Once upon a time, when George Cerny was the publisher, the Enterprise-Bulletin newspaper was an avid and active local promoter: the indefatigable cheerleader for the town; for its events, activities, clubs and organizations. It was the proud voice of Collingwood. No so, today. The paper seems to have lost that community passion. Today it
Continue readingTag: writing
Scripturient: Blog & Commentary: National Poetry Month
April is National Poetry Month in Canada. I don’t know if this gets widespread acknowledgement much less appreciation among the public and in the schools, but it should. Poetry is an important part of our cultural lives, although it seems to me our collective passion for it has waned over
Continue readingezra winton: Best Canadian Essays 2014
A couple of weeks ago I had the honour and privilege to be invited as a guest to a book launch in Toronto for a yearly anthology published by Tightrope Books called Best Canadian Essays. My POV Magazine essay, Upping the Anti: Documentary, Capitalism and Liberal Consensus in an Age
Continue readingcentre of the universe: To Print or Not to Print
You’ve heard by now that HarperCollins will be publishing a “new” book by Harper Lee, the author of one of my favourite books, To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee, renowned for being reclusive and very protective of her work, may not have made the decision to publish, and that raises some
Continue readingmark a rayner: Are you a famous writer yet?
This flowchart may help you answer this “important” question: Alltop is a famous humor aggregator. Flowchart by electric literature
Continue readingcentre of the universe: The Reason
It finally dawned on her that the reason he’d left wasn’t because of anything SHE had or hadn’t done. It was because he’d figured out that she could hear everything he did in the water closet. Every. Single. Thing.
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: The Ampersand, Etc.
Among my many iPad apps is a simple one called ‘Ampersands.’ All it does is display, in large format, numerous ampersands from different typefaces. A brief introduction tells the viewer it was the designer’s intent to show how the character had become art in it its own right. It accomplished
Continue readingmark a rayner: Breakthrough books and late bloomers
As a “late bloomer” (my first novel wasn’t published until I was 39 and I haven’t had that “breakthrough” book yet), this interactive infographic is kind of reassuring. I hope you enjoy it it too! Alltop loves a good bloomer. Source: Blinkbox Books
Continue readingmark a rayner: Quote: Vonnegut on reviewers
Originally appears in “The War Between Writers and Reviewers,” by Thomas Flemming in the NYT, 1985. Alltop loves a good bad review.
Continue readingPostArctica: Short Story
I woke up this morning and what happened next will blow your mind. I put on the pot for hot water and something extraordinary happened. Then I went to the bathroom and you just wouldn’t believe what happened there. Back in the kitchen I found something awesome. The water boiled
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: 200,000 Thank Yous
It seems that only yesterday I was saying thank you to my first 100,000 unique visitors at this blog after just over two years of writing. That was at the start of March. Now, 10 months later, I want to say thank you to more than 208,000 visitors for coming
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Larry & Jerry’s Inferno
I had forgotten about this book until recently when I came across a reprint. I read it originally in the late 1970s when I was reading a lot more sci-fi than I do today. (Many years ago, I ran a Toronto computer convention where I invited the authors to be
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: The Lobbyist Registry
I was in the local grocery store with Susan, picking over the collection of organic vine-ripened tomatoes, earnestly searching for the best couple of them. A man recognized me as a member of council and approached me, smiling, hand extended.* “Hi, Councillor Chadwick,” he said. We shake. “Can I talk
Continue readingcentre of the universe: A Gift of the Prairie
THE BOOK THAT MY POEMS ARE IN IS HERE! THE BOOK THAT MY POEMS ARE IN IS HERE!! Extra points if you can name the reference there. It’s called A Gift of the Prairie and it is published by the Last Mountain Lake Cultural Centre. This was a project co-ordinated
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Sonnet 103
Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth, So begins Shakespeare’s sonnet number 103 (I started rereading the sonnets recently because, well because it’s Shakespeare, damn it all, and what other reason would anyone need?). It’s a sentiment I well know. The impoverished Muse thing, I mean. There are three dozen
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Inanity and vanity
Michel de Montaigne wrote in his usual self-deprecating but sardonic way: If other men would consider themselves at the rate I do, they would, as I do, discover themselves to be full of inanity and foppery; to rid myself of it, I cannot, without making myself away. We are all
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Finding my muse in Montaigne
Muse: a source of inspiration; especially a guiding genius; the imaginary force thought to provide inspiration to poets, writers, artists, etc. A muse, for modern writers, is that indefinable force that drives us to write. It’s part imagination, part inspiration. I suspect there’s a heady brew of psychology and biology
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Ruthful, funct and doleless
Why can’t someone be clueful, only clueless? Hapful, not simply hapless? Aweless instead of just awful? Ruthful not merely ruthless? Doleless, not just doleful? Gormful, not just gormless? We can be thoughtful or thoughtless, careful or careless, mindful and mindless. Why not ruthful and gormful? Why not the qualities of
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: The Death of Handwriting?
I almost cried in pleasure when I watched this video; the handwriting is so beautiful. Apparently some viewers have, as Jesus Diaz writes. On Gizmodo he says that it’s: …a video that caused many to discover autonomous sensory meridian response, a perceptual phenomenon that gives a pleasing tingling sensation. Some said
Continue readingPostArctica: Community
My generation from Verdun grew up With Fathers who worked in factories and Mothers who, if they worked were in retail or service low paying respectable jobs. To do better was a challenge in many, many ways these were awesome people of incredibly principled standards but fun loving people they
Continue reading