Writing & Editing

My Authorly Thoughts on Ebooks and Piracy

8
February 23, 2011
My Authorly Thoughts on Ebooks and Piracy

Publishing-industry thinker Sean Cranbury linked to this article in the Globe and Mail: The rise of the e-book lending library (and the death of e-book pirating). The voice of the article, along with some of the people quoted within it, struck me as... naïve. To say the least. But enough about that. As an author, here's...
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Teach Yourself Visually Crochet: 2nd Edition Now Available!

4
February 22, 2011
Teach Yourself Visually Crochet: 2nd Edition Now Available!

I can't believe I forgot to tell you about this! Sigh. Last month the second edition of Teach Yourself Visually Crochet came out! Cecily spent a ton of time updating and adding stuff (um, hello Booties Master Pattern*!), and she did an amazing job. Also, I'm very glad that Wiley changed the title from "Crocheting" to...
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2010: A Year of Apps

18
December 21, 2010
2010: A Year of Apps

This was an odd year for me. I started out with a job, left that job in February to go back to freelancing, and am ending the year doing the majority of my work in crochet-related projects, which was never my goal but which makes me happy all the same, despite my desire to...
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An Ode to Contractions, the Key to Your Voice

14
May 14, 2010
An Ode to Contractions, the Key to Your Voice

Way back in school, you were probably taught that contractions had no place in your essays and reports. School was to be for formal writing. You put two spaces after every period, you compiled a perfect bibliography, and so as not to sound like a kid you banished the contraction to the lowly realm...
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New Project: Make & Meaning – Creative Community in Conversation

0
December 7, 2009
New Project: Make & Meaning – Creative Community in Conversation

Our first few posts are already up, and given that there are six of us that means you have a good hour of reading ahead of you. I've written so far about getting out of a crafting dry spell and about my favourite topic: opinions. I'd love to hear from you about those pieces,...
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Writing a Novel in a Month (and Other Fun Stuff)

9
November 1, 2009
Writing a Novel in a Month (and Other Fun Stuff)

I didn't finish my novel last November, but I'm going to try very hard to finish one this November. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, get thee to the National Novel Writing Month website, stat). This despite the nagging reality that, at mid-afternoon on November 1st, I have almost no idea what...
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What’s a Blogger?

14
October 8, 2009
What’s a Blogger?

Yesterday, in a fit of bluntness, I let loose on Twitter an idea I've been simmering for a long time. If you've disabled commenting on your blog, I'm gonna go ahead and say you're not a blogger. I had a conversation with my friend Scott about it. And a bunch of people responded on Twitter. And...
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Interviews and Essays

8
July 28, 2009
Interviews and Essays

It's a busy heatwavy week over here. As the dog alternates between sleeping and panting and I sit very slowly wishing I could do the same (everything is done very slowly during a heatwave, see), I marvel a bit about how much I'm getting done. First, here's a link to the interview I did with...
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New Project! The Creative Life Blog

3
July 20, 2009
New Project! The Creative Life Blog

An unexpected and thoroughly delightful side effect of quitting my job last year is that right after I did it I managed to get know some incredibly cool people whose work I'd admired from afar for a long time. I really don't know how or why it happened; maybe cutting myself free somehow opened...
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Opinions as Online Currency

4
July 14, 2009
Opinions as Online Currency

Over on the Booknet Canada blog, Morgan Cowie wrote about subscription models in online news and how they don't work in part because they stifle the sharing and conversation that make the Web go 'round. She wonders if similar models would work for ebooks, which are very different from news articles*. But I'm not really...
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