Bankrupt news

Bizarre story about writers and a new magazine on the early editions of CBC Radio's "World Report" today. (I assume it was dropped from later editions, because it's not part of the latest show available online.)

The story began with the assertion that these are tough times for writers. Well, maybe. Certainly they are tough times for journalists, whose papers are being shut down all over the place. I've rarely been busier than I am now -- and I know plenty of other writers who aren't hurting either.

So let's assume the story means these are tough times for staff journalists.

It then goes on to say that there's a new magazine from Vancouver that has sprung up to give emerging writers the opportunity to publish. It's called Bankrupt, and -- here's the hook, I guess -- it doesn't pay contributors.

Now, wait a minute. Did the story mean these are tough times for literary writers? Times are always tough for literary writers.

A look at the magazine's website indicates that it's mission is "showcasing the latest stories from Vancouver writers."

The magazine launched about six weeks ago.

I'm trying to figure out how any of this is national news.

• Timely? Magazine launched six weeks ago.

• Innovative? Writers have been putting up with the same old crap ("We don't pay but you get exposure" forever.)

• National in scope? It's an online Vancouver litmag.

• Recession? Yes, I guess this is it. The mag is called Bankrupt, and we are in a recession.
  

Therefore it is news that a) a little online journal with a clever name has launched, doing the same thing little online journals have always done, and b) it features emerging literary writers -- many of whom not only don't mind being kicked but will line up, ask you to kick them and then thank you for it. In any kind of economy.

The only retailer that matters?

This is a weird sentence, from a Marina Jiménez story on Mexico City in today's Globe and Mail:

Parks are closed and plazas empty. Malls, museums, cinemas and shops are shuttered - as well as most restaurants and cafés, including some of the country's 259 Starbucks outlets.

Short Twitter fiction

My story on writers creating short fiction on Twitter is online at The Globe and Mail. 

It features interviews with Arjun Basu, and Clare Bell (author of the Ratha series), and also links to Jason Camlot (aka jcsped) and Darryl Parker (aka Twirled View).

Basu, writes super-short stories. He calls them twisters, and they run exactly 140 characters. He's got more than 500 so far, and has attracted the interest of an agent who, he says, is confident he can get him a book deal.

Bell's a former engineer who used to race an electric Porsche -- now there's something you won't find on most writer CVs. She's posting a novelette in tweets, as of March 14, and also archiving the pieces for readers who are jumping into the story in the middle.

Attention English teachers

Want to talk about poor metaphorse? Introducing Ms. Beyoncé Knowles, and her song "Single Ladies":

"Cause if you liked it then, you should have put a ring on it."

If he liked her finger? Or have engagement and wedding rings migrated to a new part of women's anatomy? 

Worst cutesy church sign so far

The local Anglican church is in a lovely old building, surrounded by a graveyard, and with the ocean nearby.

Unfortunately, they also have a sign on which they not only place times of worship, but also those cutesy slogans mainline Protestant churches seem so enamoured of. You know the kind: "What's missing in this ch__ch?"(answer: "u r"). There's actually a great post on the subject of these types of signs on the Church Marketing Sucks blog.

I am not a church-goer, so I read the signs with a vague, idle interest. But one a few weeks ago almost had me hitting the brakes as I drove by. It said, "Jesus is my Prozac." The local Anglicans are clearly not the first church to have thought up this gem, but that doesn't excuse its sheer awfulness.

Where to begin?

I can't really think of a more limp, milquetoast, bland approach to religion than to compare Jesus to Prozac. Is the Anglican church a happy pill? Did Jesus die on the cross to relieve our symptoms of depression? Do depressed people need church to pick them up? Are people who take Prozac being made to feel they are inadequate, and they should be in church instead? Will quitting the church potentially make you suicidal?

It's an awful, awful analogy.

If this is the best the Anglicans and their like can offer, no wonder the fundamentalist churches are booming.

Workshop on Interviewing, May 10

On May 10, I'm offering a 1.5 hour workshop on interviewing, through the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia.

