Marion Agnew

I seem to enjoy using the words "reflection" and "retrospective." Hmm.  It’s apparently customary for people who write and read to reflect on their writing and reading at the end of the year. Even if, like me, you consider reading your vocation as well as work, yet somehow don’t have “reading goals.”* My to-be-read pile:  nothing but good times ahead I do track what I read (because it involves writing in a notebook, as much as for any other reason, and what is not to love about writing in a notebook?) and I (separately) record thoughts as I read. I am also, on occasion, moved to share thoughts publicly, sometimes in formal reviews and sometimes on Instagram and/or Twitter in a #SundaySentence post.   However, I don’t have goals like “read XXX books this year” or “revisit Author Name’s work” or “read a lot of books about maps,” although I have, in various recent years, done both of those last two.   This past year, as in the year previous, I consciously bro...

I've been a member of the Northwestern Ontario Writers Workshop , a regional group providing opportunities for writers, for almost as long as I've lived here.  Naturally, the past eighteen months have provided many opportunities and challenges, and NOWW has been proactive in moving programming online. In the autumn of 2020, I attended a workshop with the then-eWriter-in-Residence, Susan Olding, in which she spoke of two ways to enter a work of writing: through content and through form. As we explored finding our way into a piece of writing through content, she suggested considering an object nearby. I looked out the window and saw a wooden ladder on the porch. As one does. From that seed, an essay grew, and when the NOWW Magazine editor asked if I had something for an upcoming issue, I made time to revise it. It appeared in February. And now it appears on their blog, and I can share it here.  "What Can I Give You?" at the NOWW blog.   It's about ladders, and croc...

It's December, which is BOTH just another month AND a month where people do "round-up" or "best of" or "lessons learned" activities.  I also do that, in my small way, BOTH because I'm drawn to nostalgia (remember the electrifying feeling of knowing that COVID vaccination was coming??) AND because I don't like to leave all the yucky accounting-type jobs to the new year. (Though truthfully, I do procrastinate most of them as long as possible.) So here are some things. Mostly random.  A random photo to match these random thoughts. 1. Here's something I need to revise. In July, I said I don't like oat milk. Turns out I do like it well enough when it's packaged for coffee, which is all I really use milk products for these days. So I guess that's a benefit for the planet. Can we ignore the multinational corporation doing the packaging? 2. Here's something I have known before but face again, and frankly, I've never really like...