Marion Agnew

April 4, from 6:30 to 8:30 PM at the Mary JL Black library, this is where I'll be: That's my husband, Roy, who's currently prepping to answer questions in a panel format. I participated in a similar event last year. It was different--in February, with one-on-one chats available. This year's panel format will allow for those on the panel to comment and learn from each other too. Should be fun.  This event is one of many sponsored by the Northwestern Ontario Writers Workshop from (roughly) September through May. Many events are free. Others have a nominal cost. All are worth checking out! For more information about NOWW, go here.

Last year, my essay "Atomic Tangerine" appeared in The New Quarterly . In it I reckon a bit with names of things.  When I moved here a dozen years ago, I wanted to learn everything about this place, and learning names seemed like a good start.  Then I started to ask why--why did it matter whether that wildflower was a butter-and-egg or a marsh marigold?  And after that came "so what?" A reader could probably guess that a butter-and-egg would be yellow (butter, eggs...)...and the point is?? I've been thinking about the "so what?" issues around names as I continue revising my novel, which is set in northwestern Ontario. Perhaps a character notices that the types of trees in northwestern Ontario are different from those nearer Toronto. Why bring it up at all? What does that say about him? Does he even know the names of the types of trees?  I've recently read Melissa Harrison's novel All Among the Barley , a coming-of-age story s...

I have cut way back on small-picture multitasking, which I define as "doing more than one thing at a time." Listening to podcasts while exercising or stretching (which I actually do fairly often because they combine successfully). A less successful example is listening to podcasts while scrolling a newsfeed and ostensibly carrying on a conversation. However. Bigger picture, I still multitask, by which I mean "working on several projects in the course of a specific time period." Within the same day or two or three, assembling information for income taxes. Preparing (cleaning and cooking) to host the book club. Revising. Writing. For example.  Sometimes, small-picture multitasking results in toast that looks like this. I do like almost all toast, and I'm old enough now to eat it even when it has burned bits. However. It's not my preferred toast. I am capable of better.  But I'm not delivering because I'm not paying attention solely to...

I'm revising a novel, and not for the first time. In the previous large revision of this work, I eliminated an entire point-of-view character. It was a satisfying revision--visible in lots of ways. The word count dropped by nearly one-third, in about five minutes. Poof, all those words, gone. (Into a scratch file, but realistically? Gone forever.) That change required a cascade of other revisions, mostly simplifications, which required time and a bit of help. For the past few months, I've been doing a different kind of revision, one that I think of as more on the "decluttering" end of a spectrum that includes "renovations" and "building a new house." Taking out that point-of-view character and her whole odyssey are more like renovations, where you take off that deck that was never really useful. Other revisions are smaller but still have easily defined edges. For example, downsizing from two bedrooms to one lets you ditch an entire bedroo...