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I remember having a designated spot in the library throughout my university years that I would love to claim. I loved to read and study in the university library. I would scout out old anthologies of Tennyson or Dickens or devour their pages while my school binders lay open on the desk of the library carrel I had laid claim to for the day. I loved the feel of old books—I even loved the smell. Times have certainly changed. Few academic experiences like that exist today. Sure, readers still read, but there are far fewer in my experience. And I know. I am that matron, otherwise known as an English teacher. In my first years as a teacher, my excitement was often met with student groans after Labour Day: “Who'd You get for English?”  I vividly recall a scene in You’ve Got Mail that encapsulates my September feelings early in my teaching career. Not uncoincidentally, both main characters in the film sell books, though they do not own bookstores of the same ilk. Joe Fox, played by Tom Hanks, writes in an email: Don't you love New York in the fall? I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.  I love to read and write and was called to teach. I kid you not: Labour Day used to feel like New Year's Eve to me.  What does any of this have to do with AI? Frankly, everything. This past year, I have had to completely re-engineer how I teach literature; I use the term ‘teach’ loosely here. This reengineering has not been easy: I am a dinosaur who has learned to embrace AI. Chatbots have helped with a few of my menial tasks: of note, AI can offer specific feedback on students’ writing assignments and has certainly helped with my plethora of student letters of reference or recommendation. Unfortunately, AI cannot grade tasks for me, and student use of AI has increased my workload immensely.  Not only do I and other teachers have to scan tasks for AI use and plagiarism, but in many circumstances, we use draftback to check a student’s cutting and pasting from outside sources and the number of edits along the writing process—I also use the phrase ‘writing process’ loosely. And do not get me started on Quillbot and Grammarly paraphrasing tools that completely reword sentences, paragraphs, and entire essays. Do not get me wrong: many students still enjoy reading and some still do complete their writing tasks authentically, but not the majority.  This year, I changed my tasks considerably. I once encouraged students in my grade twelve class to use Chat GPT to summarize critical articles and then evaluate the effectiveness of those summaries. In April, my students interviewed seniors at a retirement residence and wrote two-to-three-page memoirs on their lives. In lieu of a literary essay in May, students wrote creative writing tasks whereby they had to write fictitious letters from one character to another. Am I still gauging knowledge and understanding of novels and writing expectations? Absolutely. Simply in different ways.  The challenge therein remains that these tasks are arguably not preparing them for writing academic essays in university, but again, universities are battling the same challenges of AI and academic authenticity that high school teachers are facing. In North America, 40% of college and university students polled in February of 2024 admitted to regularly using ChatGPT to complete coursework, assignments, and, yes, even exams. This statistic is rendered all-the-more problematic since more than one-fifth of university students now take classes entirely online. The waters of online learning and academic integrity have indeed become murky.   My youngest son, for one, has not seen the inside of a lecture hall at Carleton University in three years, and he hopes that the next time he does is when he collects his Journalism Degree.  In Ontario, all high school students must now earn at least two online learning credits as part of the Ontario Secondary School Diploma requirements unless they have opted out or been exempted. This mandatory online learning began with students who entered Grade 9 in the 2020-21 school year. They had just emerged from the COVID pandemic. Had they not stared at screens enough? Now, let me be clear: Online learning has its place, and many students absolutely love filling their timetables with online courses, and it is not for the reasons you may think. Sport schedules, more sleep, and, yes, the fact that it can be far easier to get away with Chat GPT in an online course top the list of reasons.  I taught two online high school English courses this past year. These students who registered were from all over the province of Ontario—a big province. I have no academic context for these students, and I rarely, if ever, saw their faces or heard their voices. I had one student who took my course online because he did not speak English, and he admitted he took English online because he used Google Translate to complete every assignment. These were his words, not mine. To clarify, this was a university-English preparatory course. He emailed to ask if he could use ChatGPT and then Google Translate to complete his exam. I answered no, but he did anyway.  This past year was the first school year in the Ottawa school boards' history, wherein online exams were unproctored. To clarify, in past years, students were supervised in school settings for these online exams. That is impossible now: far too many students are taking online courses, in courses with teachers all over the province. Don’t get me wrong; even in supervised settings, much cheating takes place. I can think of dozens of examples from my own courses.  My online unproctored exams were a disaster this year. At least one-third of my online eleventh-grade university English course students cheated on their final exam. Many wrote essays—or generated essays—about books they had never read. Chat GPT wrote exam responses for them and, in several instances, wrote entire literary essays for them that included invented novel titles and authors that not only were not course readings but did not exist at all.  