This Writer's Diary
November 1, 2025
With the end of October comes the end of daylight savings time here in Ontario (and much of North America). I’m not a fan of driving in the dark now, which means afer the clocks change I want to be home by about 5:30 pm. So a long day out, birding at Long Point on the northern shore of Lake Erie, needed to happen before the reversion to standard time.
I went with a friend: one of my oldest. I’ve known him since high school. We talked of writing – he’s a freelance journalist, poet, essayist, photographer, working on a novel – and birding. After a brief stop for an early lunch, we spent a chunk of time at a place I know where a little-used road ends at a creek. There used to be a bridge here, but it’s long gone. Woodland and marsh, and encroaching brambles and dogwoods on both sides of the track, now only a path down to the old bridge abutment. It was full of birds: a cacophony of red-winged blackbirds, joined by three rusty blackbirds, their rusty-gate-hinge call announcing their presence; one yellow-rumped warbler among many ruby-crowned kinglets; a Carolina wren; the rufous of a fox sparrow in a tangle of dogwood and reeds.
At the Big Creek National Wildlife Area a yellowlegs (greater? lesser? couldn’t tell in poor light) fed in the mud of a ditch. Overhead, a trio of sandhill cranes made their slow, stately way across the marsh to join a few others. We checked out a few other sites until 3 pm, when I judged I had just enough light on this clear-skied day to make it home before dark. A lovely day, away from email, social media, and tasks that needed doing, with good company.
In my writing life more writing-adjacent things still have been happening than actual writing, although I’ve made some progress there too. The workshop with Marion Adler for my writing groups went very well, all of us learning a lot – which was evident in our Open Mic Night this week. The quality of the readings, in terms of voice and pacing and expression, was notably better.
All three of the Arboretum Press books are out in the world now. The ‘official’ book launch for mine is this coming Thursday. I’m sharing the night with the author whose book I formatted; it’s really his night, for his first novel. I’m a guest who gets to read a story and sell (?) some books. But if you’re in the Guelph, Ontario region, you’re invited.
The historical novel edit is also complete. Just in time to begin a new project: I applied for a Writers’ Union of Canada microgrant to mentor an emerging author, specifically to look at the structure of her unpublished novel. A little to my surprise, the grant was awarded. So a week to clear my head of the previous projects, get the book launch and an upcoming book fair out of the way, and I’ll start on that.
In An Unwise Prince, I’ve finished Kirt’s chapters for now, and have moved on to the youngest of my point-of-view characters, Audun. When I left Audun some weeks ago, he’d been kidnapped, destined to become an unwilling soldier. Now he’s just learning what that entails.
I’ve also been doing some plot rethinking, after learning of Sigurd of Norway’s involvement in the Crusades. There are no religious crusades in my fictional world (because there are no organized or state religions) but there is a concerted, multi-country effort to save books and scrolls from destruction by an invading force with a history of burning libraries. My ‘Scandinavian’ analogue country wasn’t involved in this originally, but now I want to rethink it.
I gave myself another couple of weeks of reading good, undemanding but enjoyable stores: two Joanna Trollopes (both re-reads) and Jo Jo Moyes’ The Giver of Stars. But now I have four new books to dive into, and I’ve begun with the first-arrived: Patrick Laurie’s Native: Life in a Vanishing Landscape. This is a book I have to discipline myself not to inhale. He writes beautifully, but it’s a book that need contemplating, not devouring.
The music this week, in honour of my trip to Long Point, is the (defunct) Ontario folk group Tanglefoot, and the true story of ‘The Angel of Long Point’:
Writer graphic by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
Book graphic by Colleen ODell from Pixabay
Music graphic by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
Read my fiction in my Substack Story Archive
Find my historical fantasy/alternate world books at https://scarletferret.com/authors/marian-l-thorpe
or all my books via: https://arboretumpress.com/the-books-of-marian-l-thorpe/