Here's the description:

Get What You Need: The Interview
An hour and a half with Philip Moscovitch
1:15 to 2:45

Nothing can bring on a case of the jitters like having to interview someone. You may only have one chance to get the information you need. This session will consider the following interviewing questions and techniques: Approaches to advance research and pre-interviews. Setting yourself and your subject at ease. Interviewing in person, on the phone or electronically. Getting the quotes you want. Deciding when a question is worth asking. The power of the simple and direct question. Creative listening and the power of silence. This workshop is designed for storytellers of all kinds who conduct interviews – journalists, documentary filmmakers or writers researching subjects for longer works.

Philip Moscovitch is a freelance writer and broadcaster who has interviewed hundreds of people, including musicians, filmmakers, private eyes, activists, prisoners, and an NHL hockey legend. He loves to immerse himself in new worlds through the people he talks to.

This is one of several workshops being offered by WFNS in Halifax on May 10. The full list is here. Cost for a single workshop is $25 (WFNS members)/$35 (non-members); you can get two workshops and a light lunch for only $45 (WFNS members)/$55 (non-members).

Register by emailing talk@writers.ns.ca or by calling (902) 423-8116. Full registration information is here.

One senior? I'm a believer!!

I don't expect a lot of hard news from the Sunday paper. Especially when it's the Halifax Chronicle-Herald.

But when I took a look at this past Sunday's front page, I thought maybe I was reading an edition of The Masthead News instead. That's one of our weekly community papers, given to headlines like Girl Guides to Learn Self-Defence, and serial punctuation abuse: ("... a big, new store.")

The main story is a CP piece about a Montreal woman who has had season tickets to the Canadiens for 55 years. There's a big photo of her above the fold. It's a gentle, boring human interest piece. What really got me was the sub-head:

Montreal senior a season ticket holder for 55 years; believes 2008 team can win the Stanley Cup

Hey, one senior can't be wrong!

Being in the story

When you're a freelance writer, you don't tend to see your own name in print (unless it's a byline). So I was a bit taken aback to come across this story on Reader's Digest education hero Joe Bishara, in The Yarmouth County Vanguard.

Because I wrote the RD profile of Bishara, I'm there in the lead and at various other spots in the story.

The writer from Readers Digest looked with disbelief at the 60-strong student honour guard in their bright red jackets with Canadian flags fluttering over-head last September. He turned to teacher Joe Bishara.

“This is for one veteran?” asked Philip Moscovitch.

“I told him “Yup - one or a hundred- it doesn’t matter around here,” said Bishara, who spearheaded the Maple Grove Memorial Club close to two decades ago.

The writer of the story never checked with me on what I thought, relying instead on what Bishara says I said. That, and a few factual errors in the piece drove home (once again) the lesson of how important it is to check your sources and make sure your facts are straight.

Although there are mistakes, I have to confess to feeling slightly tickled at seeing myself in the story -- even if I think it's a bit weird.

Robert Fisk's Saddam biography

Great story by Robert Fisk, in which he discovers a biography of Saddam Hussein -- purportedly written by him -- is selling well in Egypt:

Needless to say, I noticed one or two problems with this book. It took a very lenient view of the brutality of Saddam, it didn't seem to care much about the gassed civilians of Halabja – and it was full of the kind of purple passages which I loathe. "After the American rejection of the Iraqi weapons report to the UN," 'Robert Fisk' wrote, "the beating of war drums turned into a cacophony..."

Dare I suggest to readers that this kind of cliche doesn't sound like Robert Fisk? The only war drums I could hear were those of my own astonishment. For I never wrote this book.

I like the tone Fisk takes. Rather than get high-and-mighty, he casts himself as Detective Fisk, enlists the help of an Egyptian friend and a cab driver who wants to make sure his name appears in full in the newspaper, and goes off in search of the writer.

NSELC: Leadership in editing needed

Last week, I got a letter from the Nova Scotia Education Leadership Consortium.