Clearly, there are many problems here. One glaring issue is that many of these students did not see it as cheating. One student cheated her way through the entire course and admitted through email that she had never had to read a book throughout high school and had always maintained A’s in English. This is an email asking for another chance to write an essay ChatGPT wrote for her. She also relayed that throughout high school, she simply looked up book quotations and analyses on the internet when needed. Thus, not only did she not read the texts, but she never had to have a thought about them. Sit with that for a moment. She had an average of eighty-five in high school and rarely had to read or think. All the book summaries and analyses of the texts were splashed all over the internet for her.  Thus, Google enables students to copy quotations and copy literary analyses. QuillBot.com and Grammarly’s paraphrasing tools rephrase this content. Now, AI can completely generate the content, be it literary essays, paragraph responses, or exam responses. Years ago, some of my students spent more time evading work than they would have actually spent doing it. Now, ChatGPT can perform in ten seconds what had taken me a week to complete thirty years ago in my little library study carrel or what time students have spent doggedly avoiding the task at hand.  We have come to the end of traditional literary analysis, traditional academia, and, for many, the end of reading and thinking about books. The curriculum will indeed need to be revamped. Again. Teachers cannot teach like they did even two years ago, but they cannot also be expected to spend hours upon hours ad nauseam tracking down the sources of student work.  Overwhelmed teachers are doing their best to adapt to this new reality. We have sat through workshops on AI and new teaching methods and have been told to embrace chatbots. We are moving back to pen and paper. English classrooms have embraced book club discussion in destreamed grade-nine classrooms in Ontario. (Alas, that is an article for another day.) Though it has introduced teachers to so much more work, no doubt, ChatGPT and other such tools inevitably have their place in the education system. And, though I often subscribe to Socrates’ paradox that all I know is I know nothing, after thirty years of teaching English, I know a few things. I know that we cannot entirely throw the baby out with the bath water. I know that literature should still be explored. I know that students everywhere must still be encouraged to think and write, but in what ways will and must change.     I may not be able to instill a love of reading in students the way I imagined after watching Robin Williams in Dead Poets’ Society , but for now, English teachers still have jobs and students must still read and write. Teachers have no choice but to embrace AI and find ways to create new meaningful work inside classrooms everywhere that prepare students for what lies ahead. Just how we do that in this changing landscape when it is hard to predict what lies ahead is the conundrum.

blessings. I refuse to suggest luck, becau As 2025 winds to a close, I wanted to reflect on a monumental year in my life—though monumental in its defeats, also. I turned fifty-five, retired from teaching, wrote a new manuscript, continued in my security role at the Canadian Tire Centre, and learned some tough lessons. And I’m sure my grown sons have equally. It was a challenging year, all around, in many regards.  Highlights:  For a few months, I queried my second manuscript, to no avail.  I coached intermediate girls’ basketball for the first time, and it was thoroughly rewarding.  My high school softball team were champions—quite literally—and we were profiled on the evening news.  While joining a new soccer team is no surprise for those who know me, I joined a Futsal team. A very different style of play, for sure! After my formal retirement, I returned to teaching for seven weeks. I had two big, busy grade 9 classes and one grade 11 Indigenous lit class.  I submitted two short stories to the CBC competition (fingers crossed) and now approach every single chapter I write as a short story with its own conflict, mini-inciting event, and resolution—well, not entirely resolved, of course:-)—Mini cliffhangers at chapters’ ends are fun.  I saw Springsteen in concert. Twice. Two of my grown sons moved back home with me—until March, they say.  Insights: I’m over the insinuation that writers who use AI use em dashes. I love the em dash and the (subjectively effective:-) use of sentence fragments, and I won’t stop.  I imagined that writing a classic retelling would be easier, since I had the story's framework. It was no easier, though, boy, I am proud of my finished product and would consider another retelling. PM me which you prefer: I was thinking Little Women,  with sons. Perhaps a Macbeth retelling with light speculative fiction and a little cli-fi backdrop, though thorough research into wiccanry might be a good starting point.  People in writing groups discuss how much they love writing. For me, after three full manuscripts these past few years, many short stories, and one novella, I am not entirely sure it’s a love—more of a compulsion. I need to quell the stories and characters in my head.  I find it hard to read when I am writing so much. But now that the manuscript is complete… My instincts were correct about balance after retirement: I have managed to balance (well, it should be noted) my security job, time with friends and family, writing, interests, and exercise. I couldn't be happier! Lessons learned: ✔ Professional editors, even highly vetted, highly rated ones, may not be worth it. I avoided one for my most recent project.  ✔ I need to keep trusting my instincts. ✔ Sometimes, when querying a project is not panning out, I should simply start a new one.  ✔ AI still sucks. See my summer blog post. My disdain for it was one of the reasons I retired a smidgen earlier than I had planned to.  ✔ Tenacity does, and will, pay off.  Here’s to another year around the sun! May 2026 be filled with laughs, successes, and blessings. I refuse to suggest luck, because frankly, I think we make our own.  se frankly, I think we make our own.

