed, a blog by Jessica Hagy , where she explores relationships between sometimes-disparate things. She uses axes, lines, curves, and sometimes Venn diagrams. I love it. I thought of her this morning, when I was looking at the various short stories I'm (again) trying to collect. They vary along a continuum from "raw" to "stick a fork in it; it's done." They also vary along a continuum ranging from "I'm excited by it" to "I'm sick to death of it," another continuum from "examined" to "unexamined," another from "hardly any time" to "relatively, a lot of time," and yet another from "only tweaked" to "revised extensively," by which I mean "every freaking word has been second-guessed." I hope that the "stick a fork in it" end goes up at the same time that "examined," "revised extensively," a...

I try not to be a snob about much of anything, but I do have preferences about some things, and, it turns out, I have distinct preferences about the tools I work with. I can adapt to pretty well any kind of keyboard or software, but I'm kind of "that way" about pens. I don't write a LOT with pens -- definitely not production work -- but I do write with them often. Just about every day I do spend time writing "by hand," as we now must specify, and I sometimes sketch  zentangles. Generally, I like felt tips and fine points. In the world of ballpoint technology, I have recently enjoyed using Paper Mate's InkJoy pens (and no, they're not paying me to say so). I originally picked up the package because it had all different colors of pens in it, and it said something important on the package: Effortless Writing. Effortless! Writing! In a rainbow of fun colors! Who could resist that? But every time I get on a plane, my pens explode in transit. Even ...