The NSELC is... well, I'm not exactly sure what it is -- because when I visit their website and click the link that says "About The NSELC" I'm greeted with this:

Historically, the NSELC has targeted educators already in positions of senior leadership (principals, vice principals and central office personnel) and/or teachers who were aspiring to move into an administrative role. The NSELC is now expanding our Modules/Workshops specifically with teachers as the audience i.e. classroom teachers interested in becoming curriculum leaders, student teachers and beginning teachers who want to learn how to be more effective classroom managers, seasoned teachers who want to develop their instructional strategies to better meet the needs of their students, teachers who are fulfilling the role of coach/mentor in their schools or board. This expansion of our audience is very exciting for us and certainly supports what we have learned about effective schools being those that develop and foster leadership from within the school.

The NSELC was writing to me because I chair the local elementary school's advisory council. In their letter, the name of the school was wrong, the address was a mish-mash of my home address and the school's address, and the name of the road was misspelled. (In an email I just received, I'm told that the Nova Scotia Department of Education is to blame for this.)

School administrators keep talking about excellence in schools. How about some excellence in writing (or even decent basic skills) from those preaching it?

The most annoying cliché strikes again

According to the Globe and Mail, the today's Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is "not your grandmother's CIBC."

Considering that one of my grandmothers lived much of her life on a mountainside in Greece with no electricity, I'd say the headline writers are correct: it's not her CIBC.

Not your mother's, or your aunt's

Of all the journalistic clichés -- hell, of all the writing clichés -- one of the worst has to be the one that snidely refers to your parents, or aunt. It's typically an aunt (and only occasionally an uncle -- usually when he borderline fondles you at family get-togethers).

You know what I'm talking about.

• The MVP TV series is "not your mother's CBC."
• Thinking of going south for a holiday? It's "not your mother's Florida" anymore.
• Hitting the hills? It's "not your father's skiing" now.
• Businesses need to recognize that their customers are "not your father's customers."

As for the aunts, Gertrude is in for a particularly rough time (especially when it comes to those mythical sweaters she doles out as Christmas presents).

• Aunt Gertrude's memory problems make her unreliable.
• Google Reader's share feature could allow her to see what blog posts you're reading.
  
• At holiday dinners, she wants to talk about her digestive system.
  

We own a cookbook that has a recipe called "Not your mother's green beans." My partner looked at the recipe. "These are my mother's green beans," she said. A local bar advertises that "Your father never rocked like this." Given their target demographic, there are probably decent odds their customers' fathers rocked a hell of a lot harder.

This is lazy, lazy writing. And worse, it's offensive writing too. It makes assumptions about the readers, which is generally a poor technique because it alienates them. It also seems to assume that all family members are stuck in a cliché of 1950s family life, and that everybody (except of course these hip not-your-parent places) conforms to some -- again, mythical -- notion of bland mainstream life and entertainment.

And Aunt Gertrude? Not too many of us have an aunt Gertrude. The name's popularity peaked in the 1890s, when it was the 24th most popular girl's name in America. It went into a steep decline after that, ranking 939th in the 1960s, and dropping out of the top 1,000 names altogether after that.

Why I love Christopher Hitchens, Part II

Because he writes sentences like this:

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is the current beneficiary of a tsunami of drool.

Link.

It's all about me, baby

I recently saw a book about global warming that took a different approach from most of the others out there. It wasn't about how dire the environmental situation is; it didn't take the opposite tack -- that climate change fear has been overblown; and it didn't offer any suggestions for collective action or policy that would improve things. None of that. Instead, it was about how to ensure your own personal survival in an era of climate change and extreme weather. Kind of an update of those bomb shelter books of the 1950s and 1960s. Who cares if the world is going to hell, as long as you (and your family, of course) are safe.

Later, I turned on the radio to an ad for a Ford truck. The pitch? That the ride in the cab is so quiet, you won't believe how powerful the truck really is. But if you need a reminder, just open the window, so you can hear the engine roar. No consideration, of course, of whether or not anyone around you wants to hear your engine roar. As long as it's nice and quiet in your cab, it's all good.

Walt and Skeezix

I have been reading comics from 1921 to 1924 the last few weeks. They are early strips of Gasoline Alley, collected in two books called Walt and Skeezix, and published by Drawn and Quarterly.

