The long game: rob mclennan on evolving as a writer through decades of daily practice

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, rob's most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026), and the

anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta. You can also find rob at his author page and at Bluesky. In this interview, rob looks at rob mclennan on evolving as a writer through decades of daily practice and why failure is a good teacher for writers.

Evolving as a writer through decades of daily practice

Canadian author rob mclennan

OCW: Has your writing evolved over the years? If so, how? Through writing experience? Reading a lot? Writing courses or communities? A combination, or something else?

RM: I’ve been writing full-time since the early 1990s, so I would say daily practice is the mechanism through which my work has best evolved. Writing is essentially a muscle, and the more you work it the stronger it gets. Back in the 1990s, sitting in my daily writing corner of a Bank Street Dunkin’ Donuts, I would rewrite drafts of poems or short stories into the dozens, whereas much of that process, since those early days, has long been internalized. I scratch, I sketch, I carve, but use up far less paper than I once did. I constantly move phrases around or erase words, whether through the notebook in a coffeeshop or pub, or via laptop screen at my writing desk.

If, through the compositional process, I can’t “see” a piece of writing anymore, I often have to print it out and sit down with it, moving further bits around and adding, subtracting. There are still times that a piece of writing might circle completion across five or ten or twenty printed drafts, each with its own scribbled addition, occasionally within the scope of a single afternoon. I can feel when completion is close.

Looking back at earlier work, I would say my writing is far denser, less straightforward and more complex than it was across those early years. Many of the same thematic touchstones might still emerge, whether family, home and my immediate, but one would hope the writing more crafted, mature. I’ll let the future essay writers delve more deeply into that question. They’ll be out there, won’t they?

From library stacks to coffee shops: A foundation in Canadian writing and culture

But yes, I read an enormous amount. I spent much of the 1990s buried in the stacks of contemporary Canadian poetry over at the University of Ottawa’s Morisset Library, attempting to learn as much as I could about what had come before me. To understand that foundation of Canadian writing and publishing, going back to the beginning of the 1960s. I also started book reviewing in 1993, deliberately seeking a steady stream of new and newly-published material. Within a year, I was writing a column for the local entertainment weekly, which provided me even further material as it appeared. Writing is as much study as muscle, and one needs to understand the context in which one works. Write of the world in which you live, as Gertrude Stein offered. Read history, catch the news, engage with culture.

I was raised on a dairy farm, so working within and with a community has always been essential for my thinking. I don’t understand how one could continue to work, productively and properly, without engaging one’s community (however that might look).

On narrative surprise, failure, and the culture of theft

OCW: Are you a plotter or a pantser?

I’ve never cared for plotting out stories or novels or poems. I would rather be surprised as to where the narrative lands.

OCW: What advice/guidance would you give to writers?

RM: Read widely. Be curious. Find your people. Don’t be afraid to fail (that’s where one learns best, honestly). Keep going. Occasionally attempt something that scares you. Culture rewards the long game.

OCW: Do you see generative AI as a threat or benefit to writers?

RM: It is theft, pure and simple.

OCW: Do you edit as you write, or write and edit later?

RM: All of the above, really. I’m constantly moving things around as pieces emerge. Editing is an essential part of writing.