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July 30, 2016
The Problem with First Books
In an interview with New York magazine’s Vulture blog, comic book creator Brian K. Vaughan makes clear his feelings about his early work:Do you go back and read many of your older books?Oh, God, no. ...
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June 18, 2015
On Buttery Butter, Compress to Impress, Less Is More, Etc.
To indicate her displeasure with overwritten sentences, my grandmother used the phrase "buttery butter." What she meant by it was this: if you write "butter" it’s clear already what you’re talking ...
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June 09, 2015
On the Benefits of Not Writing (Surfing)
It isn’t (usually) wise to blame other people for things that happen to you, but I blame Dr. Kary Banks Mullis for everything.Dr. Mullis is a Novel Prize-winning biochemist who devised paradigm-shifting ...
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May 11, 2016
Posthumous Lit: How Do You Capture a Dead Author’s Voice and Intentions?
You all know the saying. It goes something like this. The only three things guaranteed in life are death, taxes, and the Toronto Maple Leafs not making the playoffs. Okay, so I tacked on the latter Leafs ...
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June 30, 2013
Are You Spending More Time on Pinterest Than on Your Prose?
As a card-carrying member of this newer generation of entrepreneurs who believe in thoroughly cultivating all sides of our hybridized identities, I spend an equal amount of time working as a communications ...
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May 04, 2014
Guttersnipes: Elisha Lim
TCAF is the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. It is an annual week-long celebration of comics and graphic novels and their creators, featuring readings, interviews, panels, workshops, gallery shows, art installations, ...
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May 01, 2014
Residential Zoning: Comics, Poutine, and the Publishing Ecosystem
Here's hoping you don't learn anything about me this May.My name is Evan Munday, and if you've heard of me at all, it was probably through my past publicity work at venerable Canadian indie press Coach ...
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June 16, 2017
Writers Working With Actors
Prep for the audio book: it was fun for me to Skype about my characters’ accents with narrator Pascal Langdale before the recording sessions for my new novel. Few people are interested in such arcane ...
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May 27, 2017
5 Tips to Stand Out in the Slush Pile
You’ve finished your manuscript. It’s been edited by a critique partner. You’ve assembled a pitch. Now what? The next step is securing literary representation to pitch your project to prospective ...
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March 09, 2021
A love letter (to books)
The first quote-unquote serious novel I read was One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. My eighth grade teacher set down a box at the front of the classroom and, in a seemingly ...