I got a lot of use out the delete button over the past month while working on my thesis novel. So far, the thesis process has gone down more or less like this: Draft one: 60,000 words. Written over two summers, including all the outlining and such. Draft two: 89,000…
Read MoreIn my intro screenwriting class, we do table reads of the students' short scripts before workshopping them. This year I started to notice that men seemed to be cast more than women. There's lot of research out there about unequal representation of gender in a variety of media. The Geena…
Read MoreI was sitting in my History of Publishing class while a woman gave a presentation on the history of literacy. The class was restless and confused. The presenter's visual aid--likely an overhead transparency--made no sense. The chart clearly depicted literacy steadily, and sometimes dramatically, decreasing over the ages. Finally, someone…
Read MoreLazy Miscellaneous Post Alert! CreCommers Reading Amanda Hope of The Hope Files is organizing an all-CreComm reading over at Aqua Books at 4 pm, Saturday, Feb. 26. Sign up to read if you haven't already! Talk to Amanda. And if you don't want to read, come out to support everyone--a…
Read MoreIt’s Magazine Project time again, as CreComm students are well aware. I’m not a CreComm grad, but I did do a very similar magazine project myself over at the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing. It’s mostly a blur, but I do remember our magazine was called Travel Canada. I’m…
Read MoreI didn’t post last weekend while I was at the CCWWP founding conference, though anyone who follows me on Twitter cannot have failed to notice my incessant tweeting about it. Many jokes were made about the CCWWP needing to be on the back of a Cold War–era hockey jersey. It…
Read MoreDavid Elias will join us at Red River College Princess Street as Writer-in-Residence from November 8 to December 10. He will be available to read and comment on students’ creative writing. [caption id="attachment_211" align="alignright" width="227" caption="David Elias"][/caption] David is the author of four books of fiction. His work has been…
Read MoreThis past week I took a fairly enjoyable class in "Instructional Methods" along with 19 other instructors, mostly from Red River College. We spent most of the week listening to each other teach. We were a class of guinea pigs, testing out our colleagues' lessons. I now know only a…
Read MoreStudents! If anyone is thinking about becoming a Manitoba Writers Guild member anyway--and I highly recommend it--here's your chance to get a great workshop with the esteemed Catherine Hunter into the bargain: Alive & Writing: Lecture by Catherine Hunter + workshop for university & college students Saturday, April 10, 2010…
Read MoreI'm going to fulfill Russell Smith's predictions in this column by posting the column: The market for fiction shrinks every year, the attention paid to novels by the media diminishes monthly, booksellers demand ever-lower prices, everybody in the industry says it’s the worst it’s ever been. And yet more academic…
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