Category Archives: Life

Dreaded Tasks

Often, I know I’d be happier if I do something I really don’t feel like doing. … Those dreaded tasks hang over my head, though; they make me feel drained and uneasy. I’ve learned that I’m much happier, in the long run, if I try to tackle them as soon as possible, rather than allowing myself to push them off.

—Gretchen Rubin

Sharing Stories

People I know who don’t read my blog often ask me what it’s about, and why do I blog. But since you’re here, you likely already have a good understanding of the answer to those two questions. What it really comes down to is that blogging allows me to observe the human experience — in ways that I will never experience personally. There is simply no way that I can experience everything in my life. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to soak it up and explore it a bit anyhow. And I think that’s why so many bloggers are avid blog readers. It’s all about sharing stories. Giving stories a voice.

—Julie Harrison

Creatures set down here bewildered

Why are we reading, if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the hope of meaningfulness, and press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. If we are reading for these things, why would anyone read books with advertising slogans and brand names in them? Why would anyone write such books?

—Annie Dillard

Rituals and Repetition

What resonated with me was rituals and repetition…So many of the things that I learned as a dishwasher you do as a cook. The idea of being efficient, being organized, the rituals of being a cook, the repetition…and of course the more you do something, the better you become. That’s why I became a good cook, because I enjoy the repetition, I wasn’t always trying to seek something new…You tend to always want to do something new in the kitchen, but there really isn’t anything new.

—Thomas Keller

Suggest something unreal

For TV shows to work, they have to capture something real about home or work, but increasingly, in order to capture it, they have to suggest something unreal: far more face-to-face contact than most of us actually have. People text each other all the time in real life, but hardly ever on television. When they do, it’s just shorthand for a teenager’s distraction, not an important part of the plot. Texting doesn’t have the dramatic power of a confrontation that ends with an emotional resolution and a hug. E-mail chains don’t have the same resonance as sisters showing up in each other’s living rooms.

Even as we spend more and more time in front of screens every day, the screen we watch the most — the television — still depends on people, family and friends, who look into each other’s eyes with anger or love or desire. And however sophisticated technology gets, that can still only happen in person.

—Sara Sarasohn

Without needing my approval

Yes [there is a difference between Facebook and a blog.] In sum: I can read anyone’s blog without needing their approval first, and anyone can read my blog without needing my approval first. I *like* not knowing who all is reading my blog. I intentionally *optimize* it so people I don’t know might find it. That’s how people get book deals, son.

But also, I think blogging is more about long-form writing than short-form sharing (Facebook).

—Elisa Gabbert

Extratextual Knowledge

That naming of a real intersection is a daring act and one that is controversial in Canadian publishing. Here is the issue: When situating fiction in your hometown, you risk relying on street names as a kind of shorthand, a code for those in the know who will immediately situate the characters and action in terms of social class and ambience. But that relies on what’s called extratextual knowledge on the part of the reader. I know Queen and Broadview as rather seedy, for example. I have done this rather lazily in my own fiction: I have mentioned Yorkville, a shopping district in Toronto, as shorthand for rich, which is a message lost to anyone who doesn’t know Toronto. I have had editors suggest I take out street names to make the city a less specific one: If you replace College Street with “a street of cafés near the large university” you sum up the atmosphere of the place in a way that’s accessible for a foreigner.

But then you also lose a certain amount of pride. Let’s be honest: We all know the primary reason for such erasures. It’s to make the book more saleable to Americans. We all want our books and films and TV shows to be published in the United States, and we know a large proportion of their entertainment-consuming population is not interested in looking beyond their borders.

—Russell Smith

Ok, here’s the thing, Russell. “Queen and Broadview,” “Yorkville,” and “College Street” don’t mean anything to me, either. So, you know, when you do that sort of thing, you’re not just alienating Americans who are “not interested in looking beyond their borders,” you’re alienating everyone who lives outside the COTU*, including about 85% of Canadians. It’s pretty obnoxious to be aware that it’s a  “message lost to anyone who doesn’t know Toronto” but to then to label all people-who-don’t-know-Toronto as foreigners (and subsequently all foreigners as Americans).

Unless you’re writing for a TO-centric publication, don’t do this. Especially don’t do this in fiction. Go ahead, name the street. But don’t rely on the name. Give it context.

(This is a good illustration of why BC and Ontario often feel like two different countries!)

*Center of the Universe