Love letters – And two award-winning Christmas stories

Hi Brian:

Just a quick note to let you know that I won 2nd prize this year in the 2010 Not So Cynical Christmas Writing Contest.

Once again, your workshops are amazing and thank you for bringing them to the various cities throughout Ontario.

Take care and Happy Holidays.
Judy J. Thompson

Note: You can read Judy’ story, “The Christmas Kiss,” here.
For information about submitting to The Cynic, see here.

Hi, Brian.

The week before the holidays, I'd scheduled myself to go into my daughter's kindergarten class to do some storytelling. I was planning to take a few books out of the library, learn the stories and then tell them Tuesday morning. Only one hitch: I couldn't find holiday stories that were exciting enough for a bunch of 4- and 5-year-old boys. Everything was too wordy or too sappy.

So ... I decided to write my own story.

It was fun to churn out a story to tell that would get the kids involved too (I had them honking like geese and yelling out new names for the reindeer), but as I was writing out the kid-friendly piece for me to memorize, I realized that, with some tweaking, it might make a good story for older kids and grownups too. And ... I'd just read that the Guelph Mercury's holiday story contest's deadline was that night by midnight. I worked on the piece until 11:55, sent it in - and found out a couple of days later that it was a winner!

For anyone who's interested in reading “Santa recovers after big, honking crash over Guelph,” see here.

Writing weekly in our class was so great. It really got me back into the swing of things....
Thanks to everyone in the class, and have a wonderful holiday.

Cheers,
Kira Vermond
writer and editor

To see more of Kira's work, check out her column for the CBC here.

If you’d like a weekly dose of writing and inspiration, join us for the “Exploring Creative Writing” class Tuesday afternoons in Burlington (details here). If you already have some writing pieces you’d like to work on, join the “Extreme Creative Writing” class on Wednesday afternoons in Oakville (details here) or Wednesday evenings in Mississauga (details here).

For information about all of my writing workshops and creative writing courses, see here.