February 2026

Some of my favourite writing workshops have been with very young writers at elementary schools. The enthusiasm and energy are unmatched, and the whimsical ideas that flow (quickly and mightily) are dazzling. Getting the chance to work with young creators is deeply inspiring and has certainly made me a better writing coach—as has a certain walrus. Here’s how.

Several years ago, I teamed up with an extremely talented and accomplished artist by the name of Anita Lebeau to create a workshop for schools called “Scraphic Novels” —a mash-up of creative writing, visual storytelling, and crafting techniques. We combined my step-by-step creative writing method and Anita’s expertise in visual storytelling and inspired our young creators to make their very own mixed media storybooks. It was as fun, colourful and cool as it sounds and we co-taught the whole program, which meant that on the days where Anita was teaching the arts and crafts portion, I was still on the scene to help out.

Which brings me to the walrus.

During one of our sessions as I circulated around the art space, a third grade girl summoned me to her side with a request for help.

“Can you show me how to draw a walrus?” she asked, showing me the text of her whimsical walrus-based story.

Me, draw a walrus? went my thought process immediately.  At best, it will end up looking like a rotten banana! It’s possible that I chuckled out loud (I certainly did inside). But as I opened my mouth, a funny thing happened. I heard the sentence I was about to utter before I spoke, and I stopped myself—thank goodness.

The instantly-regrettable thing I was about to say was: “Let’s find Anita. I’m not an artist.”

Sounds reasonable, right? Except that every day for the past week, I had been hammering home to the students what I truly believe: if you’re engaging the writing process, you’re a writer already.  I had been urging them to take risks, make mistakes, and push on with their ideas however fledgling. I’d been encouraging them all to abandon the idea that there were “writers” and ”non-writers” among their peers. We were all working on story writing, so we were all writers—full stop.

How then could I let myself say “I’m not an artist” to this brave, creative hard-working young writer/artist in front of me? I’ve encouraged scores of people to declare themselves “writers already”—it’s one of the first concepts in my book The One Week Writing Workshop. Embracing your writer status even at the very beginning of the process is a huge boost of confidence and fuel for the long writing journey ahead. You don’t have to “wait until”, because you “already are“. With that identity crisis out of the way, you can simply keep to the business of keeping at it.

The trouble is, I’d been cheering on writers for so long, I’d forgotten how vulnerable it can feel to declare yourself to be something when you’re measuring yourself against things you haven’t yet completed or experienced. Which is exactly what I was doing with my very minimal relationship to art.

The walrus moment was my chance to honour the idea that the process is what counts, in art just as in writing. So, instead of saying I’m not an artist, I said something like this to the student: “Okay—why don’t you show me your walrus sketch? Then I’ll show you how I might draw it.” And that’s what we did. We worked together, going back and forth as we sketched a few variations on the mighty walrus. We played with tusk placement. We debated how long the whiskers should be. We giggled at some of our attempts. We oohed and ahhed at others. We had an artistic experience together (one we would have missed out on if I had acted like we needed expert supervision and approval  just to get started!)

Eventually we called upon Anita. We invited her into our process as the more experienced artist in our group in order to seek her advice. Just because we were artists and engaging the process didn’t mean we knew everything—hardly! But we didn’t deny ourselves the opportunity to plunge in and engage the artistic process ourselves just because we weren’t already experts—and that’s the whole point.

I’m relieved that I had the presence of mind to show that lovely student that it’s not only the experts who have the right to create. It reinforced my belief in what I’ve been telling other writers for years (You’re a writer already! Go for it!)…and it helped me to do so with a greater understanding of how it feels to hear it (and actually do it!). I’m a much better writing coach for it. 🙂

So this is how I want anyone taking my writing workshops to feel about creative writing: You are a writer already, even though you may have lots to learn. Don’t let that stop you from engaging the process!

While it still sounds a little funny coming out of my mouth, I’m going to declare right now to the universe that I AM AN ARTIST. I even have my attempts at a cartoon walrus to show it.