The comics feature the residents of Gasoline Alley, in Chicago, and are from the early days of a comics saga that would carry on for decades, with the characters aging in real time. If I look at Hagar the Horrible today, it is pretty much the same (and just as awful) as when I was a kid. Gasoline Alley is not like that. It was the first comic to have its characters grow older, year by year.

I love these comics, and I have been trying to figure out why. They can be funny, but mostly they are very gentle. Unlike other comics you might describe as gentle though (Family Circus?) they are almost never sappy or sentimental. The stories move slowly and gracefully, and even though they are clearly set in another time (just look at the cars) they still seem very familiar. I don't feel like I'm reading something written almost 90 years ago.

Drawn and Quarterly have committed to producing many of these collections (unbelievably, almost none of the Gasoline Alley comics had ever been published in book form before). The books themselves are beautiful, including essays on creator Frank King and his work and some truly amazing old family photos. Plus they come with endnotes that help point out little extras a reader like me might not notice (like the Skeezix doll in one of the panels).

The books are normally priced at $39.95 in Canada, but I noticed on the Drawn and Quarterly online store that they are now selling for $29.95. It is a bargain.

Harlan Ellison sums it up

Speaking of rants (see previous post), here is Harlan Ellison on the subject of paying writers. Note that he uses what my buddy Vern would call "some choice language" so this one may not be safe for work.

I suspect that pretty soon most every writer I know will have this posted. (Hat tip to writer Allison Finnamore, who turned me on to it).



On a related subject, in her most recent column, Heather Mallick notes that "Ironically, Viacom sued Google for $1 billion in lost online profits over pirated video, but tells writers that their work is worth nothing online and they don't deserve a royalty."

Why I love Christopher Hitchens

I don't always agree with Christopher Hitchens (his defence of the invasion of Iraq has seemed to become more and more strained), and I don't think I'd like to meet him. But agree with him or not, I do love his writing. He manages to take a thundering tone, to be unequivocal in his opinions, and to use an impressive vocabulary while somehow not seeming too showy (unlike William F. Buckley Jr). He's also superior without being smarmy.

I am currently reading his polemic God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything -- which, so far, is very cutting but has hardly proved the thesis that religion poisons everything (except for noting that it does, in italics, a couple of times).

I was reminded of just why I love Hitchens when I came across a sentence referring to this book as "unlikely even to rate a footnote in the history of piffle."

Brilliant, dismissive, concise. Great writing.

Rick Mercer and paying for free content

In the September 2007 issue of The Walrus, Jon Evans makes the case that writers ought to be putting their content free online, and that this will not hurt book sales.

He points to the music industry to illustrate the point. Anybody can download as much music as they want, risk-free, for free, by doing it at a public location (say a library that's a Wi-Fi hotspot, or an Internet cafe). Even doing it from home is almost risk-free, given the tiny number of people charged with pirating music. Yet, millions and millions of dollars are spent annually on purchasing digital music. (Not just that, but digital music that often has digital rights management limiting what you can do with that music built in.)

Evans also points to the case of The Java Tutorial:

Online reference works can make use of endless space for appendices, unlimited full-colour graphics, examples that run on the user’s screen, discussion boards, and chat rooms. Given this interactivity and timeliness, why would anyone want to buy, say, The Java Tutorial onpaper?

And yet people do. The book is a worldwide bestseller for technical manuals. The physical Java Tutorial is, compared to what’s freely available and downloadable online, limited in scope and out of date; but its readers — overwhelmingly web programmers — purchase the bound sheaf version anyway.

For years, I was convinced that having your content available free online was a bad thing. I still think there are circumstances in which it is a bad thing -- say, when a freelance writer owns the copyright, but a publication (like a newspaper) is profiting from the sale of digital versions of the work without the writer seeing a penny.

I also think that providing free content to major media -- which more and more people are happy to do -- makes it harder for anyone in the business of creating to make a living.

At the same time, reading something online and reading a book are clearly different experiences. And that brings us to Rick Mercer.

Mercer's new book, The Rick Mercer Report: The Book, is #3 on the Globe and Mail's bestseller list a week after its release. Clearly, many of us are willing to buy it, even though most of its content is freely available online, on Mercer's blog, and on his TV show's archive site.

