Death to Word: It’s time for Microsoft’s word processing program to die.
Voices of 1956: Hear from the ABCs of science fiction: Asimov, Bradbury, and Campbell, in their heyday. Well, closer to their heyday than today, anyway.
Tag Archives: the writer’s life
Freelancing Reviews
A while ago, what I started doing is requesting review copies of books from publishers directly, then pitching publications to run my reviews. The goal was to get whatever books I wanted, even if they hadn’t been submitted to the usual places I write for.
But while I’ve generally received the books I’ve requested, I’ve also found it’s annoying trying to place a review after the fact, not knowing whether a place will accept freelance submissions, if I’ve conformed to their style guidelines, if perhaps they’ve already reviewed or assigned a work for review, etc.
In other words, I’ve learned how much work I can create for myself by bypassing my editors instead of working with them on prospective submissions from the start. Not only might they sometimes be more successful at soliciting review material, they can let me know in advance what they want covered.
This is true of all kinds of writing besides reviews. It’s usually better to pitch an idea and get a provisional acceptance for it from a specific publication (and additional notes, i.e., “I’d like to see you focus more on this angle”) rather than trying to sell a finished article when it hasn’t been tailored to their needs. At best, you’ll be doing a lot of rewriting by not having a discussion with your editor before you’ve written the first draft. At worst, you may not even be able to place it.
Writers write in order to be read. I hate having unpublished work on my harddrive.
I have a bunch of finished reviews that will be running in the next couple weeks, and I have three books on hand I still need to write up as well as place somewhere. An additional five that should be arriving in the mail any day now are, fortunately, already specifically promised to certain review pubs. So I know exactly what style and focus to take as I write each of them up.
(On the plus side, my previous efforts to place articles have led to a couple new regular paying outlets for me. So that’s nice.)
Dreaming of Astronauts and Librarians
On more than one occasion I’ve thought about being a librarian. I’ve read that it’s a terrible field to get into these days; an overabundance of people with degrees in library science (consider a master’s, though the quality of programs, and therefore graduates, is said to be very spotty at the moment) competing for a small number of positions. A graduate program in library or information science would not be a good investment right now.
Of course I have a degree in education already, so I could become a school librarian tomorrow — if someone were to hire me. I trained primarily as a science teacher, but with a few exceptions, any registered teacher can theoretically be hired for any teaching position, even if it doesn’t typically happen in practice.
This is somewhat of an idle thought, and likely will never come to pass. I’m daydreaming. But why? Who daydreams about the exciting world of librarianship?
Frankly, I’m not sure if it’s a question of my love of books or a certain obsession with organization of knowledge. My favourite topic in high school biology was taxonomy, studying and relating different species, phyla, and other taxa. Similarly, I’ve made a point of both ordering and filling in my knowledge of literature, and I suppose I want some application for that knowledge. What better way than to be the living card catalogue for some eager students? (A dated reference; perhaps a living search engine would be more relevant?)
For example, I’ve lately been working my way through some of the major fantasy canon. The bedrock stuff that has influenced basically everything that is being written in the field today. That means not only J.R.R. Tolkien, but C.S. Lewis, T.H. White, et al.
But these twentieth-century writers have their own antecedents in previous centuries. Tolkien’s influences date to Chaucer’s day — works like Orpheus and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. White, with The Once and Future King, rewrote Le Mort de Arthur, also from the Early Middle Ages. C.S. Lewis, on the other hand, certainly must have thought about Milton, and perhaps Dante during his writing, if we’re limiting ourselves only to literary inspirations.
Of course none of this can be understood without a solid grounding in the classics of Homer, Virgil, and others in turn. And it can’t be only me who collects such information and wants to immediately organize a display of fantasy through the ages, to piggy-back on the buzz of the new Hobbit movie, for example.
It can’t be only me, for that matter, who wants to divy up a science fiction section into cyberpunk, steampunk, alternate history, slipstream, new wave, and so forth. Categories were made to be sub-categorized. Historical trends were made to be explicated to interested library patrons, celebrated via promotions and posters and whatnot.
But it’s just an idle dream. Perhaps I will get a chance to run my own library at some point, even for a year or two. But as likely, not. At least I do have some other application for my carefully organized reading: as a literary critic who knows what he’s talking about. That’s not a bad job either, and it’s not even full-time work.
Portfolio Update
I’ve updated my portfolio, which has been stagnant since almost the launch of the site, over six months ago. I’ve added a couple of new articles to my feature writing spotlight, and swapped out one of the reviews, as well.
Besides that I trimmed the other section and gave some specific links to my technical writing, though I’ve done less of it lately.
Now I really need to update my LinkedIn profile as well; I really need to find some way of better organizing my employers as a freelancer. At least my regular outlets need to be separated from the current grouping, where I simply list every place I publish under a single job title.
Sigh. One of these days.
The Importance of Numeracy
An article of mine has just run at The Irascible Professor, which provides “Irreverent Commentary on the State of Education in America today”. The title it’s run under is “Numeracy, is it important?”
