Tag: authors

Posted on

100 Ways

You’re creative. You can come up with 100 excuses why it’s not convenient to write.

The ‘y’ on your keyboard is missing. Jay Leno is on. Your cat named Jay Leno ate your keyboard.

The truth is, writing is damned inconvenient. It’s never convenient to have a plot or character bothering you when you’re supposed to be presenting Marketing for Morons to, well, morons, or explaining what that thing is between your nose and your upper lip to your eldest child while talking on the phone and making your youngest child a ham sandwich (ham and lettuce on the side).

It’s easy to find 100 excuses why it’s not convenient to write.

A writer finds 100 ways to fit writing into their inconvenient life.

Here’s a great excuse for not writing on Mother’s Day: My daughter wanted me to BE SuperMom. No, seriously, with a pink cape and everything. So I did, and had a blast with her in the backyard. Then I wrote about it.
Posted on

“I can shake my eyeballs back & forth really fast” Author @hgracestewart

I woke to find this phrase in my Twitter newsfeed. Not retweeted once, or twice, like I’m used to, but filling the entire newsfeed. People have been retweeting an interview I did for the wonderful site Celebrating Authors, with wonderful interviewer & author Carolyn Arnold (@Carolyn_Arnold) since it came out yesterday, and haven’t stopped yet. It’s pretty much all I see in my  @ twitter feed every few minutes. It makes me chuckle and smile. I told my almost-8-year-old daughter and she said, “People want to know about the POET. That’s why. They want to know funny things about you!”  I laughed. Well, now, certainly, all of Twitter does! 🙂

Here’s the interview http://celebratingauthors.blogspot.ca/2013/04/i-can-shake-my-eyeballs-back-and-forth.html  and thanks again to Carolyn for inviting me to Celebrating Authors!

I wanted to remind you all that I’m a featured author this month on Authorgraph.com and very happy to sign your digital books (you’ll get a PDF for your ipad and other signatures go directly to your Kindle and other e-devices! It’s really simple and very cool. )

Heather

Another thing about me? I love wearing heels!
Another thing about me? I love wearing heels!
Posted on

Top Ten Moments @ My Chapters Bookstore Signing

10 Sold lots of books!

9 Met lots of new readers!

8  Met someone who definitely wants to come to Herb’s Café for my reading Sat. April 20th. So much so, in fact, he took the 8×10 poster with him. Oops!

7 Two tweens bought Three Spaces. Poetry lives on in the younger generations!

6 Several children listened to me read for 15 minutes and I never saw them squirming or playing with the housewares stuff once!

5 Someone came up to me to ask if I worked there!, and when I said I was a visiting poet she said “Oh, wow, I love poetry!”  (you don’t hear that too often)

4 Several dear friends, neighbours, and a dear old friend from my Harrowsmith magazine days (I hadn’t seen her in years!) visited and hung out with me a long time as I signed books etc.

3 One of my readers bought me a latte!

2 My daughter wore a very similar lace top, purple vest, and black leggings, because

she “Wanted to be just like” me.

and the #1 Moment…

Chapters put out decorations on the table and a beautiful pillow and wicker

chair for me. My 7-year-old daughter took one look and said,

“Hey, last year you just got the empty desk. Maybe you’re a little bit more

important than last year!”  (Me: ha! But I certainly was comfortable!)

Thanks to the League of Canadian Poets and Chapters Pointe Claire for your wonderful support, and to everyone who came out for making the launch of Three Spaces such a success!

IMG_1412Reading from Three SpacesOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Posted on

National Poetry Month Events

Hey there. I’m not sure how many of you regular readers of WHERE THE BUTTERFLIES GO actually live in the Montreal area, but I’m doing a few special events for National Poetry Month and wanted you to know about them in case you can attend.  Click on the photos to reach the event pages!
If you do attend either the Three Spaces book launch at Chapters Bookstore or the Herbs Café: A Night of Poetry & Music, please come say hi and let me know you follow my blog!

Best wishes, thanks so much for reading,

HeatherTSCHAPTERSTSPOSTER

Posted on

Bet You Didn’t Know!