My birthday is this month. I will be fifty-five, or Freedom 55 as the adage or pithy insurance advertising slogan suggests.  Not entirely coincidentally, my age plus years of work equals eighty-five. I will soon be free from my full-time career, but in this economy, it is not possible for me to be utterly free from paid work. I have a mortgage. I have a line of credit. I helped my three sons with post-secondary education. But I also have meaningful part-time jobs that, luckily enough, bring in streams of income that should nicely balance out my now-smaller monthly income until I am no longer as physically and mentally able.  And though yes, I am blessed to be able-bodied, my body does, in fact, work against me many, if not most, mornings. In winter mornings, putting on socks is not easy. During the night, rolling over is often a painful affair. Reaching down to feed my darling cats in the morning is also no easy feat, for I have much back pain, which I am sure is attributable to spinal arthritis. My mother suffers from arthritis, as did my maternal grandmother.  Though I inherited much from my mother, she has not always been my biggest supporter. Just last month, she cited a fact she read: that my arthritis will be much worse than hers because I played impact sports, and continue to do so. I would love to see her sources or find any doctor who advises against physical activity, but she has always, almost always, frowned upon my athletics. However, she seems to be a supporter of my golfing: aside from Scrabble, golf is the one activity or pastime we share.  Now that I am well into my fifties, I do see much more of myself in my mother, though I can’t see well at all. I now begrudge time, not my mother, for my horrible eyesight— its decline is timed nicely with the new coarse chin hairs that elude it until I look in the car’s rearview mirror. And though I can barely reach my toenails to paint them, there is genuinely a sense of freedom with age.  Others’ opinions mattered so much to my younger self.  I was also riddled with self-doubt in my twenties and thirties, some days with self-loathing. I was never entirely comfortable in my own skin until well into my forties. Though my body often defies me, I continue to be highly active. I play soccer several times a week all summer long. Throughout the winter months, I love to ski, both alpine and Nordic, and at the gym, I enjoy body-toning and yoga classes all year round. I have discovered, as I age, that moving my body is beneficial for both my physical and mental well-being, but I have also been gifted with far richer blessings as time marches on. I have never felt more certain of myself. I have never felt so productive, nor so efficient. I have never felt so wise. I have never given so much of myself to the wider community. I have never felt more settled. I have never felt so creative. I have never cared so little about what others think of me. And that, my friends, is true freedom.

Working Canada-US World Junior Game on New Year's Eve Since it’s that time when some take stock of the year in the rearview and set goals for the year ahead, I thought I’d chime in. With the former part, at least. 2024 was such a year of professional and personal growth for me.  Highlights: All sons moved out—and are well on their way to happily carving out their own lives.  Garrett graduated from Western, and Ethan graduated from Carleton.  Lots of skiing, golf, soccer, and time with my boys and friends rounded out my calendar. I saw Springsteen in concert. Twice! I wrote a second novel,  Secrets We Share,  which is vastly different from my first. The greatest challenge was writing in the third person point-of-view & writing multiple-point-of-view stories.  I embraced the scathing parts of the writing process by hiring a skilled professional editor to review my two completed manuscripts. I filed my official retirement papers after 30 years of teaching I outlined the third novel I intend to write and am thrilled with its direction I learned how to write decent short stories. I wrote two I'm particularly proud of, and submitted them to a prestigious CBC writing competition. (I’ll keep the world posted:-) In December, I welcomed a roommate. It seems to be going well, though one of my two cats vehemently disagrees!  (Said roommate's lovely, albeit big, dog is still sure my sweet tortie is a squirrel, and my kitty has yet to prove him wrong.) Lessons learned: I still love teaching I write YA well Designing a web page is difficult Making sleep a priority pays off Time in nature still recharges me I half-enjoy playing nets in soccer, and, some days, I am not half-bad My female friendships are enough to fill my emotional reservoir I can survive and thrive without several soccer games a week I should have attended the teachers’ coaches banquet throughout my career. So fun and so many lost years! My CTC crew is like family, too. I can successfully ignore those who struggle to stay in their lanes. ‘Unbothered’ is my new mantra—handed to me late in 2024 by a former student turned cherished colleague You cannot change others’ opinions of yourself (thus, I finally stopped caring and trying!) Having others inspect and dissect your writing is not for the faint of heart. Think: ripping off a freshly healed scar and pouring iodine on the wound. Repeatedly.  The publishing world is ridiculously tough to break into, but I will forge forward. Lastly, I am capable of so very much. So let’s raise a glass to 2024, and hopefully, it did not knock you on your ass. And if it did, raise a glass to your resilience. You are stronger today than you were yesterday. Focus now not on the sandy or snowy path you may have left behind you but on the excitement of the footprints you have not left yet. And focus on yourself for a change instead of changing for others. One of my favourite movies this time of year is The Holiday. Perhaps you’ve seen it.   In it,   Eli Wallach plays famous screenwriter Arthur Abbott, who shares much wisdom. In one particularly pithy scene, he explains to Kate Winslet's character, "In the movies, we have leading ladies, and we have the best friend. [Isris] I can tell you are a leading lady, but for some reason, you are behaving like the best friend." Indeed. Wallach, by the way,  was 90 years old when The Holiday was filmed. Perhaps he knew a thing or two:-) So, be the leading lady of your own life—queen of your life, if you will. Prioritize yourself. Listen to your heart. Note the energy others impart after they have left the gift of your presence. And do not be afraid to consider your perspective more often than you have in the past because“...life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.”

The paradox that “If you want to get something done, ask a busy person” rings true in history and rings true in our lives. I think Benjamin Franklin had it right. While he was a busy writer, scientist, politician, and polymath, he also lived with an equally busy woman: Deborah Read Rogers. She deserves much credit, too. I coached a boys’ soccer team in the fall. On average, it added twenty-five hours to my already busy teaching week. It was a long, demanding soccer season, and though I do love being on a soccer pitch, after a busy workday, it sometimes felt like one more task on my perpetual to-do list. I now coach a girls' softball team, among many other commitments. These girls are a lovely, fun bunch. They are competitive, delightful, and grateful. It is no doubt rewarding. Some days, though, it does feel like simply one more task. After softball practice last week, my colleague and the team’s assistant coach asked me to delegate any paperwork or small jobs; I felt the head attached to my neck nod in agreement, defying my inner dialogue. She is new to coaching and new to softball. I knew I would do it. Like an overwhelmed mother who complains that her husband will not share in the household workload and then complains about his laundry abilities or restacks the dishwasher when he has tried to help, I wondered why it simply felt easier to do all the softball paperwork myself. Was it about competence? Perhaps, but we all need to learn. Was it about standards? Perhaps, but once I taught her, there is no doubt she will do an impeccable job. What then? Bright, competent women are good at, well, so many things. One thing we are not good at, though, is saying no. Saying no is a skill that smart women must hone. In this digital post-COVID age, this is all the more critical. People who want something done know to ask either a busy person or a woman who cannot say no. Often, this is one and the same. Requests keep flooding in via phone, email, instant messaging, Zoom screen, or in-person over lunch and in office spaces everywhere, and we must learn to say no. My advice to you: assess the asker’s intentions. And assess exactly why they are asking you. If their primary criterion is that you will not say no, surprise them. Say no, and move along. A familiar strategy for larger requests, is to make an inventory, itemizing the details of the request. When unsure, always clarify. In this inventory, include the advantages and disadvantages, both professionally and personally. The more onerous or difficult the task, the more details you should gather before making a decision. And take time making that decision. Being inundated by tasks generally does not dilute our competence at said tasks. After all, we are busy and capable; however, frequently finding ourselves overcommitted has the power to dilute the very essence of ourselves.

