Why do people drink?
I go to all kinds of social functions and I swear that no one who drinks has a better time than me, and yet I don’t touch the stuff.
I know I can’t tell for sure because I’m not them, but it sure seems that way.
Yesterday it was a business type of picnic. [...]

Everyone should watch a movie in a cramped airline seat, with a six or four inch monitor, however big it is, and with lousy ear plugs. That way, they can really tell if a movie is any good.
I always tend to watch movies after the hype has died down somewhat.
I wasn’t very curious about Avatar. [...]

I always used to wonder why God seemed to put so much emphasis in the Quran on sending a messenger to a people from among their own people.
It’s repeated over and over again.
I thought, what’s the big deal if an outsider were to come and point out what they were doing wrong? After finishing Sold [...]

There’s a line in Patricia McCormick’s book Sold where the mother says any man is better than none.
It’s an interesting line because there are indeed some women who feel that way.
In fact in writing Wanting Mor, I thought the stepmother was a bit like that too. But actually my stepmother is much more calculating than [...]

It was a National Book Award finalist but it’s written in free verse!
Gosh I hate free verse novels.
They feel like the writer cheated. They’res kind of artsy fartsy.
I think the first one I read was Kiss the Dust. It was good but I think the format is annoying. I mean why couldn’t she just set [...]

Can’t figure out the right consonants and vowel mix that perfectly imitates the groans coming out of me.
Woke up with a sore throat. Took my Cold Fx but sometimes you just have to be sick I guess.
Got through the day without sneezing too much, it hit hardest when I got home.
Bought three books at the [...]

Got two chapters revised today when I thought I’d only, at most, get one.
But somehow, after I finished putting this chapter into the eyes of the other character, I still had some stamina left, and I got started in on the next.
It wasn’t that hard. Just really changing tenses, first person present into third person point [...]

Sometimes, when I dwell on it, I can’t help cringing about the way I behaved when I was first starting out.
And sometimes, when I’m feeling generous, I don’t even blame that instructor for asking me to leave that writing workshop I’d paid to join.
I made all the typical newbie mistakes. Probably every single one of [...]

I’m going to be interviewed on Shelagh Rogers radio show The Next Chapter tomorrow. It’s on CBC, which stands for Canadian Broadcasting Company and is national.
It’s not the first time I’ve been on her show.
But the first time was a different show. Years ago, when she was host of Sounds like Canada she was doing a piece [...]

I subscribe to an email newsletter from a group called CAIR which stands for Council on American Islamic Relations. They’re a Muslim advocacy group and they field all kinds of issues that arise with regards to problems Muslims face in America.
Most of them have to do with women who are fired for wearing the hijab, [...]