My Writing Practice (and why I plan to give away my next book).

Over a decade ago, I was taken to the ancestral home of British playwright George Bernard Shaw. There, tucked away in the garden, was his writing hut. Ever since that visit, I’ve wanted one of my own. Like Shaw, I want to escape the noise of a troubled world. My own hut would serve as de facto headquarters of my writing practice.

As a child, the word practice was only used as a verb and referred to one thing: the piano. I was notoriously lax (and incredibly dishonest) about how much I played between lessons. To my piano teacher, I would claim hours of so‑called practice, even though it was obvious from the opening bars of many lessons that I was fibbing.

Now that I’ve been a writer for well over fifty years, I’m haunted by how easy it was to lie about practising the piano when it’s downright impossible to do the same with writing. I could fake my way through a piano lesson. But without sitting down to write–the essence of a committed writing practice–nothing get produced on the page, not even a blog post like this one, never mind a full‑length book.

Writing guru Natalie Goldberg has long understood this. A writing practice, she tells her readers, is about showing up and not waiting for inspiration to grant permission. There comes a point, she says, when you have to stop talking about writing and simply sit down and do it. Years ago, I distilled her words into a sign to hang over my desk:

“In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.”

That’s still the point of my own writing practice. It motivates me to believe that something worthwhile may emerge if I keep returning to it, day after day. 

When I was knee‑deep in my career, no writing meant no income. That kind of stress certainly motivates the mind. But it’s different for me now. No writing means not gaining the benefit from firing up my cognition and aging brain cells. Without committing to my practice, I would also lose my purposeful mornings at the library, my local equivalent of a writing hut in North Vancouver. Eventually, I would have produced neither a new book nor essays for this blog.

My writing practice has now morphed from career strategy to sanity-and-brain-saver. Never mind if only three people actually read the words I’ve laboured over. (All right, sometimes I get four readers and maybe someone will like it when I share on Facebook.) It gives me exactly what I need.

This has become clearer over the past few months. During our winter sojourn in Costa Rica, I retreated each morning to a small writing space for a few hours. Since returning to Canada, I’ve continued the routine, with a few flourishes unavailable to me in San Vito: a latte and a good book while waiting for the library to open before I quietly settle in to write.

All of these small, daily rituals contribute to what I hope will eventually emerge from my practice: a funny new book called Dead is the New Old: A wickedly honest memoir about aging.

Naturally, I still want people to read what I’ve written. That motivation hasn’t vanished just because I am in my seventies. But now, I have far less mental energy for the effort required to push a book into an oversaturated market that tends to favour voices much younger than mine and involves a boat load of technology.

I learned this the hard way from publishing my previous memoir, The Carry‑On Imperative: A Memoir of Travel, Reinvention & Giving Back. At times, it felt as though I were shouting into the void, trying to attract readers to a book that perhaps should have been titled, as my brother Laurie recently suggested in a conversation about book marketing, Memoirs of a Nobody. 

So what do I do with this daily practice now that I’m no longer interested in a traditional publishing campaign?

Why not simply give the book away?

Once that question popped into my mind, it felt less radical than it sounds. In some ways, it seems the most direct path between my work and the reader I’m writing for. No intermediaries, no performance metrics, no attempt to convince people to read my memoir. Just writing that comes out of a daily practice, gathered over time, shaped into a book, and then offered freely to anyone who might want it.

So that’s exactly what I’m now planning to do.

I will finish the manuscript, maybe by the fall, maybe by Christmas. I’ll work with my long‑time copy editor, who has edited several of my previous books, to make it as clear and readable as I can. Then I’ll turn it into a simple e-book. When it’s ready, I’ll make it available to my newsletter subscribers as a free, shareable download, and also post a link on my social channels.

No launch. No sales push. No tech meltdowns trying to figure out how Amazon buying links work. In short, no bat shit crazy book drama. I’m calmer already.

If you choose to read Dead is the New Old, you’ll be keeping me company in this season of my life where the practice matters more than the performance. If you choose to share it with someone, I will consider that a bonus. Giving my work away feels like the most honest way I know to tell people I’m still here, still paying attention to the world and, hopefully, still able to make readers laugh out loud.

Watch this space. It’s where I’ll be keeping track of that work as it unfolds, one quiet morning at a time.