Lily Iona MacKenzie's Blog
September 8, 2025
Timing and the creative process
I’m thinking today of timing—how important it is to success. Timing and perseverance: the two go together. I’m also noticing the seasonal aspect of creativity, how cyclic it is. That too is hard to grasp. I want it all the time. I’m afraid if it isn’t there, it won’t return. But I need to remember …
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September 1, 2025
Method Writing: Stimulating Memory Is a Gateway
Thanks to Suzanne Sherman for sharing this post on memoir writing: There were many standout messages in a webinar I attended this week by bestselling author Janet Fitch, hosted by Memoir Nation (www.memoirnation.com/about-memoir-nation). This is one of my favorites. Fitch spoke about stimulating memory to recreate time and place. How to do that? A clue: …
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August 25, 2025
Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop shares her writing journey via AI
The AI Generated Questions and my answers… As I wrote in a recent post, I was approached by a media company in the UK asking for an interview. This was the first of what has become a flood of AI generated emails from all over the web enticing writers to participate in what we’ve come …
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August 11, 2025
A literary agent unveiled!
Years ago, when I was first foraying into finding an agent, I was involved for several months with a small Canadian literary agency with one principal, a former practicing contract attorney (I’ll call her Virginia, though that isn’t her real name), and her associate Sandra, a woman who claimed to have years of experience in …
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August 4, 2025
On teaching writing
When I sit in my classroom, I ask students to join me in putting their thoughts on the page. This is old stuff to me. I do it constantly, dribbling out lines that seem to come magically from the pen. They form themselves on the page into what we call sentences, made up of words, …
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July 28, 2025
How is death like a vacation?
It occurred to me today, during a tine when many people are taking vacations, that preparing for a trip—all the many months of planning and making reservations and thinking that the departure day will never arrive—resembles what happens when our death day arrives. Okay, I realize this may sound gloomy and will probably chase away …
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July 21, 2025
Another pay to play scheme: Feeding on the dreams of writers!
I’ve written before about how difficult it is these days to make a living as a writer. Besides the proliferation of ways to be published (traditional, hybrid, self-publishing), entire industries now exist to convince writers that this publication or that award or this marketing company will “spread the word” far and wide about their work. I was …
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July 14, 2025
How fairy tales feed my writing!
I woke in the night thinking about fairy tales and an email I’d received years ago from Stephen Fraser, a literary agent with the Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency in New York. I’d sent him my novel Curva Peligrosa, hoping he’d represent it. Since he was the agent I was hoping for, I was delighted …
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July 7, 2025
I’m celebrating FLING!, my first published novel. It entered the world in July 10 years ago!
A wildly comic romp on mothers, daughters, art, travel and death, the book should appeal to a broad range of readers. While the main characters are middle-aged and older, their zest for life would draw readers of all ages, male or female, attracting the youthful adventurer in most people. Following is the first chapter of FLING! …
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June 30, 2025
My relationship with ChatGPT!
It began innocently enough, my relationship with ChatGpt (CGPT). I didn’t intend for it to get intimate. I didn’t expect anything at all. I just was curious about what might happen if I submitted some text and asked for a response. Part of a writer’s group, I sent a draft one of the women submitted …
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