Every month, I share the articles and sites that I found most interesting. Here’s what caught my attention in September: finances of book deals and self-publishing, China’s effect on Hollywood, thoughts on Instagram and Like buttons, how commuting has shaped cities, and more.
publishing
Inspired | August 2018
LinksEvery month, I share the articles and sites that I found most interesting. Here’s what caught my attention in August.
• On Woman’s Weekly, and why we should all care about their new contract policy by Joanne Harris: “Womag writers are the canary in a very deep literary mine. If we, the more influential and better-protected folk of the literary world, allow their rights to be exploited, then sooner or later companies like TI Media will come for the rest of us.”
• Jami Attenberg’s #1000WordsofSummer Turned a Corner of the Internet into a Supportive Literary Community by Amy Carleton: “Writing is work. And writing well, amidst all of our available distractions, online and otherwise, can be hard work. But this summer, one writer found a way to turn a potential distraction — the internet — into a motivational force and an affirming pop-up literary community in only two weeks.”
• Is social media influencing book cover design? by Holly Connolly: “Like the recent revival of zines, the encroach of digital has resulted in a renewed appreciation for the physical – and beautiful.”
• Writing and the Creative Life: The Tactile Experience of Writing by Scott Myers
The only paper remnant I have kept this whole time are the index cards. That I have refused to give up.
So I asked myself why keep working with index cards? I knew the answer immediately: Because of the tactile experience.
• How to accept rejection: why failure can be the first step towards success by Donna Ferguson
• Canaries and Coal Mines: Women in Games and the Birth of the Alt-Right by Leena van Deventer [video, 16 minutes]: “To me, navigating creativity in a post-truth world hinges on communicating and working within your values, and assisting others to do the same.”
• The Internet of Garbage by Sarah Jeong: “Today, The Verge is publishing an interim edition of Sarah Jeong’s The Internet of Garbage, a book she first published in 2015 that has since gone out of print. It is a thorough and important look at the intractable problem of online harassment.”
• Electronic Devices Privacy Handbook: A Guide to Your Rights at the Border by the BC Civil Liberties Association
This handbook is meant to help you make sense of the current state of play with respect to electronic searches at the Canadian border and at US preclearance zones in Canada, and to provide tools to protect your privacy when travelling with electronic devices.
• Mike Garson’s first performance of “Life on Mars” with David Bowie, 22 September 1972
What’s the most interesting thing you saw online this month?
Inspired | June 2018
LinksEvery month, I share the articles and sites that I found most interesting. Here’s what caught my attention in June.
• The Key Book Publishing Paths: 2018 by Jane Friedman: a downloadable chart detailing the most common publishing options
• The 430 Books in Marilyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read? by Ayun Halliday
• A study on the financial state of visual artists today by The Creative Independent: “With this report, we hope to paint a clearer picture of how structures of the art world work (or don’t work) to grow artists’ careers, help them earn a living, and satisfy their overall human needs.”
• The Perfect Photo: Myth or Reality? by Emily Ludolph: “As creators, we can spend hours fine-tuning the tiniest details until we deem our end result “perfect.” But is there really such a thing as perfection when it comes to creativity?”
• Why photojournalism matters by Elodie Mailliet Storm: “This image is the result of ten years of John’s work documenting the U.S. Mexican border, way before it increasingly became “news” under the new Administration.”
• How Instagram’s algorithm works by Josh Constine
• Why Photography’s B&W vs Color Debate Is No Debate At All by Lars Mensel: “Just as black and white now looks reduced to our eyes, color must have seemed gaudy to the photographers of the 1950s: It looked like embellishment.”
• How everything on the internet became clickbait by Kevin Munger (via Now I Know, which I highly recommend subscribing to.)
This setup is perfect for people motivated primarily by diversion and duty — anyone with an internet connection has access to more high-quality information sources than Harvard professors 50 years ago could have dreamed of. It turns out that there just aren’t many people who want to take advantage of that; most of us are more into drama and display.
• #BotSpot: Twelve Ways to Spot a Bot by Ben Nimmo: Some tricks to identify fake Twitter accounts
• You Have to Fail a Little by Melissa Baumgart: “When I am flailing in my writing, certain I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, I put on Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse to remind myself that however bad it gets, it’s not as rough as being Francis Ford Coppola on the set of Apocalypse Now.”
• The Hidden Queer History Behind “A League of Their Own” by Britni de la Cretaz: “By not including a gay character’s story in “A League of Their Own,” the film does to the history of the league what the owners tried to do its existence—erase lesbians from the narrative.”
What’s the most interesting thing you saw online this month?
Inspired | May 2018
LinksEvery month, I share the articles, videos, and sites that I found most interesting. Here’s what caught my attention in May.
• My friend Bethany just launched her site! Go take a look—it’s fantastic, and full of advice for us busy writers.
• Are ebooks dying or thriving? The answer is yes by Thu-Huong Ha: “Nobody—industry experts, authors, publishers—can gauge the true size of the self-publishing market. So no one can say for sure what’s going on in the larger book industry.”
• It’s Okay to Give Up on Mediocre Books Because We’re All Going to Die by Janet Frishberg: “One, I realized literally NO ONE cares if I give up on a book except me. (And maybe the author, if I told them, which I wouldn’t do because…no.) Two, I realized that I’m going to die.”
• The Cartoonists of Color Database and The Queer Cartoonists Database, spotlighting marginalized comics creators.
• Why I’m Done With Guest Posting by Margo Aaron: “We’re tacitly participating in a system that’s designed to make readers reactive, angry, and thoughtless.”
• The Myth of Authenticity Is Killing Tex-Mex by Meghan McCarron
Waves of cheesy, spicy, frankly pleasurable Texas-Mexican dishes, with many regional variations, continued to spiral outward in the 20th century and into the 21st: sizzling fajitas, cheese enchiladas, frozen margaritas, queso, breakfast tacos, Frito pie, barbacoa, puffy tacos. Along with the crispy tacos and burritos of Cal-Mex, Tex-Mex became one of America’s most beloved and important regional cuisines, even if most Americans didn’t realize that was what they were eating.
• [SPOILERS!] Heads I Win, Tails YOU DIE: Thanos’ Plan is Even Worse Than You Know by Michael Carlisle
• Do You Know Where Your Healing Crystals Come From? by Emily Atkin: “If shop owners can’t disclose their sourcing without risking business, how can consumers know that their healing crystals didn’t contribute to human trauma or environmental destruction?”
• The New Passport-Poor by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian: “Passports, in other words, were invented not to let us roam freely, but to keep us in place—and in check. They represent the borders and boundaries countries draw around themselves, and the lines they draw around people, too.”
• I love this video so much: ‘Dynamite’ by Tami Neilson. (Someone linked to this on Twitter earlier in the month, but I can’t remember who. If it was you: thanks! You’re awesome!)
What’s the most interesting thing you saw online this month?