Buying a book like this is like buying a collection of comics. Who wants to clip Zippy the Pinhead every day (or Baby Blues, if that kind of thing turns your crank)? Or store post links in a feed reader for permanent reference? Or continually return to bookmarks? You liked it the first time, you want to return to it again, and it's handy to have it all in a book to which you can easily return anytime.

Late 60s Spiderman

Posted this on my other blog, but I figured it belongs here too.

I recently read a collection of old Spiderman comics, dating from the 60s. This was the era that gave birth to lots of the villains who've been in Spidey's world ever since (or until recently). I'm talking about sweethearts like Doc Oc, the Green Goblin, the Kingpin and Kraven the Hunter.

There are also tons of totally forgettable villains who appear for an issue or two and never come back again. Guys like Blackie Drago, aka the second Vulture.

A few things really struck me about these comics.

1. The stories are set in New York City, but it's a New York with no Jews and almost no Blacks.
2. Inventiveness! Stan Lee and his gang could come up with villain after villain after villain. Awesome.
3. Boy Peter Parker spends an awful lot of time worrying about poor, frail Aunt May.
   
4. Sound effects. When I write the Daisy Dreamer comic I am not great at doing sound effects. They wind up being things like "Pop!" But Stan Lee -- Stan Lee strings letters together that look crazy on the page, but work as sounds. Words like Bzok! and Spanng! and Btok! I think reading the sound effects was the most fun I had with these comics.
   

And now, just for fun, someone's list of Spidey's 21 worst villains here.

PC pink

My kids -- like kids across Nova Scotia -- are wearing pink to school today.

The reason? Two Grade 12 students from a rural high school who were upset about a Grade 9 boy being picked on, teased and threatened for wearing a pink shirt. The older guys went out and bought dozens of pink tank tops and t-shirts and handed them out at school in a show of solidarity. Other kids across the province picked up on the idea, and today thousands of them will be wearing pink clothes to school in a show of anti-bullying solidarity.

What's my beef? (You knew there had to be one.) It's with the media coverage. Every story I've read or heard says that the unidentified boys who teased the kid who wore pink that first day called him "a homosexual."

Now, in most contexts, it's not nice to use the words queer and fag in print. But I am pretty sure those bully boys did not say "You're wearing pink -- you're such a homosexual." In this context, using the bland word homosexual takes away from the bullying act itself. It makes it seem more benign. I understand we don't have a direct quote, but surely someone told a reporter something like, "They were calling him a fag."

Just because we don't use some words because they are pejorative or hurtful doesn't mean we should never use them at all. We may not like the words precisely because they are so powerful. Sometimes, that power is something writers should take advantage of, in order to get a story across as accurately as possible.

Urban legends and arguments

Updated:
Apparently, the Globe editor responsible says the writer claims the urban legend originated with a story of hers. I would have thought she would have laid claim to it publicly sooner.



Now this is embarrassing. Today's Toronto Globe and Mail's reader-submitted Facts & Arguments essay is by a teacher who says she asked students to write a story co-operatively. In one team, the male and female students wrote in radically different styles.

The essay was written by Sharon Melnicer, of Manitoba.

From the story, as reprinted in the Globe:

(First paragraph by Marla) "At first, Betty couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favourite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Bruce, who once said, in happier times, that he also adored chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Bruce. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question. She'd switch to chai."

Trouble is, the story is an urban legend. From the Snopes urban legends site:

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The camomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked camomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So camomile was out of the question.

The Globe piece goes on and on like this, almost word for word.

Barbara Mikkelson of Snopes concludes:

"The Writing Assignment" first appeared on the Internet in February 1997, when it popped up in the newsgroup rec.humor, having gotten there from a joke list. Though it's passed around as a "true story," we should simply accept it for what it is — a wonderful piece of creative writing.

There's gonna be a whole lot of embarrassment in them pages come tomorrow.

Tip o' the hat to my eagle-eyed writing colleague Mark Kearney for spotting this.

