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Category Archives: Literature
How Using Academic Research is like being in an Argentinian Argument
Although many academics tacitly accept that research makes a paper stronger, they don’t exactly examine that premise. In fact, if the paper is well argued, and has evidence it has garnered from the primary text(s), other sources are superfluous. They … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, Teaching, Writing
Tagged Academic research, Argentina, logical argumentation, Research
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Memory
I’ve been thinking about memory lately for the latest project that I am working on and it occurs to me that memory loss leaves very real and recognizable tracks, although they might not be what we expect. I tried to … Continue reading
Self-reliance and the Helping Hand
Someone asked me recently if my books were linked by a common trait and for a moment I found the question daunting. Then I leapt at the one attribute that they all possess, from my long poem to academic work … Continue reading
Posted in Code World, Literature, Post-Apocalyptic, Self-reliance, Solitude, Travel, Winnipeg, Writing
Tagged My books
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Something to Show for Each Year
I am frequently asked why I bother writing my various books. I don’t have a huge audience to satisfy like Stephen King or J. K. Rowling. In my case, my books sell sporadically and I don’t know there is a … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Literature, Writing
Tagged Ani DiFranco, Bob Dylan, Coming Home to Newfoundland, For a Breath I Tarry, J. K. Rowling, Multiple Personality Disorder, Not Quite Dark, Roger Zelazny, Stephen King
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Textual Reality and the Phenomenological World
Although my friend’s daughter asked me one time if the story I had just told her was a “true story,” most people acknowledge—however reluctantly in the case of Harry Potter fans—that the characters in the stories they read are fictional. … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Literary Theory, Literature, Media, Writing
Tagged Harry Potter, Helen of Troy, Hogwarts, Hunger Games, Linda Hutcheon, Marshall McLuhan, Phenomenology, Racist Jesus, reality, The Appearance of Solidity, twilight, Wolfgang Iser, writerly text
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To Build a Fire
In the public imagination, the skill of building a fire lies somewhere between the virtuosity of some online people (We can think of the man from the Primitive Technology channel) with their bow and drill, Jack London’s famous story (“To … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Literature
Tagged building a fire, fire, Jack London, Prometheus, Survivor show, use of tinder
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Fifty Shades and a Silo of the Publishing Industry
The so-called vanity press has changed little in the public imagination until very recently. Traditionally, paying to have your book published was seen as synonymous with junk novels and sentimental and self-indulgent poetry. The only route to acceptance by the … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Culture, Editing, Literature, Social Media, Writing
Tagged Amazon, Beth Reekles, E. L. James, eBook, Erika Leonard, fan fiction, fifty shades of grey, Gulliver’s Travels, Henry David Thoreau, Hugh Howey, James Redfield, Jonathan Swift, Kindle, Lisa Genova, Penguin, Random House, Self-publishing, Silo Series, Still Alice, The Celestine Prophecy, The Kissing Booth, twilight, Warner Books, Wool
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How We Write the Future
Whenever I think of writing about the future, I always remember those early writers of science fiction beginning in the forties and extending into the seventies, Heinlein and Asimov among them, who thought we’d be smoking in spacesuits, and that … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Literature, Singularity, Writing
Tagged Electric Ant, Flight to Forever, H. G. Wells, Men Like Gods, Philip K. Dick, Poul Anderson
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Writing is a Poor Person’s Art
Writing is the poor person’s art, just like soccer is the poor person’s sport. All you need to play soccer is a will, for a ball can be made out of torn nylon stockings, my friends from Chile tell me, … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Culture, Literature, Solitude, Writing
Tagged blogging, meditation, quills, reader's digest, Writing
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An Authorial Dream of Wealth and Success
Perhaps because my latest book, Not Quite Dark: A Post-Apocalyptic Adoption Story is doing well in terms of sales, I had a strange dream about being a popular writer the other night. I dreamed that Obama had unwittingly endorsed my … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Literature, Mars, Post-Apocalyptic, Writing
Tagged Not Quite Dark, Obama, Surviving the Apocalypse, Thailand, Writing
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