Sylvia McNicoll's Blog, page 26
October 1, 2010
Writing Lakeshore Public School
Wednesday is dialogue day. Middle of the week, by now students might be tired of writing stories. They've done description and character so they need something light and fun. So I get them to write scripts and act them out. The grade 5/6s at Lakeshore were great script writers and wonderful actors. We laughed a lot and had a great time.
August 29, 2010
Seven reasons not to vanity google
While trying to find a good Internet address to send people to view my Last Chance for Paris trailer, I inexplicably became hooked into reading about myself, this entailed googling my own name in quotation marks: "Sylvia McNicoll"
The results weren't pretty. First of all I discovered that on Boomer Counter they had a tribute already for me in case I died. On the good side, the content providers insisted I was still alive.
Then I saw that there was another Sylvia McNicoll in Edinburough...
The results weren't pretty. First of all I discovered that on Boomer Counter they had a tribute already for me in case I died. On the good side, the content providers insisted I was still alive.
Then I saw that there was another Sylvia McNicoll in Edinburough...
August 2, 2010
Filming the trailer of Last Chance for Paris
It's always fun when the McNicolls + Filipowiczs get creative together. Here we all return to Lowville Park to film the trailer of Last Chance for Paris. While my husband Bob and I have travelled over eight times to Alberta to research the series, the cover photo for the novel was shot at Lowville by Bob due to time and budgetary issues. The model with , what a cooincidence, the same tatoo as my main character Zanna, daughter Robin posed wading into the stream. In the book she falls in th...
June 28, 2010
Exercising Creativity
This wasn't my idea. As far as I know Arthur Slade (author of The Hunchback Assignments) first started the trend and I wanted to get on board immediately. Only treadmills cost money and Arthur is ten years younger than I am. But then Gillian Chan (author of The Turning) appeared on CBC also using a treadmill while writing. She's the same age as I am and has similar joint issues.
Coincidentally Canadian Tire had a sale offering about 50% off on a Temp 621 T which I knew would work as Art...
June 11, 2010
Digital Camera--my favourite writing tool
For Today's Parent Toronto, I was invited to a photo tutorial at Riverdale and then given the camera to keep! Hurray! These two photos are taken on my year old Sony. I love digitals for taking notes on fiction and non fiction projects. Helps my description immensely. I take photos of food,menus, and decor, for restaurant reviews. It's my visual memory.
I went mostly because I'd never been to Riverdale Farm before. I've written about it which always feels slightly fraudulent. We were...
I went mostly because I'd never been to Riverdale Farm before. I've written about it which always feels slightly fraudulent. We were...
June 10, 2010
Recouping from the holiday.
The first few days back from Alaska and in between blowing my nose from an airplane cold, I wrote like crazy trying to sort out the sites of Toronto. I checked websites, talked to people, looked over event calendars, asked Today's Parent people for some KidSummer sites, double checked neighborhoods and hours and prices, cut hours and prices because of space issues.Readers don't realize how much work is behind an article, sadly publishers don't either. You only see the end result, you don't ...
May 27, 2010
Back from Alaska
No internet for me on the Coral Princess, well I did pay for 15 minutes to wish my son a happy birthday but otherwise I un-addicted myself. It helped that I forgot my camera-downloading cord at home. I hate blogging without an image. The surprise gift on the cruise was an upgrade to balcony which meant not stop beauty from my bedroom window. Listening to silence as we drifted through Glacier Bay was inspiring and eerie. Immediately below is a small iceberg broken from Mendenhall Glacier ...
May 9, 2010
On the trail of the Feature
I inherited a "staycation" feature from my fellow editor who became too busy. I love Toronto and always feel I should get to know it better so I started off on Harry the Hippo, an amphibious bus tour. Leanne, the tour guide, gave random trivia about Toronto like that the Royal Bank Building has $90 worth of gold dust in every window. No wonder bank charges are so high! The cool factor of course was when Harry splashed into the water off Ontario Place
We were pretty cold after our hour and ...
We were pretty cold after our hour and ...
May 4, 2010
Mining for Magazine Stories
My writing job consists of three parts, one: writing novels which I consider the main part, two:talking about writing with students, there by exciting them to read and write and three: writing and editing for Today's Parent Toronto. All of these jobs crisscross in lots of fun ways.I visited Science North while I was teaching at Alexander Public School a couple of years ago with the idea of writing a travel feature on Sudbury and their great museums and instead wrote Slam Dunk Robot, a...
Violet's Celebration
On April 24th Gisela Sherman (another great writer and good friend) hosted a welcoming celebration for my new grandaughter Violet Vivien McNicoll. Because the ladies who came seemed so much like fairy godmothers to Violet, I asked them each to write out their wishes for her, hoping that no 13th fairy would show. Now there is at least one wish missing so I hope that "fairy" will write me theirs so it is not lost for all time. Also the painting wish needs to be identified.
Because most of t...