Create your own Facebook news story

How long, do you think, before newspapers realize there are better things to do than pay writers to troll through Facebook looking for interesting groups? Is there anything less useful than a Facebook group? All you have to do is click to join. Sure, that means there is now a list of people with a common interest, and you can send emails to them to try to harness real-world protest. But does anyone really think this is very effective?

Here is your typical Facebook news story:

1) Headline: Facebook group formed to protest/publicize/decry/celebrate XYZ.
2) People upset about XYZ have formed a group on Facebook.
3) The group has X number of members.
4) The founder of the group says he/she created it in order to raise awareness etc.
5) A spokesperson for someone else said that the group would not affect their decision.

There. Now you can be a cutting-edge tech reporter too.

Or am I just bitter because the one and only Facebook group I created is tiny and has gotten no media coverage? (Join up! It's called "You're Gone! A Ted Tevan Group" and it took me all of a couple of clicks to create.)

That dastardly media

From Maisonneuve magazine's MediaScout, on George Jonas's National Post commentary on the Conrad Black trial:

Then he launches into the serious part of his commentary, calling the prosecution a “sorry lot” whose “dubious evidence … rested on the slender foundation of browbeaten government witnesses butting their beaten brows against documentary evidence.” Wow. Not even a half-hearted attempt at journalistic objectivity to be found there.

Why does MediaScout expect George Jonas's commentary in the Post to display any journalistic objectivity? Has this person ever read George Jonas before? Does he or she know what a commentary is?

Writing for Canadian youth shows

An excerpt from my Canadian Screenwriter magazine feature on what it takes to succeed in writing for youth shows -- and why Canadians are so darn good at it -- is now online here. It's a pretty long excerpt. Most of the story, in fact.

Interviews for the piece include Sara Snow, Jordan Wheeler and Will Dixon from renegadepress.com; Jeff Biederman from Life with Derek; and Brent Piaskoski from Naturally Sadie and the upcoming The Latest Buzz.

My favourite quote:

Piaskoski says he has run into his share of overly restrictive notes–the silliest being one asking for the name of the town of Drumheller to be cut because, as he puts it, “it has the word hell in it and Americans could be offended.”

To read the whole thing, you'll have to pick up a copy of Canadian Screenwriter. Or come back in fall when the current issue is no longer on the stands and I'll post the full piece.

Even crankier

People who are even crankier than me about language.

It's the results of a contest from the UK's Daily Telegraph.

The idea was to come up with a paragraph or two, no longer than 150 words, packed with as many infuriating words and phrases as possible...

Infuriating as the language was, the entries were very funny. "When it comes to abuse of English, I've been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Do you know what I mean?" Jackie Rowe's entry started, worryingly.

Quick hits

Maybe I'm especially cranky this morning. I don't know.

• Canada launches its very own no-fly list today. See? We can play with the big boys too! Our list is part of something called the Passenger Protect Program. I will leave aside the basic stupidity of lists like this. Instead, I want to say, Passenger Protect? Is there something wrong with the word protection?
  
• What's with Paul Wells and Andrew Potter's blogs lately? Why do they (or Maclean's) think we're more interested in French politics than, say, Canadian politics?
  
• The local elementary school has a breakfast program. It's great. I help out occasionally (though probably not often enough). I received a nice certificate for my efforts, from the national Breakfast for Learning program, whose slogan is "Eat Right! Be Bright!" A good breakfast is an important part of the school day. But I would think good English just might be too. And "eat right" ain't it.
• CBC wants you to submit your videos! So they can air them! And not pay you anything! But you should be thrilled to have the exposure! And, unfortunately, many people will be. An old freelancer's mantra: You can die of exposure.
  

King Kaufman on the Cup

King Kaufman of Salon is my favourite sportswriter. Unfortunately, he almost never writes about hockey.

But when he does, he gets it right.

Two highlights from the piece:

Every year I'm struck by how cool the end of the Stanley Cup Finals is. The losing team has to stand around and wait while the winning team goes ape-crazy bananas. Then comes the traditional handshake, which everybody agrees is a groovy thing. Then, after the curtain-opening bestowal of the Conn Smythe Trophy for Most Valuable Player of the entire playoffs -- Ducks captain Scott Niedermayer took this one -- the Stanley Cup itself is brought out by its handlers.