When I was a young beginning teacher, I was lost and overwhelmed. I spent days trying to simply stay on top of classroom management and spent entire evenings trying to work; well, if one could call it that. More accurately, I spent hours with papers and binders splayed all over my living room thinking about working and wondering where to start. Executive functioning not at its finest. Hours later each evening, I was splayed out myself in my bed exhausted. How was one to manage the learning curve, along with learning styles, authoritative styles, and new curriculum? At any given moment, I felt that I needed a battle cry, the patience of a saint, a good night’s sleep, and a bottle of wine. In what order, always remained to be seen. The word flounder is a Dutch derivative: a combination of words flodderen, which means "to flop about," and blunder, which means "do something clumsy." In the beginnings of my career, I was both personified. I felt I was playing a game, and was in an adult world, that I didn't fully understand the rules to. I watched experienced teachers carefully, hoping to glean a few tips from one, or a few tricks from another. What I really needed was a female mentor. There were no formal mentoring programs in education, such as there now. One experienced teacher many moons ago, I aspired to be just like. Most are familiar with Goldilocks, the nursery rhyme. Equally, it is a fitting analogy for teaching styles. Goldilocks approaches the first bowl of porridge, the first little chair, and the first bed up the stairs, trying out each at its turn until she finds the one that is just right. Such is parenting, teaching, and leading. We must find our individual styles as teachers, mothers, and leaders; otherwise we are simply playing a role or trying out a persona—one that might not fit well. I learned early in my career that some teachers were incredibly authoritarian, steering their ships with glacial equanimity. I knew that could never be me: I needed to be more laid back and to be seen. I needed to be fair and glean respect because I delivered it. I needed to be comfortable in my own skin as I governed my own troupe, or little ship of pupils, and a model for this I found in Joanne. I inspected her interactions carefully at every turn. One day, I heard her laugh with her students, then effectively direct their attention back to the lesson at hand. Over time, I became comfortable enough to ask for her advice. Now that I am in the final year of my career, I avail myself often to younger staff—and am often called upon. Sometimes it is to dispense guidance of a personal nature, but frequently this guidance is of a professional nature. Just last month, another experienced teacher and I had invited three young female colleagues for drinks after work. Our colleagues were delighted, and when one was running late, I ran back into the building only to find her sobbing at her desk. “How on earth have you done this for almost thirty years?” she asked, half-query, half lament. I stayed, I listened, I coached. Drinks with the others would have to wait. I am retiring next year and another 60 million baby boomers in North America are projected to retire over the next 10 years. Females in advisory roles or senior positions in their careers possess a wide body of skills and institutional knowledge that needs to be passed down. Essentially this is termed knowledge transfer, more colloquially known as passing the torch. Female mentors are inevitably instrumental in this process and organizations and individuals must recognize this. Whether it is a listening ear one needs, or a new strategy or skill one must develop, in my humble opinion, we are best served by female mentors.

Last weekend, I braved the most significant ski hill I have ever faced. I only began downhill skiing when my boys were learning, and must admit, fear often holds me back. Oftentimes too, like my golf game, I wonder why I cannot quickly improve. Nervous, I climbed into the gondola at Mont Tremblant and ascended almost 3000 feet to the summit. I closed my eyes briefly,  imagining I was headed to Mount Everest base camp. This girl dreams big. Fridtjof Nansen wrote that skiing washes civilization clean from our minds because of its exhilarating physicality. That snow helps “strip away the things that don't matter and …those wonderful, long, steep mountainsides, where the snow lies soft as eiderdown, where one From the tips of the skis…the snow sprays knee-high, to swirl up in white clouds behind; but ahead all is clear. You cleave the snow like an arrow…” — Fridtjof Nansen, En Skitur fra Voss til Kristiania, 1884. Cleaving the snow where no path lay before. Like a clean white page waiting to be written upon, and both equally daunting. By extension, I believe both teach important lessons on vulnerability and overcoming fear. While at a play recently, my friend Fiona, who aslo writes, whispered to me, “I don’t think I would be brave enough to ever let others see my writing. Aren’t you afraid?” “Afraid that they will not think it is good?” “Sure but afraid of being so vulnerable and letting them into your personal life.” I pondered that, turning her words over slowly in my mind. Sure, writing inevitably allows people to see our inner selves, but do you know that feeling of seeing something interesting, like a beautiful place or an exhilarating experience, through another’s eyes? That is how I feel about writing. It is no doubt scary. And though I do in fact write and ski for myself, I believe some things are simply better shared.

Photo courtesy of Shantelle Paul Recently, I made a disastrous decision. I took matters of hair colour into my own hands. I was impetuous, trying to save both time and money. It left me with a horribly brassy, splotchy colour and feeling like a cheater: after all, I have been seeing my stylist Shantelle for nearly twenty years, and she is simply wonderful. I am a highly patient person—but only when it comes to others. When it pertains only to me, I rush, ignore consequences, and, like a five-year-old with only days until Christmas Eve, have a hard time waiting. Writing equally tests my patience. This past August, I wrote 38,000 words of a novel, and this past week, I contributed only 2,000 to my latest manuscript. Writing cannot be forced. Some scenes come to me when I am in the middle of another task on days when I have no intentions of writing. Equally, nature is living proof that beauty abounds when patience does. Simply look around: the golds and reds of autumn, high tide, spring's early buds, a spider's intricate web. The maxim that good things come to those who wait is originally attributable to British author Violet Fane, and it rings true in most domains of my life. By extension, there are generally no honourable shortcuts in life, and strong results cannot be forced. Thank goodness, though, for the editing process and for fabulous hair stylists!

