Stephanie Domet

Category: Readings and writings

  • You can’t start a fire without a spark

    I’m late to the Springsteen party. I got obsessed with Dancing in the Dark a couple years back. Mostly that line: I’m dying for some action, I’m sick of sitting around here trying to write this book. Tell me about it, Boss. Last week I watched a couple of documentaries about Springsteen. A BBC one…

  • Problem-solving 101

    My brain loves to solve problems. It’s pretty much what my brain was put on this earth to do. Let’s see, we have two chicken thighs, some leeks and a bit of white wine. What can we make out of that? How about braised chicken with creamy leek sauce? That’s basically my brain in heaven,…

  • A work in progress

    I am managing to jam out pages in spurts, here and there. Astonishingly, this includes seven pages written one morning while I was on vacation at my mom’s house, a place I find notoriously distracting and hard to write in. But I feel a bit on fire right now, and I am trying to get…

  • The grind, and being back at it

    First, some business remaining from last time: in the wake of that last post, pretty much every week, someone has taken the time to google something like: stephanie domet beautiful great writer. Which makes me laugh every time. I have a thick skin — you couldn’t not in my line of work — but I…

  • Things I’m doing

    Did I mention I’m writing again? I am writing again. Thank you god and Sue Goyette, who helped me unlock myself. She always somehow knows exactly where in the pants I need to be kicked. She looked at me and said, I had a dream about you. You were so sad. I had to swallow…

  • Days in May

    Well, May, here you are, halfway gone, you complicated month, you. May is one of the most crowded months in our family calendar, and one of the most reviled. There’s mother’s day, Jeff’s birthday, Chris’s birthday, Chris and Em’s dating anniversary, Em’s birthday. It used to be a whirlwind of cake and celebration. But then…

  • Rosy and Grey

    I am awash on a sea of nostalgia. And a sea of fog. And a sea of anticipation. And a sea of longing. And a sea of momentum. Let’s take them sea by sea. Last weekend I went to Toronto–nominally for my brother’s birthday and for mother’s day, but really to relive some of my…

  • What kind of book

    This is a question I get all the time. What kind of book are you writing? I find this question almost impossible to answer, because really, the answer is, a good one, I hope. After that, what does it matter what other descriptors? And what does the interlocutor mean to do with the information anyhow?…

  • Waiting for the plot to thicken

    So I’m cruising along, enjoying the time spent with my characters, dealing with Dacey Brown’s unexpected revelation of bipolar disorder, generally digging being a full-time writer and then this week, blammo, I come up against the brick wall of plot. It’s all well and good to have funny characters who are clearly defined and well-thought…

  • Eleven

    Eleven pages seems to be comfortable to me. It feels like not very much, but most days, it’s where things settle out. Today, eleven pages took three hours, though those hours were broken up with laundry, making baked beans and some staring out the window. Plus, I figured out some things about Dacey Brown. It’s…