A new season began on the Labour Day long weekend. While it marks the anniversary of my giving birth to an entirely new human in my family decades ago, it is also a chance to give new life to my current priorities. My hope with each long weekend is to “reset.” I often buy a new notebook, crack it open, date the page, and underline a heading. It’s a typical ritual initiating a reset. It’s a gift to have three unscheduled days. Yet, between the recreation and catch-up time on the home front, I feel compelled to reflect and plan, as if the universe is going to audit my use of a Monday off.
It’s Sunday. December 28. A lull between the manic, joyful madness of making Christmas merry and the tightening of New Year’s noose of celebration mixed with expectation. Yep… so much preparation and anticipation. Then, it dissipates in hours.
Lists. We make ’em before the events. To do. To buy. And then we construct a kind of Fantasy Football League of lists of what not to do going forward, in the annual rush to improve our lives in whatever way is important to each of us in 2026. Yet again.
So, I do feel lists qualify as one form of writing. Bullet points, words next to boxes to check off, and full sentences. Start on a page big enough, and it’ll end up as a journal entry. I used to kind of poo poo ‘journaling’ as not real writing. It wasn’t generally paid, published or impactful on others’ lives. I was wrong. Turns out I have many boxes of archived pages and short-form scribbles. Writer, teacher and big-time meditator, Natalie Goldberg once advised a participant who confessed in our online masterclass to having journals from 10 years ago.
“Oh, just throw those notes out. You don’t need them.” I recoiled in horror. DECADES, I have kept my notes. There are pretty journals, nostalgic covers or businessy books, started and abandoned after a couple or a score of gripping pages. Scrapbooks with notes written LARGE in coloured pens so my deteriorating penmanship could still be deciphered and perhaps seen in a new perspective on the different colours or sizes of paper. I’ve been a closet journaler for years, not even admitting it to myself, apparently.
Below is an email from Kash Khan, whose health posts, DNA testing and theories I have followed for a while. This is taken from his UNCENSORED email, as it is titled, where he is free to say what he deems necessary. It is a complete piece about the science of the power of expression on our very health. Enjoy. I’m going back to slowly decluttering, the semi-legible brilliance I have hoarded all these years, as my holiday project.
Do rituals get you to a writing, or otherwise productive, frame of mind? You’re not alone. Today’s post looks at the quirky ways some famous writers began their books. How they faced their blank page and ‘got into’ a writing rhythm to get the job done.
A little book of bigtime author secrets
After reading a book I bought years ago at a fundraising table in the foyer of the YWCA on Hornby, I began to share some of my own quirky starters and writing sparks. The book, which is still in my library, is called “Secret Lives of Great Authors.” It’s a fun, gossipy read. It was more thrilling to me than People Magazine of the day. Fittingly, I was there for the Y pool, where other local writers I knew also swam between drafts of their work to balance all our hours at a desk.
Let’s explore the accepted definitions of “Deadline”
What Is a Deadline, Really?
Traditionally, a deadline is defined as a time or date by which something must be completed. But the origin of the term is much darker. It came from American Civil War prisons, where a “dead line” marked the boundary prisoners could not cross without being shot. From literal life-or-death consequences, it evolved into something more psychological—yet still stressful—applied to the world of publishing, journalism, and the arts.
Today, a deadline is a finish line. A marker of commitment. A line in the sand between “someday” and “done.”
On Living Life in General: The thing I’ve done and the persona I’ve lived for the greatest portion of my life, other than being a human 24/7, has been as a writer in the service of education, marketing and support to individuals and organisations in the business or general community. So, as I live out … Read more
On hold. Waiting for the New Year to start like a guest waiting in a studio’s ‘green room’ before going on air to a talk show or some other live event, with an audience, and floor directors and a host to greet your arrival. And snacks.
Traditionally, a deadline is defined as a time or date by which something must be completed. But the origin of the term is much darker. It came from American Civil War prisons, where a “dead line” marked the boundary prisoners could not cross without being shot. From literal life-or-death consequences, it evolved into something more psychological—yet still stressful—applied to the world of publishing, journalism, and the arts.