Do you read the fine print? I read everything, and I love that some creative types reward people like me. For example: Andy Wibbels offers to send his blog posts by e-mail, and when he does, it has this note at the bottom: “All Rights Reserved. Please forward to friends, colleagues, enemies and groupies. I [...]
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Reaching for a word II
I’ve written before about the delightful column in The Atlantic where Barbara Wallraff posts reader requests (and ideas) for words that don’t exist but should. I didn’t realize that she also has a book called Word Fugitives until my husband, knowing what a word nerd I am, got it for my birthday. Ms. Wallraff describes [...]
Mindless diversions
It’s funny how blogging is the first casualty when I’m up to my eyeballs in work. In the meantime, here are a few diversions: “Insanely interesting facts” from the Mental Floss “amazing fact generator”: http://www.mentalfloss.com/amazingfactgenerator/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2008-06-20&utm_content=Amazing-Fact-Generator. For example, every year since 1971, Nova Scotia has sent a giant evergreen to Massachusetts as thanks for sending aid [...]
Lesson learned from Dancing
You might think that watching Dancing with the Stars has precious little to do with writing. But as well as admiring the dancing (and watching in disbelief that Cloris Leachman is still hanging on), I took away after Monday’s show a reminder that applies to writing. You could sum it up as “It’s not all [...]
Have you heard of ‘tuckerized’?
Astrologers who find new stars get their discoveries named after them; so do researchers identifying new diseases. Did you know that there is at least one writer who has been similarly recognized, although for a practice rather than a discovery? I had never heard the term “tuckerization” before I encountered it reading the Mental Floss [...]
Blog Action Day +1
Yesterday was Blog Action Day, where more than 9,000 bloggers had signed up to “raise awareness, initiate action and shake the web” by discussing poverty. High housing costs often mean a decision between paying the rent and eating properly. In my community, there is a food drive going on this weekend. Volunteers dropped off bags [...]
Gee, thanks, Stevie
I’m mad at Stephen Harper. Yes, Canada’s newly re-elected Prime Minister is still in the saddle after a useless election that he called, thinking he could turn a minority government into a majority. Although he did gain 16 more seats, he was 12 shy of the majority he wanted. When he called this election, a [...]
Start your glory file
Here’s a secret about a lot of writers. We have fragile egos. We crave positive feedback, and when we don’t get much (or any), we’re often struck by a feeling of “I’m not as good as [fill in name of admired author here].” I have a Gary Larson cartoon above my desk that captures that [...]
Giving thanks
Happy Thanksgiving, Canada! Today, as always, I am thankful for my family and friends. I’m thankful for my smart, funny and handsome husband and two smart, funny, handsome sons (no bias here!). I’m thankful that our mortgage is paid off and my husband and I are both working, so watching our investments drop is painful [...]
Prize-winning odd titles
This spring, I posted about the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year. I recently found out that The Bookseller has crowned the Diagram of Diagrams, bestowing the title of Oddest Book Title among all the winners of the past 30 years. You may be surprised to find that Bombproof your Horse and [...]