The article was prompted by a Washington Post news item from before Christmas: a school board member in Florida failed the math section of his state’s own standardized assessment for tenth graders, but worse, he went on to make public comments that the math being tested was not relevant to real life. I argue against that statement.
Beyond that, I’ll let the article speak for itself. However, I’ve already received several interesting comments via email, which Dr. Shapiro, whom runs the site, has forwarded to me. Not everyone is so forgiving as I (apparently) was to this school board member.
(I wrote that the school board member “is, I’m sure, not a stupid man.” A reader responded that he might very well be stupid, since there is no evidence to the contrary. Yikes.)
On Heinlein
I have an article up today in AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review. Entitled “Arguing with Heinlein“, it’s more or less what it sounds like. There’s some stuff about Cory Doctorow and Joe Haldeman, as well.
And that’s all I’ll say about it.
This and That
There are only three more full weeks before we return to Canada, and there’s lots to do. I’ve just finished the Murakami book, so I need to write up my review for that. That leaves me with four more review books to read this month.
Odds are I’ll still be working on the last one as our plane touches Canadian soil, but as I know I have fresh new review material waiting for me at home, I’m endeavouring to be as close to caught up on my Costa Rica reading as possible by the time we head back. I don’t want to arrive there with more than one unfinished book.
I’ll be doing my usual Care2 blogging throughout the week, and I’ll also be working on a piece I’m writing for a magazine, which I won’t name unless and until they actually decide they like what I came up with and are going to run it. I don’t want to count my chickens, after all.
I have been reasonably diligent with submitting other unsold articles, but don’t expect too much to happen with that, at least immediately. I’ve already mentioned a new blogging gig, but I don’t even know if it’s going to start this month, since the site itself has yet to be launched.
The last week we’re here will involve a lot of last-minute touristy stuff. A canopy tour, a trip to the zoo, a couple last treks to the ocean, and even just local stuff in our nearby towns. My writing output will probably be lower that week as a result (not to mention the need to clean house and pack). So I hope to be on the ball this week and next and keep to a good working schedule.
That’s all for now.
Submitted for your approval . . .
I’ve been lax in submitting my freelance work lately. Since I got a regular gig at Care2, I’ve been spending my mornings writing articles that I know will run, rather than investing my time submitting previous pieces to markets who may or may not be interested. I’ve also been tapped to contribute to another soon-to-launch site, which makes it even easier to keep busy with my writing (more on that later).
But I’m going to be slowing down my output at Care2 a bit compared to last month. I’ll write when something really strikes me; maybe a few posts per week. Not because I’m not enjoying it — it definitely beats the more technical stuff I’ve done a lot of in the past: stock analysis or calculus tips, for example. But I’m ready for a little break.
What I’d really like to see in print is a little thing I wrote all about tea. That may not immediately sound fascinating to you, but I enjoyed writing it. It’s a sort of spiritual successor to one of the more popular piece I’ve written, called “The Art of Science — The Science of Art?” I might define it as creative non-fiction moreso than feature writing, if I stop to think about it; particularly the tea article, since I let myself loose stylistically a bit more.
I had this piece in mind for at least six months before I actually wrote it. Where my previous piece in this vein started out talking about DNA but used that as a jumping off point to discuss the works of Salvador Dali, this newer piece starts off with me talking about my chemistry lab and then discussing all sorts of little-known facts about my favourite hot beverage. It’s a kind of writing I really enjoy because it combines my interests in science and culture by drawing connections between them.
It’s also difficult enough to categorize that finding the right market is a challenge. But if I don’t keep sending it out, it won’t happen. And the same goes for everything else that’s making the rounds at the moment. You have to submit. It’s a basic rule of freelancing: keep your stuff circulating until it sells.
Holiday Work Schedule
Just a quick note that I did indeed make it back safely from Panama last week, but have had very little time for writing since then. It’s been a busy month, lots of touring around both in Panama and here in CR. I did manage to squeeze out a couple quick reviews, one of which I’ll post up here later (another hasn’t been placed yet), and I also finished up an author interview I’m polishing up today for a potentially-interested outlet.
I’m also pleased that I’m officially caught up on all my assigned reviews. I have a pile of books that I’ve requested myself, which means I am not beholden to any particular editor or publication to review them for.
But I do have to make up for lost time. Before New Year’s, with any luck, I’ll get through a good five or six of the features and reviews that I’ve been meaning to start, or have half-finished, as the case may be. I do wish I wrote faster — it takes me a solid two or three days for a decent feature article.
And of course there’s the ongoing chore of placing my finished work, which means pitching, pitching, and pitching. Anyway, I normally try for three updates a week on the site, but I’m giving myself permission to do less than that from now until the New Year. Let’s call it a holiday schedule.
EAT! Bistro, Farewell
I forgot to mention, I did a quick write-up about the EAT! Bistro, which unfortunately has its last day on Saturday. If you live in Winnipeg, you should try and stop by for one last lunch. My article is here.