introspection

What Am I Doing Here?

a manicured green lawn with a low staircase leading to a Victorian stone mansion with a peaked tile roof; people are sitting on the grass on blankets and in folding chairs and someone at the base of the stairs is speaking — Well, on Canada Day I was attending “As You Like It” at Craigdarroch Castle but lets not be too literal!

The blessing and curse of being a writer in the 21st century is that there are endless places to publish things. Whereas in the 20th century you needed to petition the few businesses which owned the kinds of presses that could make a few hundred thousand copies of a paperback to get your writing in stores, today everyone has a printing press in their pocket. This has been catastrophic for the ability to get paid for writing, but rather nice for the ability to get paid for a comic strip. There are so many options, each with advantages and disadvantages, that Jane Friedman felt it necessary to write an essay on the major paths to book publishing.

The Rewards of Scholarship

Bottoms up! A prize bottle of whiskey. There is an old joke that most of the people who will ever read your dissertation are in the room when you defend it (and that not all the examiners will be among them). I recently received a royalty cheque from ProQuest for the princely sum of CAD... Continue reading: The Rewards of Scholarship