Storytelling. Fact and fiction. One word at a time.
What about just laying on the ground and looking up. What about not even looking up, but closing your eyes and listening. What about breathing in the smells, feeling the earth...what about those things? Where it started In a staff meeting, I brought up how successful my semester with the Grade Nine English Literature class... Continue Reading →
I brought a book up from my studio called The New Creative Artist by Nita Leland. My intention was just to leaf through it and feed my strong desire to do more visual art. I stepped away from painting for a while because writing projects took up a lot of my time—which I love. But... Continue Reading →
I found the following quote cut up and taped together in one of my bins of collage materials that I’ve been curating for over three decades. A completed sentence ends with a small black dot, but that’s how epiphanies begin. A coffee bean. A tiny, good thing from the earth. But the best ones have... Continue Reading →
*Stories that did not make it into My List, My Rules: The Year a Checklist Changed My Life *Goal #67 may be inaccurate as far as numbers of my list go. If so I'll fix that later. Goal #67Make a Drawing While Blindfolded In all my years of teaching, I’ve had a lot of unique... Continue Reading →
New Year, New Me?Nah. I like the current me quite a bit. I like the tenacity I’ve shown over the years of teaching and writing—lugging heavy boxes of books to book fairs, chatting with new readers and fans of our books. I like the openness I bring when welcoming new folks into our book world.... Continue Reading →
When I first started blogging, I had no idea what my focus would be. I read all the advice — endless lists of what I should do: find a niche, choose a category, define a purpose. Travel blog, wellness blog, creative blog — the suggestions blurred together. I didn’t know how that focus would find... Continue Reading →
I’ve lived a life full of pauses—gaps between experiences. Friends scattered across the world I wouldn’t see for years. Weeks away from home, then returning to my people. Long breaks from work—the nature of teaching means stepping away from the building, the students, the rhythm. And every time, I’d feel a bit nervous about the... Continue Reading →
I hate show and tell so much that I’ve even stalled making a post about it for fear of resolving it and then having to show and tell! How messed is that? I’ve realized I have a massive resistance to posting on social media—especially TikTok, but really, any reel. It’s got me wondering: why am... Continue Reading →
In the washroom at school, over soapy hands, a colleague asked if I had any exciting plans for winter break—traveling anywhere, doing anything thrilling. "No. Nothing exciting. No. Not going anywhere." I watched the temperatures drop. Drop. Drop. And with them, my enthusiasm for anything beyond crawling into a warm, cozy cave with a hot... Continue Reading →
I write fast Diane Stewart, a brilliant English teacher and colleague who has long retired once said that "such and such (I'm not brave enough to name the writer she mentioned) is a good writer but his editor is better." That made me laugh, but that also gave me reason to write---Like. A. Savage. Since... Continue Reading →
Angie Counios 