Jo-Anne Richard’s blog

I’ve been having that feeling again. The sense that you exist on another plane from other people. That there’s no one on earth who can truly understand where you are right now. For the longest [...]

Our Author Q and A series celebrates All About Writing community members. We hope this blog will inspire you to write, help motivate you to get to the finish line, provide tips and tricks about [...]

Our Author Q and A series celebrates All About Writing community members. We hope this blog will help motivate you to get to the finish line, offer support to the authors (please buy their [...]

Don’t feel guilty for focusing on your creative needs – your life may depend upon it My mother was raised a Calvinist, so I was taught that time taken for myself was indulgent, a selfish waste of [...]

I love being able to do this – it’s like offering you a magic carpet, and transforming you into a Venetian writer, practising your craft in a 16th century palazzo. Now in its eighth year, our [...]

There’s a flat, yellow rock I swim out into the ocean to touch each day. It’s where I acknowledge what I have, give thanks … and beg favours of the creative muses. I’ve always been a bit [...]

How did we get to December? Surely it was only last week that the other Joanne (Hichens) and I were swimming at sunrise beneath the towering cliffs of the Tradouw Valley. And warming up over a [...]

I wasn’t looking forward to Venice. I know – sacrilege, right? I wondered at myself. What did it say about me? Did it mean I was tired of life, as Samuel Johnson once said of London? But on our [...]

Holidays should present you with time to do exactly what you please and concentrate on yourself, but they seldom do.   Writing holidays are different. These provide a time out of time for you [...]

Holidays should present you with time to do exactly what you please and concentrate on yourself, but they seldom do.   Writing holidays are different. These provide a time out of time for you [...]

There’s often a fine balance between writing and procrastinating, particularly at the start of a writing project. I know many of you are thinking of starting a serious writing project this year. [...]

“Watching birds takes you out of yourself. It’s a flow state. Writing ideas come in sideways during such states. So perhaps it is a form of meditation.” That’s Margaret Atwood’s form of embracing [...]