Susan Calder

On Saturday, I spoke to the Alberta Romance Writers Association about short story writing. To prepare, I took out a couple of books on the subject from the library and learned a few things. Apparently, as late as the 1950s you could earn a good living as a commercial short story writer. Magazines like Redbook and [...]

January was a productive month of writing for me.  After the holidays, I plunged into the second draft of my novel-in-progress.  In the past, I thought I enjoyed writing first drafts best for the discovery and because it doesn’t matter if your sentences are shoddy or if everything is accurate and fits together perfectly. With [...]

Friday evening, I spent a thoroughly enjoyable time at Calgary’s Pumphouse Theatre, watching the opening performance of  Front Row Centre’s Assassins, Stephen Sondheim’s Tony award-winning musical. I found it a well-performed, intriguing piece of theatre that is much edgier than most of the musical genre. Fans of dark stories will appreciate the glimpse into the [...]

If holidays are breaks from routine, I’ve been on holiday for the past month. During this time, I haven’t done any creative writing or attended any writing-related events; I’ve eaten too much food and way too many sweets, slacked off on formal exercise, played numerous board and card games and hosted four guests: my sons [...]

Here’s some writing advice for the new year from my favourite columnist, Russell Smith.

November is National Novel Writing Month. I haven’t participated in NaNoWriMo, but this November turned out to be my novel writing month for 2011. My latest novel writing binge began around October 20th, after I returned from a holiday in Ontario and Quebec. I usually have trouble getting back into writing mode after a break. [...]

My short story “Freezer Breakdown” will be published in The Best of the Puerto Vallarta Writers Anthology 2012. The book is supposed to come out in time for the Puerto Vallarta Book and Authors’ Festival on Feb 24-26, 2012.  It’s nice to think of my story in that warm place, especially given the story’s title.  I joined [...]

My personal deadline for reaching the midpoint of my novel-in-progress was a trip to Toronto for Thanksgiving weekend followed by a week in Montreal and Kitchener. I made the writing deadline so tightly that I’ve only found time to blog about it now, after returning from the trip.  This first half of this book is [...]

Writing a novel is a daunting task. It becomes more manageable for me if I break the novel into quarters, with each quarter ending at a turning point. I start out with a fuzzy idea of what the first turning point will involve, but know it will be about 80 pages in. Writing toward page 80 [...]

Last weekend, I attended the innaugural When Words Collide conference in Calgary. This festival for readers and writers was organized by a committee of local science fiction and fantasy writers. Previously, this group had organized a Calgary science fiction conference CONnvergence. They felt last year’s CONvergence was too media focused and split to hold a writing conference that would include all [...]