What an absolutely brilliant way to start the week! I am so grateful.

And so excited for everyone read 10 Things I Can See From Here!

Anxious queer girls unite!

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2016:

«10 THINGS I CAN SEE FROM HERE

Author: Carrie Mac

Review Issue Date: November 15, 2016

Online Publish Date: November 2, 2016

Category: Fiction

A white teen with severe anxiety struggles to manage her mental health and finds joy in a budding relationship with a new girlfriend. Most people worry, but Maeve has always done so to the extreme. With her severe anxiety and panic disorder, she is constantly working to balance her spiraling, catastrophizing thoughts—without the help of any medication. When her mom decides to spend six months in Haiti, Maeve is forced to move to live with her father and his family in Vancouver, disrupting her otherwise relatively stable life. In Vancouver, Maeve feels she has plenty to be anxious about: from her pregnant stepmother’s home-birth plan to the possibility her father might start drinking and using again. But when already-out Maeve meets Salix, a violin-busking “friend of Dorothy,” and their mutual attraction grows, she begins to find unexpected happiness in Vancouver. Mac crafts a beautifully awkward and affecting budding relationship between Maeve and Salix—one that neither miraculously cures Maeve nor leaves her entirely unchanged. With Maeve, Mac provides a realistic portrayal of the ways that anxiety can affect all relationships and permeate every aspect of life—demonstrated at times with humor through sardonic obituaries regularly composed by Maeve throughout the first-person narrative. With Maeve, Mac delivers a character who’s heartwarmingly real and sympathetic, and her story provides a much needed mirror for anxious queer girls everywhere. (Fiction. 14 & up)

Found Writing Advice #4

5am. Powell Street, by the shipping yards. Dark and raining.

 

Air

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Repeat.

Stuck? Go outside and do the same.

Anxious? Slow it down.

Need to think something through? Frustrated with a character? Can’t find a way to write through a scene?  Find a quiet place. Close your eyes. Breathe.

Need more than that? Walk faster. Run. Swim until your lungs ache.

Breathe.

Found writing advice #3

 

This is you, as a writer.

Perhaps this is you as a person?

Some writers are very good and shutting the operations down when they want. That comes easy for some, requires discipline practiced for others, is next to impossible for a large group, and absolutely impossible for an unfortunate group, which is thankfully quite small.

No matter what your shop hours are, use them well. If you are keyed in best in the morning, then don’t squander it. If you work better at night, have your tea and fuzzy slippers at the ready. If you word whenever the hell you want (good for you), then plan accordingly. If you work any time, any where, beware.  Beware of over-stimulation, exhaustion, an overwhelming barrage of potential storylines, characters, locations, atmospheres, images and ideas.

Be sure to get some sleep.

Writers are open 24 hours a day, even if they deny it.

It can be a superpower and it can be a curse.

Use it wisely, and see what you come up with.

Found Writing Advice #2

 

Be reasonable.

Keep your goals within reach, but not too close. Spitting distance is too close. Need binoculars? Too far.

If your writer-gut tells you it sucks, listen.

If it needs chopping, sharpen your ax.

If your smart people read it and give similar advice, listen.

If you get rejected, send it out again.

If you don’t like it, write something else.

If you’re tired of it, put it to bed and wake up something else.

Be reasonable.

Keep writing.

 

Found Writing Advice #1

 

Estimate.

 

You don’t need to know anything for sure.

You don’t need to know everything about your characters, your plot, the arc, the climax, the ending, the theme, the atmosphere, any recurring images, motifs, or ideas. You don’t need to know where, when or if your story will be published.

Just estimate.

Get an idea, and go with it.

Keep writing.

 

 

Powell Street. 5am.

What an honour it is to be included in Plenitude’s The Query Project this week.

The Query Project invites queer Canadian authors to recommend writing that has had a deep, personal impact on them. It was very, very, very, very hard to come up with just one. In fact, it was impossible. I thought about it for so long that Brett had to nudge me more than once to get my submission together.