50 Burning Questions has reached dry land! Quick, run to your local bookstore and make sure they’ve ordered it!
(My week is going well, isn’t it? At this rate, I’ll be winning the lottery tomorrow.)
The ship has come in!
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Category Archives: Writing
Now accepting resumes for an in-house dream butler
I have won a BC Arts Council grant to write a young adult novel called Over the Pass, based on the character of Cole.
Normally, I wouldn’t blog about receiving money, especially when funding is scarce these days. But I thought that since you blog readers actually chose the story of Cole (over the story of Constance) and then you listened to me whine about completing the grant application, you should at least get to share in the celebration.
Champagne all ’round. Cheers to the BC Arts Council!
I now have nothing left to whine about. Unless you want to discuss the way my aunt put her hand on my belly this weekend and asked if I was pregnant. (Which I am NOT!)
Curses to the internet
I’ve received an e-mail from a student who wants to interview me for a national high school documentary competition in the U.S. Apparently, I know something about blue jeans and their historical significance. Ack!
If you would like to stand in for me in this interview, attempt to look presentable to the general public, and speak without stuttering (the student has offered to chat via phone or skype, or to come “to Canada”), please send your contact details now to 1-800-Save-Tanya.
Something useful this way comes
Here we go with useful topic number one: why Wikipedia isn’t evil.
Good, rule-abiding non-fiction researchers are not supposed to use Wikipedia. This is because it is written by the masses, edited (or not edited) by the masses, and eternally changeable.
All good reasons. But, if you’re writing a section on, say, the chemical spill in Bhopal, India, in 1984, and you happen to be historically and geographically illiterate and know nothing except the word “Bhopal,” well… let me introduce you to your new best friend: Wikipedia. It’s The Reader’s Digest Condensed Version. The Coles Notes. The hot guy behind you in class who takes great notes with multi-colored pens.
Okay, those guys never existed in my classes either. My point is, Wikipedia is the most convenient source for an instant “snapshot” of a topic.
There are only a few things to keep in mind:
1. Don’t assume anything you read is true. Probably, it’s fact. But it could be biased. It could be missing pertinent info. Or it could incorporate urban legend. Find the part the interests you, nab the key words, and go search for them in the library’s on-line periodical databases. Look for confirmation in peer-reviewed publications, or at the very least, in multiple sources.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the Wikipedia article and look at the references. Often, your respectable and/or peer-reviewed publications are waiting right there for you. Sometimes, they’re even linked. Woohoo! (We researchers get excited easily.)
3. Look for connections. You know how sometimes you look for a library book in the stacks, only to find three much more interesting books shelved alongside? Wikipedia’s like that. It’s the single best place to find information that you needed all along, and just didn’t know it yet.
— Usefullness over until next week. —
Whew!
I have finally finished The Children’s Book. It held my attention all the way through, but yeesh… both the family relationships and the history were ridiculously complicated. It was kind of like a Maeve Binchy book on steroids.
As for the ending… well, of the 6000 characters, about 3000 (those who were most in love, it seemed) managed to live. The others threw themselves into the sea, spontaneously keeled over, or were trampled into the mud of a battlefield.
That was not a spoiler. There’s no way you’ll figure out which 3000 are which until the final pages.
Mom used to tell me to do something useful, too
I’ve been reading about ways to make a blog more popular. I’m supposed to comment on other people’s blogs, when I have something intelligent to say. (Check.) I’m supposed to post regularly. (Check.) And I’m supposed to be useful.
Useful?
I’m a bit torn about this idea, for a few reasons.
1. I enjoy rambling on about whatever I’m reading, or writing, or thinking. And I think Min enjoys not having to hear about any of those things, now that I have a convenient internet outlet for my opinions.
2. It kinda freaks me out when strangers follow my blog. For example, one of you followers is named Beast. Are you a friendly sort of beast?
3. Being useful implies that I must actually know things. I am generally more comfortable with everyone assuming that I’m bumbling along with my books, while chewing on my blonde split ends. That’s the strategy that served me so well in high school.
4. As my sister can confirm, I am naturally a bossy advice-giver. I have to work against this tendency in regular life.
On the other hand, 50 Burning Questions will be my tenth published book. Surely I know a few things that would be useful? One would hope.
Consider yourself warned. I’m thinking that once a week, this blog may become useful. On a completely temporary, trial basis.
Yikes!
Misnomer
Reading a book called The Children’s Book is not nearly as quick as reading something that is a children’s book. I’m on chapter 37. What the heck kind of book has 37 chapters??
All I can say is, there’d better be a happy ending. I have a personal rule (prompted by Fall on Your Knees) that any book over 500 pages long must end well.
Kaching! (How do you spell that, exactly?)
Min and I were discussing the millionaire home lottery. And what we might do with 2.4 million dollars. You know, if we HAD to spend it.
I was quite convinced that we wouldn’t want a lot of new material possessions. Just as I was justifying this view, we parked in front of a bookstore and I leapt from the car, pointing and shouting, “I need that book.”
I didn’t wait for my lottery winnings.
R.I.P.
Duthie Books is closing.
I feel like someone just told me the polar ice caps are gone.
Freedom! Kind of…
Woohoo! 50 Poisonous Questions if off to the editor! Which gives me a week and a half of free time before I begin my next book project. My ideas for this unexpected bounty include:
- Create a teacher’s guide for 50 Burning Questions
- Compile visual references for the illustrator of 50 Poisonous Questions
- Revise three or four chapters of the perpetually hovering novel
- Create a birthday present for my husband
I think I may be feeling a little optimistic about what I can accomplish in ten days.
(Now if I had my butler, that would be another matter.)