Events & Workshops

SHAKE IT OFF: How to fail better, tame the inevitable distractions and increase your writing output 

 

“Write like a miner trapped under a fallen roof.” — Balzac 

 

This Shake it Off webinar will give your writing practice a kick-start. It covers the typical challenges and obstacles you’ll encounter as you wrestle with your writing practice. 

Writing is a mental game. It challenges its adherents on every level: daily distractions, constant rejection, a demanding ego, wavering commitment, holding fast to truth under outside pressure, navigating difficult subject matter, preventing burnout, tackling comparison, ignoring criticism and downplaying praise and meeting a lack of self-discipline head-on. 

 

To register for this online event, please visit https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-naShdOhQoyMwWjLxq62sQ

 

About this event:

 

First Draft: Conversations on Writing is an online talk series that dives into themes that affect our writing lives. Writing helps us to understand things and to communicate these findings to our audience, even if our audience is ourselves. Sometimes we are driven by these themes, other times they’re the things that hold us back – what we learn through the process can be revolutionary. The quest to be understood unifies all writers.

 

This event features a 15-minute talk presented by Patricia Dawn Robertson. Following the talk is an interview conversation with Deana Driver to dig deeper into the event theme.

 

Participants are welcome to submit questions in advance of the event to swgevents@skwriter.com.

 

Please be mindful of your time zone as all times listed are Saskatchewan time. Find your time zone here: https://dateful.com/time-zone-converter

 

Accessibility measures in this event:

• Live auto -captions through Zoom during the live event
• (TBD) A read-along copy of the presenters talk available during the live event only
• Presenter self-descriptions
• This event will be recorded, captioned, and made available for 30 days (until December 7, 2025) on the SWG YouTube channel following the event: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRAIIcrpQW0NcY6ZM0GGSzw
• Transcript of the event available upon request

 

Presenter

 

It’s been almost three decades since freelance writer and independent journalist Patricia Dawn Robertson held down a straight job. Robertson’s personal essays have appeared in Reader’s Digest, The Walrus, Broadview, Canadian Living, Best Health, The Christian Science Monitor, The Globe and Mail Books and the Women’s Review of Books. Robertson’s memoir, Media Brat: A Gen-X Memoir, was released in April 2025. It’s available for purchase at MeatDrawBooks.com.  She lives in a 1925 Eaton’s house in Wakaw, Saskatchewan, with her writer/editor spouse, D. Grant Black. To fend off the perils of submission rejection, Robertson power-weeds and tends to her two spoiled Siberian Forest Cats.

 

 

Host

 

Deana Driver is an award-winning author, editor, book publisher, and retired journalist. Deana wrote and co-published her first two books in 2001 and 2006. In 2008, she founded DriverWorks Ink after numerous other Saskatchewan writers requested her editing, layout design, and book publishing assistance. Deana has since written four more books and published or co-published more than 90 books in print and/or e-book formats, written by Western Canadian writers, including herself. Her passion is sharing true stories that can help readers lead better lives. She publishes nonfiction biographies and anthologies, kids’ historical fiction, rural humour, and spiritual healing books. 

 

 

 

 

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Funding provided by:

 

                    

 

In proud partnership with: