Techno-treachery

My struggle with ftp sites

   How simple it should have been: Click on the link, enter the user name and password, log on, download the documents and be on my way. Easy as pie, right? Nope. The link didn’t work and the web page didn’t even exist, so I was informed by a chirpy piece of pop up automation software calling itself Parallels Plesk Panel.

   What in creation is Parallels Plesk Panel? It doesn’t matter. It isn't there to help. Its sole purpose is to remind me that I’ve been kneecapped, again, in a world created by programmers who regularly fail to understand the needs of computer users.

Thirteen Lucky Tips

Crossing the magazine article minefield

   It’s high fashion to put out helpful lists of How To Be a Writer, but will advice like “write, don’t “write,”” or, “fuck every publisher you meet,” butter your turnips?

   Here are 13 lucky tips, based on my experiences writing way too many magazine articles, for surviving your own assignments. I use each one for every piece I write.

   My tips kick in right after you’ve successfully pitched your idea to a magazine editor.

And Behind That Door ...

Sights and sounds in mysterious places

   Like the magic phrase Open Sesame, the words, “I’m with magazine X and I am writing an article about topic Y” have opened doors to some cool cook’s tours, from Toronto Pearson's air traffic control tower to the underground mysteries of North America's only tidal power plant in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. Here is a small sampling of the sights I have recorded.

    These mysterious machines, in the Beavers Dental plant in Morrisburg, Ontario, make tiny dental drill bits. They lurch around (well, not all over town!) like drunken robots. 

Content Farm Writing

There is always room at the bottom

   If you agree to write for next to nothing – novelists excepted, because they are a special case of crazy - you might be in the wrong profession.

   This has always been my belief, and an opinion I read this morning on something called Story Board* about something called content farm writing only reinforces my stand on this.

The Indefinite Article (Episode II)

Just because it’s heavy, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t lift it

   I once met a man. His name was J. Richard McEwan, a Micmac Indian (back before it was spelled Mi’kmag) from the Bear River Indian Reserve in Nova Scotia. I sat in his living room with my Uncle Everett, and Mr. McEwan told me how his father bent and bundled ribs for the birch bark canoes he built.

   This gentle man and my good uncle reminisced about Bear River in its heyday. My host was 81 and my uncle was 65. Talk gradually, perhaps inevitably, turned to the feats of strength of its men.

The Indefinite Article (Episode I)

Open-ended assignments can be bad medicine

   I got an assignment, the thirteenth, from one of my European editors one day. He wanted me to do a global review story. He had a fetish for round the world pieces and baby, did I get screwed.

   “Geographically, I'd like the environmental piece to be as global as possible and cover the full gambit of environmental issues (noise, air, water, energy saving initiatives etc),” began his assignment note. Never-say-no freelancer that I was, I agreed.

256 Days to Go

... or how to finish a book

   I’ve made a pledge. I’ve been chipping away at a book project since 2004 and this feels like the year I should tie off the big bow. I’m determined to work on it for at least 60 minutes a day till December 31 or until it is finished.

   Nine days into the year I am up 415 minutes, a mere 125 minutes off of my new pace. Today I even made up 15 minutes of lost ground. I’m optimistic. My mind feels ready. Made up. Determined.