...

There's a hastily assembled team photo with the Cup, which always makes me wonder: Whenever I'm in a group photo, even if the group is six people, it takes the group and the photographer 10 minutes to get everybody arranged just so. How is it that hockey teams can get themselves posed in 10 seconds?

I came eight in my playoff pool. Done in by thinking the Pens would take the Sens. I would have done a lot worse if Detroit had bowed out sooner. I did have a few Ducks, but clearly I should have taken more.

Allow me to diagnose you

Pick up the new Reader's Digest and you'll find my feature "Are You Normal or Nuts?" -- adapted from a story by William Speed Weed that ran in the US version of the magazine last year. It's a pretty fun piece on people's quirks, and when it makes sense to worry about them. Can't point you to an online version because there is none to be had. Sorry.

Gone Surfin' column

My latest Gone Surfin tech column is now available online. It's about using Google for more than just searching. The link is here, and in the permanent links on the right side of this page.

Best writer site I've seen in a long time

Writer Miranda July plugs her new book with a website she made using dry erase marker, kitchen appliances, and a camera.

She tells us about her book, too



The site is brilliant, and it is here.

High Steaks / Gone Surfin' and more

There's a new section over there in the sidebar on your right. It's called My Stuff. That's where you'll find my vegetarian- converts- to- meat-eater radio documentary High Steaks (thanks to all of you who have asked me to post it).

Right underneath is the first installment of my new Gone Surfin' web/tech column, originally published in local paper The Chester Clipper. Enjoy.

Garbled at the Post

The National Post has Warren Kinsella's new column online, and it sure reads funny. Don't know how long it will stay up before the fix it, but there are some pretty weird phrases. (Read it closely and you can see how they are supposed to line up.)

1) A lot of these extraordinary numbers, obviously, are -- like many of the numbers that attempt to describe the magnitude few of your belongings, just because I f***ing felt like it? It's the same f***ing thing, mate."

2) When the U.S. trade deficit with China has ballooned to an extraordinary $232.5-billion, the Bush administration's of myriad crimes -- completely speculative.

3) "How would you feel if I walked into your house and took a desire to haul the Chinese before the WTO is certainly understandable, if a tad cynical.

I don't know how I would feel if Johnny Rotten walked into my house and took a desire to haul the Chinese before the WTO. Baffled probably.

Freelancer's dream

Emailed an idea to an editor this morning.

Note received in response:

No problem Phil... whatever you want.

Sometimes the writing life is good.

Huh?

André Boisclair leads the PQ to a disastrous showing. In the days before the election, various polls and seat projections had the party in the 40s or low 50s in terms of seats.

The PQ came third, with 36 seats.

The Globe and Mail's take on Boisclair?

After a slow start, his campaign picked up steam and, in the end, he surpassed all expectations.

Query letters: How not to do it

Because I'm still listed online in a number of places as the editor of Canadian Screenwriter magazine, I occasionally get query letters for the magazine.

I also get all kinds of junk, quite a bit of it ridiculous: media releases from York University about relevant topics like subway expansion, lots of releases and announcements about events in Toronto and LA, and -- more and more -- links to YouTube videos and releases from companies offering their services in producing YouTube videos (including one in Russia).

Today, I got a query letter (my name misspelled) about whiteboy r&b singer Jon B.

The query is for an already-written article -- usually a no-no, especially for a 3,000-word feature that would take up a lot of real estate in any magazine. There's no slant, no angle targeted specifically at the magazine. (How could there be? It's Canadian Screenwriter, remember? Either that, or this person is emailing random people with her story pitch.)

And what about the writer? She's been a reporter for "several publications" including "a national, weekly financial trade magazine." This month, she will be interviewing "the director of an independent film."

Anyway, if you're interested in publishing a feature called "Father-to-be R&B Crooner Jon B preps Back to Love CD" let me know and I can put you in touch with the writer.

Now watch this thing wind up on the cover of some mag and make me look dumb.

Looking for a primer on how to write good query letters? Paul Lima's got a good one here.