My talented author pal Elisa Lorello tagged me in a blog hop, and I thought it would be a fun way for you to learn more about her, more about me (in the interview below), and to ‘meet’ some of my other talented author friends.

Elisa Lorello is a best-selling novelist and the author of four books: Faking It, Ordinary World, Why I Love Singlehood (co-authored with Sarah Girrell), and her latest, Adulation. Currently on sabbatical from teaching, Elisa recently returned to the northeast from North Carolina, where she is busy developing new projects (she’s superstitious and never talks about her works in progress!) and getting re-acquainted with snow. Elisa’s blog post will be about Adulation–perfect for Oscar season! Please visit Elisa at I’ll Have What She’s Having.

I am tagging the following authors in this ‘blog hop.’ Could you please visit them this week? I think you’ll love getting to know them and their work.

Arianna Merritt: Author, M.Ed., Learning and Development Specialist

Website: http://ariannasrandomthoughts.com

Nate Hendley: Author & Freelance Writer

Blog: http://crimestory.wordpress.com/  Website: www.natehendley.com

Mark Stratton: Poet/writer – poetry collection “Tender Mercies” available here: (http://radio-nowhere.org/nb/?page_id=766) and website here: http://radio-nowhere.org/nb

BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW…

AN INTERVIEW WITH HEATHER GRACE STEWART

Tell me about your writing process. Do you plan out what you’re writing  or sit down and do it? What was the greatest surprise about this writing process for you?

I plan to write, but I don’t always plan what I’m going to write. Unless I have a magazine deadline or I’m writing a presentation, I set aside time, usually 7:30 in the morning to noon, to write creatively. I try to avoid distractions like the Net and the phone until noon. As far as plot, poems just come to me and I go with the feel of the poem and then edit later. I’m working on a novella right now, and I did plot a little down on paper, including character sketches, but I find what works better for me is to just sit and write for a few weeks without any rules. Just stream of consciousness, every morning.

That’s been the biggest surprise to me. I didn’t realize plotting out can sometimes strain my writing. The Friends I’ve Never Met. was a story that just woke me up like an alarm clock at 4 a.m. every morning for several weeks, without fail, and I found I just had to go write this story down. After a few weeks I went back and made sure the plot and characters were working, and then I fattened everything up, and did many, many edits.

Ideas come to me in the shower, and especially while I’m driving alone, so I have learned to use a small tape recorder whenever I go on a road trip. I used to try to write on a yellow sticky note at the stop lights, but I could never read my writing later. I’m going to try texting myself, too!
What was your worst job ever? (doesn’t have to be about writing) and why? What did you learn from it?

When I was 16 I worked at a Rifle Range. I had to sweep up barracks and clean the toilets. That wasn’t so bad, but the army officer in charge was weird and made me put up heavy tents in the blazing July heat, and then take them down as soon as they’d been put up, as if I were in the army too. I experienced a lot of harassment and sexism that summer. I think it made me ballsier. I didn’t take crap from a boss ever again after that. Ha ha, maybe that’s why I work for myself!
If you knew tonight was your last meal for a week, what would you eat?

Probably many many slices of pineapple cheese pizza with green olives. And a pint of beer – Heineken or Tsing Tao- mabye even a Hoegaarden. And vanilla ice cream for dessert, with Smucker’s hot fudge on top. Okay this interview is making me hungry.


How do you feel about frogs?

 I have a special relationship with frogs. I truly love them! Besides being fascinated by the biology, like how they get oxygen through their skin, since I was very young, I’ve been able to catch them easily ( the other kids coined me the Green Lake Frog Catcher) and get them to stay on my palm for over 10 minutes with out hopping off. I rub their temples and pat them and they stay. I’m the Frog Whisperer.
Where’s your favourite place to chill out, and why?

There’s a private beach on Cape Cod ~ it’s actually the cover of my latest book, Three Spaces, and it’s so quiet and full of fascinating aquatic life. My daughter and husband love exploring it after the tide goes out late afternoon. We try to save crabs and starfish by throwing them in deeper. The private beach belongs to a small motel, and compared to other places we’ve vacationed, it isn’t expensive to stay there, but if I tell you any more it won’t be my favourite place to chill out any more.  🙂

IMG_0905