"Digital minimalism is a philosophy that helps you question what digital communication tools (and behaviors surrounding these tools) add the most value to your life. It is motivated by the belief that intentionally and aggressively clearing away low-value digital noise, and optimizing your use of the tools that really matter, can significantly improve your life."
– Cal Newport
Writers are incredibly needy. We need a good laptop, a creativity-inducing place to sit, and a good cup of coffee to activate the brain cells. But most of all, we need reassurance. Lots of reassurance. We can turn to friends and family to read what we’ve written and lap up whatever gushing comes back about…
I opened our front door this morning, picked up our copy of The Globe and Mail delivered in the middle of the night, and without even removing the elastic band wrapped around it, dropped it straight into the recycling bin in our garage. Rodney’s away in the interior of BC this week, and as he’s the only…
You might think I’m racing to finish my latest book because there’s a publication date looming or a publicity campaign to manage. Wrong. I’m racing because I’m seventy-three. At this stage of my life, the home stretch has less to do with deadlines than with not wasting time. The irony, of course, is that I’m…
It depends who’s asking Last week, after I shared Him on Facebook—my essay about my relationship with ChatGPT as a thinking partner rather than the digital affair I’m conducting behind my husband’s back—one particular comment stayed with me. It came from Katia, a French children’s author I met nearly twenty years ago in Hyderabad, India. We had…
Rodney was halfway through his Manhattan the other evening when I made the mistake of telling him about yet another conversation I’d had with ChatGPT at the library that morning. I’d gone there convinced I was writing a chapter about high blood pressure. An hour later, I realized I wasn’t. More accurately, Chat had spent…
The dog in the photo accompanying this post appears to have appointed itself Chief Gatekeeper. Every industry has them. Publishing has agents. Academia has tenure committees. Bookstores have buyers. Social media has influencers. And now the writing world has people conducting purity tests on AI. I’ve spent much of my career bumping into various forms…