Join me as I embrace...words written or spoken, delivered with enthusiasm, passion, care, wisdom, depth, creativity.
In my idea of a teenage journal I mapped-out my life's big dream...to write and document the natural world. I saw this as an expanded journal of my evolving relationship with all those amazing wonders; large, small, embracing, challenging, perhaps even frightening, but always intriguing.
It’s not as if I haven’t visited that dream many times in many ways. But for more than fifty years my primary occupation has been professional visual artist, working in the fine and commercial arts as watercolour & acrylic painter, illustrator, cartoonist and graphic designer. That has taken me into many interesting places, into a variety of landscapes and business environments. I've also written hundreds of radio ads and published a number of self-styled word pieces that began with a four-page centerfold story in a 1967 Victoria Colonist weekend tabloid. That one was inspired by a personal visit to Clo-oose, an Indigenous community repeatedly overshadowed by early white development, situated on a fragile delta of British Columbia's famed Vancouver Island West Coast Trail. You can find Clo-oose on my blog of September 2015. Or check out Kootenay Keepsakes as it appeared in Western Living Magazine. It's on my blog of October 2015. My creative non-fiction story, Mrs. Cargill, found a home in Watershed Sentinel's summer issue, 2021. And my Nature Wise column really took off on the Opinion Page of Penticton Western News as a feature item filling two-thirds of a tabloid page with a large photo and catchy headline...until I decided I'd like to get paid.
I have a love for writing to length...perfect training for writing articles, essays and columns, from a short form 100 words to 1400, or even 2500. Although I find 500 to 800 is a fun length to work with…get to the point, draw a conclusion, especially if it can be done with energy, humour and concise sentences.
Now I just need to learn how to use my Weebly blog. Where IS the type editor button?
RSS Feed
