Blog

Filter by:

Limit to posts where the title matches:
Limit to posts where the date of the blog post:
Date range
Limit to posts tagged with one or more of:
Limit to posts where the audience is one or more of:
Thursday, April 9, 2026

AI & the Writing Community

As a student within the humanities studying Professional and Creative Writing, the future can be uncertain and frightening. The basis of this uncertainty stems from a suspect that has become a staple in conversations throughout academia and the larger world itself: Artificial Intelligence. 

For the past two months, I have been working at The Writing and Communication Centre here at UW and I have been reminded of one of the main pillars of writing: community! Sharing written works, from lab reports to poetry, promotes discussion, evokes feelings, and leads to inspiration to write more. Even at an individual level— almost all visitors have told me they do write for themselves in private— writing acts as an introspective, personal experience that helps one realize their own voice. This is especially true for free writing. This act, one which I partake in, helps build the confidence to go forth and join that greater writing community. Building confidence in your own work will, in turn, help you develop resilience to criticism when sharing it with others and receiving feedback.

Why is creativity so elusive? We see artists and poets and marvel agape at their powers of creation, but in truth creativity is a learned thing – a practice of insight and introspection. You too have the potential to produce art almost as good as the greats, if only you look in the right places. It doesn’t matter that no one’s listening.

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

A writer's mind: visit today!

Visit the place where the magic begins and the fun never ends. Every day is a nail-biting adventure inside A WRITER'S MIND™!

Breath-taking beauty awaits you in this rainbow-land of fantastic ideas and colour-splashed coping strategies. Consider how grand it might be to pitch-tent upon the blissful symbolic plains of the subconscious.

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Free Writing

In the last few weeks I’ve been listening to the Mortified podcast, which features adults reading their adolescent diaries in front of a live audience, with no exaggeration, no embellishment, “just god-given awkwardness”. Every episode is guaranteed to produce cringing smiles.

I kept a diary of my own for six years, running from grade nine through my first year of university.

I did a co-op term as a technical writer at a high tech company here in Waterloo.

The job of a technical writer varies from company to company, but essentially it involves writing text that allows customers to understand how to use technology. In my case I was documenting software changes, and the process went something like this:

Friday, October 30, 2015

New! Improved?

During my undergraduate years at the University of Toronto, I took a class on a Roman poet named Catullus. For a long semester I laboured over his poetry, trying to wrestle his sophisticated Latin phrases into easy English.  From all the hundreds of lines of his poetry that I worked on, one word stands out in my memory: palmulas.

Did you miss attending our Open House on September 16? You missed some great food, excellent information, and having some fun with words. We asked our visitors to tell us about their writing habits on our Writing Centre mural. Below are some samples of what was written.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Welcome to the UWaterloo Writing Centre!

This is our blog – welcome. We are literally buzzing in our seats anticipating all of the writing we will have to do to keep everything here looking fresh. Our co-ops are English professionals so they don’t mind.