The next monthly meeting of the Comox Valley Writers Society is on Thursday, November 15, 2018 in the library at Mark R. Isfeld Secondary School. (New location!)

Our guest speaker will be Judy LeBlanc and she will lead a workshop titled Toward Effortless Writing.

In describing her workshop, Judy says we don’t talk enough about process, how we find that elusive path into the heart of our work. Neither the magic of the muse nor the methodical adherence to rules of craft are the whole answer. What inspires us and keeps us writing? It is much to do with engaging creatively with the world while developing an awareness of who we are as writers.

The title of her talk is a phrase taken from Dorothea Brande’s 1934 tiny gem of a book about writing process, On Becoming a Writer. Judy draws from other writers as well, and there will be some exercises which will aid in establishing a writing practice that is fluid and dynamic. This is applicable to any genre of writing.

Judy LeBlanc’s short stories have been published in numerous literary journals including Filling Station, The Malahat Review, Prism, Antigonish Review and Grain. In 2017, she was longlisted for the Prism Short Fiction contest, and in 2015 she won the Islands Fiction contest. In 2012, she won the Antigonish Review’s Sheldon Currie Fiction contest and was longlisted for the CBC short story prize. She teaches creative writing at North Island College and is a founding member and former artistic director for the Fat Oyster Reading Series. Promise of Water, her collection of short stories, was published by Oolichan Press and released in fall, 2017.

Everyone is welcome. Meeting begins at 7 p.m.

Also, yearly memberships are due. The membership year runs from September 1 to August 31. You can pay by cheque or cash at the November meeting. Or you can pay via PayPal on our website. Go to https://cvwriterssociety.ca/membership/?target=join-now.