Some time ago, a family friend ranted to me that her six-year-old daughter was getting too much daily homework. In Grade One. Equally appalled, I listened intently while she explained that, at least twice a week, the child had a math worksheet or two, but every night, she had reading homework. Reading homework? I had inquired, confused. “Yes,” she relayed. "She has to read every night. It is becoming a chore and a battleground. I make her stay at the kitchen table after dinner every night, and she has to log 20 minutes of reading in a journal,” she explained. This woman could have just as easily written my next blog post entitled “How to Raise a Nonreader.” Reading is not homework. Reading should not be forced—well, unless you are still of the ilk that you must finish every book you begin. Reading should be savoured. Reading for children should also happen in cozy spaces: in beds, comfy chairs, and sprawled out on floors with cushions. Ideally, it should happen often with parents. Books should be colourful and scattered on side tables and in accessible baskets and bins—even alongside toys. My boys loved picture books, pop-up books, Usborne books, maze books, and Eric Carle books, then devoured Robert Munsch stories and the Magic Treehouse Series, or the ‘Jack and Annie’ books they fondly remember them as. I have neither a magic treehouse nor a magic formula. Frankly, only one of my adult children continues to read fiction with any level of consistency—though my youngest has recently revisited the Percy Jackson series with unabated enthusiasm—but what I can assure you is that the term ‘reading’ should not be synonymous in the mind of six-year-old with any compound word that ends in ‘work.’

My second February post is fittingly about literature that celebrates Black History Month and the demise of #OwnVoices. #OwnVoices was created by author Corinne Duyvis in September 2015. The term and hashtag reflected a movement of promoting marginalized and under-recognized authors and voices. There is still much work to be done, but positive changes have been made. Two of the best two non-fiction books I have read in the past few years include How to Be An AntiRacist by Ibram X Kendi and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi. I have implemented the latter in my Grade 10 classroom. Excellent fiction choices include Born a Crime, The Sleeping Car Porter, Dear Martin (Dear Justyce coming out soon!), and many choices by Indigenous voices- some new. The Hate U Give has replaced To Kill a Mockingbird in schools, and rightly so, but let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Harper Lee’s text and Gregory Peck’s performance are worthy of attention. While WNDB may no longer be implementing the hashtag #Ownvoices, the movement and sentiments behind it are flourishing. We should all be reading books by Black authors, especially right now. We should be reading Latino authors, under-represented authors, Indigenous authors, Queer authors, Straight authors, and White authors. We should all be reading. Period.

“People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven't you? There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person.” Lucy Maud Montgomery It is no secret to those around me that I love words. Words like epiphany, crescendo, and tomfoolery. I love reading— and do not get me started on Scrabble. My middle son shares this passion for words. While he pursued a Linguistics degree and a Master’s in Speech-Language Pathology, I write. Its beginnings are rooted in Anne of Green Gables. Truly. From a young age, I would roll and savour new words on my tongue and in my mind. I would then jot them in a journal. I would decorate them, outline them, turn them into artistic poetry. The way other children scrawled pictures on desks or in the margins of their three-ring, colourful, thin notebooks, I scrawled words. My grade 5 teacher moved me into a gifted reading program wherein I had to read Shane instead of an easy choose-your-own-adventure, while my Grade 8 teacher, Mr. Durocher, admonished me for finishing the entire Language and Spelling 8 workbook by November. Writing was my art. Throughout my university years, I was enthralled with the craft of writing. At St. Francis Xavier University, I majored in English literature and minored in French literature and poetry—with eclectic concentrations in nutrition and psychology. Healthy body, healthy mind. I grew obsessed with syntax. Implement a variety of sentence structures, I tell my high school English students. I wrote poetry and short stories when I was in both high school and university. Though I continue to write short stories and poetry, I now write personal essays and novels. Artful writing is poetic. Structured writing is clear. Strong novels are both; so the next time someone asks if writing is an art, craft, or career, the answer is yes.