Resonance

Essays on the Craft and Life of Writing

Andrew Chesham, Laura Farina, Andrew Chesham, Laura Farina

• Publisher: Anvil Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781772141849
• eBook ISBN: 9781772142372
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Writing & Presentation Skills

Through forty-three personal essays, Resonance: Essays on the Craft and Life of Writing brings together insights from writers and publishers across Canada on the practices that fuel their work, and invites readers to join the conversation through a series of engaging writing prompts. The essays collected here include strategies for pre-writing, writing and revision, as well as thoughts on the writing life and the world of writing. Resonance is for any writer of fiction, non-fiction or poetry who has ever wanted a helping hand, a quick chat, or a word of encouragement along the lonely road from blank page to published work. Resonance seeks to build community and extend the practice of creativity to writers everywhere.

Contributors (in order of appearance): Janet Fretter, Raoul Fernandes, Katherine McManus, Andrew Chesham, Christina Myers, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Reg Johanson, Kayla Czaga, Joseph Kakwinokanasum, Peter Babiak, John Whatley, JJ Lee, Leanne Dunic, Jónína Kirton, K. Ho, Claudia Cornwall, Paul Headrick, Rob Taylor, Joanne Arnott, George Bowering, Madeline Sonik, Joan B. Flood, Candie Tanaka, Maria Reva, Jen Sookfong Lee, Eileen Cook, Joanne Betzler, Janie Chang, Caroline Adderson, Aislinn Hunter, Betsy Warland, Wayde Compton, Claudia Casper, Stella Harvey, Laura Farina, Carleigh Baker, Brian Payton, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Kevin Spenst, Leigh Nash, Brian Kaufman, Andrew Steeves, and Brian Lam.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Awake in the World
• Birds Outside the Boardroom Windows
• Writing Obsessed: The Compulsion to Write and Staying True to a Story
• Write about Something Else: Purging Negative Thoughts
• In Praise of Daydreams and Laundry
• Movement as Sustenance for Your Writing Practice
• Grammar for Writers: It’s Not What You Think
• The Art of Rereading
• Memoir in the Eye of the Storm
• Write Your Grain of Sand
• The Familiar in the Familiar Essay
• For Memoirists
• Dangerous Territories: On Writing and Risk
• Writing from the Edges: We Are So Much More than Our Circumstances
• Autobiography of This Essay
• Mining for Details: The Motherlode of Non-fiction
• Bursting into Imagery: The Dangerous Poetic Present
• The Power of Adjacency
• A Moment for the Craft: Poetry
• How I Learned, Am Learning: An Essay
• Poetry in Prose — Crossing Genres or And Now a Word from Our Sponsors
• The Perfect Setting: Everywhere and Nowhere
• Art Inspired Writing
• A Character Is Not an Island: Creating Character Networks
• So You Want to Write about Race
• The Five Things Counselling Can Teach Us about Writing and Character Development
• Stepping into Perspective
• Point of View: The Struggle Is Real
• Character Creates Plot
• On Praxis
• Proximity in Our Writing, with Other Writers & with Our Readers
• The Rupture
• Synecdoche — Rewriting a Novel: How to Hold the Whole in Mind, While Rewriting the Part
• To Unpack or Not to Unpack — That Is the Question
• Ghosts in Elevators: How to Edit a Poem
• Life, Revised: Coaxing Autofiction Out of Tender Memories
• The Draft in the Drawer
• Giving Voice to Your Words
• Tooling around the Befores and Afters
• Publishing as Alchemy
• Out in the Deep End
• Notes on Publishing Literary Books
• The Stories We Tell
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• The Writers Studio