Beverley Hanna
Trained as an artist in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, I was one of the first creatives to be employed in the computer graphics industry in Toronto during the early 1980’s. For several years, I exhibited my animal portraiture in Canada and the U.S. but when my parents needed care, I began writing as a way to stay close to them. I’ve been writing ever since. I run a highly successful local writer’s circle, teaching the craft and techniques of good writing. Many of my students have gone on to publish works of their own. I create courses aimed at seniors who wish to write memoirs, with a focus on the psychology of creatives and the alleviation of procrastination and writer's block.
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I’m Old, Dammit! Not Dead!
A few months ago, I received an email from a subscriber and it got me thinking… This lovely lady said something that’s been tickling away at the back of my mind for some time, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to explore it a bit. Here’s what she said: “Beverley, I love your website. It feels warm and soothing, like slipping into a warm bath. Ahhhhhhh… “It’s so nice to feel appreciated as a senior. As I scrolled through your blog posts I said to myself, ‘when seniors feel isolated, this is a good place to visit because it honors our life experience.'” “Honours our life…
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Ground your Reader with Sensory Description
We all know that it’s important to immerse our readers in our story in order that they experience it fully, but how do we do that? “Show, Don’t Tell” is a truism that writers cannot avoid. We hear it everywhere, but what does it mean; how does it work? Engage your reader, say all the great writers; readers must lose themselves in the story. But how can we do this as writers ourselves when we don’t know how our favourite authors have done it for us as readers? One way, (though not the only way) is through clear sensory description. If we remember that a story should always…
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Creativity, Productivity, Thoughts, Opinions and Philosophical Discussions, Training, Lessons, Writers and Writing
Are you a terrible writer?
Have you ever suddenly decided halfway through a writing project that it’s all crap? That everything you’ve done up to this point is garbage and you’ll never be a “real” writer? Do you habitually reach a point in your drafts when you convince yourself that it’s not good enough, it’ll never be good enough, and you should throw it out and start over, but you desperately try to stick with it, even though you have an overpowering urge to delete your work and start again with a different style or P.o.V. or…anything? Welcome to the world of the frustrated writer. Anyone who’s any good at all…
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Appreciation and the Joy of Covid
When things go right, feeling and showing appreciation — that’s easy. But when things go wrong — not so much. Road Trip The weekend before last, I took my first trip out of my small home town since the beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020. It was downright scary, leaving the nest. Over the past year and a half, the only places I’ve been were my home, the grocery store, the drug store and the dog park, oh, and twice to the vaccination clinic. Advantages of Lockdown While it’s been difficult, not seeing people for days on end, I appreciate the time…
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The Evils of Comparison
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” ― Oscar Wilde The saints are the sinners who keep on trying. — Robert Louis Stevenson Do you think you’re a crappy writer? Why do you think that? Did someone tell you that your writing sucks? Where did this belief originate? Whose voice do you hear in your head? Was it a teacher in the third grade or the fifth or the tenth, telling you that you’re not good enough to be a writer? I call bullshit! You’re not being fair to yourself — You’d never ask a child to paint like Rembrandt, dance like Nureyev, or sing like Pavarotti,…
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Creative Writing, Organization and Research, Point of View and Character Development, Productivity, Prompts, Theme, Purpose and Outcome, Thoughts, Opinions and Philosophical Discussions, Training, Lessons
Questions and Answers
How NOT To Write Your Memoir Most people, when they start to write their memoirs, think they have to stick strictly to the facts, that their story has to be a list of the things they did, in the order that they did them. This simply isn’t true. It leads to the belief that they have to write their entire history — an autobiography, which, for most people is messy, disconnected and hard to follow. This means that they end up with a list of dry, dull facts, like some kind of desiccated checklist that may reflect the events of their lives, but doesn’t say much about…
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Memoirs, Organization and Research, Point of View and Character Development, Prompts, Theme, Purpose and Outcome
The Significance of Memories
Every life has common themes that repeat themselves over and over. One of my own most common themes is a love of animals, so when my writers’ group chose Favourite Toys as their prompt this week, it got me thinking… What was my favourite toy as a child? Of course, there were many…the roller skates that repeatedly steered me towards every crack in the sidewalk, leading to skinned knees and copious tears; the pogo stick that bounced me straight into a pile of fresh dog poop; and the bicycle my parents bought for me — an unexpected gift and a total, wonderful surprise. But the…
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Snippets
I’m sitting in my recliner, teaching a creative writing class on Zoom, tea cooling beside me, about to show the class how to use short stories in autobiographies. I’m using the “Homework for Life” exercise from Matt Dicks’ book, “Storyworthy”. This is an exercise I’ve adapted to fit my short story workshop series and it works like a kind of free-writing or stream-of-consciousness process similar to Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages. I’ve called this exercise “Snippets” and it’s a ten- or fifteen-minute activity in which students go back over their day and try to find a moment or incident that for some reason sticks out for them. It also works…
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Creative Writing, Point of View and Character Development, Structure and Plotting, Training, Lessons
It’s All About The Why’s
Often, an issue that confounds writers is finding they’ve written themselves into a corner or dead end. They wind up stuck, not knowing what happens next or how to resolve the problem. Invariably, this comes from not paying attention to the Why’s. Why would the character do something like that? Why can’t he just…whatever? Where does he go from here? This indecision is usually based on a lack of understanding of the character’s psychology — his motivations, which are based on his flaws and emotional wounds, his deepest fears and his goals, his secret desires and his limiting beliefs. Every action the character takes has a motive, and it can’t be just that the…
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Writing as Art
The following is a comment I posted in reply to a blog post from K.M. Weiland, one of the finest writers I’ve never met, but whom I follow regularly. Literature as Art In her article, Helping Authors Become Artists, she pinpoints what defines an author who has become an artist at the craft and discusses the necessity for learning the skills of writing, in order that the work cross the border from average to exceptional — the difference between talented amateur and master artist. This is a particular peeve of my own, as I believe it’s essential to learn the disciplines of any art (or science or trade) in order…