Blog revivalism

Oh, hello!

I've been off running about for the past year, pursuing a graduate certificate in book and magazine publishing in Toronto. That's all done now, which in theory makes me an accredited publishing professional, which is a lovely thing to be!

I've learned a lot about the publishing industry in the past year, and I'm looking forward to taking that out into the world now. At the moment I am freelancing and job-hunting, and that is what I will be blogging about. Soon.

Beware the Twitter glitch

Ah...good times. It's absolutely pouring buckets out there. I don't have class till 4:30 this afternoon, so hopefully the sky will get itself sorted out by then.

And it's cold in my temporary home! I wish I had the beautiful Latvian-knitting-pattern fingerless gloves that Emma made for me the last time she visited. But alas, they are one of the many necessities that are tied up in all of my belongings that are still in Montreal. Soon.

The real purpose of this post is to inform anyone who may have looked at my Twitter feed recently that I wasn't the author of that delightful tweet. I changed the address of my Twitter feed (it's now http://twitter.com/ErininToronto), and somebody else took my old name, and of course anywhere I've linked my Twitter feed by address...her tweet got posted. So to the poor girl who is "Utterly frutrated and tired! Going to bed. Tomarrow is going to rock!! . . .Because i said it will. It will!" ...I hope your "tomarrow" was way better! :)

Back to School

It's been a busy couple of weeks! I discovered a graduate certificate program in Book and Magazine Publishing through Centennial College in Toronto. This is one of just a couple good publishing programs offered in Canada, and it's very well established and respected. How I'd managed to miss hearing about it for so long is beyond me.

So I packed up a few things and headed down to Toronto - a good friend here was lovely enough to let me house-sit her gorgeous downtown apartment while she was away over the last two weeks, so I've had a chance to unwind and get to know the city a little bit before school is full swing!

I was a (very) late applicant - I had my entrance interview this past Friday, and classes start tomorrow. But I got in! Apparently they have over 200 applicants for just over 60 spots, so I'm thrilled to have squeezed in at such late notice.

So, this is going to be exciting! I will review lots of things, and learn lots more new things. I'll get to do an industry internship, and participate in putting out a magazine. Happily, the editing classes are going with Chicago style, so at least I'll have a head start there!

Business-wise, this means that I won't be taking on new clients for a while. There's a month from mid-December to mid-January where I might be able to squeeze in some projects, but other than that I'm going to keep my slate clear so I can concentrate on school.

It's very strange to be a student again, but I'm looking forward to it. If you happen to know anything fun to do in Toronto, or better yet, if you have information that could lead to me having an apartment anytime soon, let me know!  I probably won't be updating this blog during the school year - though maybe I'll put up a few tidbits if I learn anything interesting! Thank you for reading, and feel free to keep in touch! I'd love to hear how everyone's projects are going.

Birthday!

So, there are still remnants of my cold hanging on - a lot of people I know seem to have this problem right now, so maybe we all caught the same Cold of Endless Doom. But I seem to be in the end stages. Fingers crossed.

Yesterday was my birthday! Hurrah! I took the opportunity to turn off all the TVs and computers and other screen-having implements in my life, and it was so relaxing, you guys. You should try it.

Usually it's pretty nice on my birthday and we take some kind of trip, but this year was rainy gloom and we're being "frugal" because poor Chris is going through his poor-student phase, so sadly no birthday vacation this year. That's okay - I really have been spoiled the last few years - Mont Tremblant, Quebec City, the Eastern Townships, Orford national park...all so awesome. But yeah, yesterday was no day for hiking. I will hike when it's nice. Oh! That's actually a literal "rain check," eh?

But fun things did in fact occur. I got awesome new pants! And a new Wii game! And I finally bought that Mick Jagger movie Performance. I don't even know if I want to watch it, but I've been jonesing after it for so long since seeing it at that crazy psychedelic film festival at the Canadian Centre for Architecture like, 5 years ago, that it was just one of those things that I had to have so I could stop thinking about trying to have it.

And! Speaking of the CCA, I got a membership! So I am going to be there all the time from now on. It's so much more than a museum - there are all these study spaces and reading rooms and whatnot, so it's actually more similar to having a club membership to a place that lets you just be in one of the most gorgeous buildings in Montreal all the time. Now all I need is a laptop so I can do all my work there :)

That is all. I actually have some things to say about writing, so I will do that soon.

Blarg

OMG, you guys. I'm so sick. And you know what it is? A cold. I thought it was allergies, but the doctor (which I went to! It was free! Canada is so neat) said no, it was just "the common cold."

Problem is, this most common of ailments is actually a complete disaster in my line of work. Sure I can figure out if commas belong and eliminate excess adverbs with a stuffy head, but it's times like this that I realize there's so much more to editing than that. Even with a line edit, there's intuition and holding onto endless amounts of detail and knowing what to fact-check and remembering that a character's bike was blue with white stripes at the beginning of the book and white with blue stripes at the end.

Uggggh. I want to be better. Everything hurts!

Too much to read!

I truly love to read. I was one of those kids who loved hiding in corners with books even before I could actually read the words. My parents bought me this little "nook" - a tiny rocking chair with a cat painted on it, with a matching little rug. So I could pretend to be an old lady sitting by the fire with a book, I guess? Anyway, it was great.

Lately, though, I've realized that reading has really insinuated itself into every corner of my life. And like any good addict, I've developed all these tricks and schemes to make myself think I'm not just reading all the time. I wake up and have tea and read something light and happy. Then I get to work, reading and editing. During breaks, I catch up on the million billion blogs on my blogroll. When I've got some spare time, I read review copies for the Self-Publishing Review. And then in the evening, I curl up with a good book.

So, right now I am reading, in approximate order of frequency,

• Nancy Drew - The Thirteenth Pearl (for the light morning read)
• Her Fearful Symmetry (for evening escapism)
• Slaughterhouse Five and Bonfire of the Vanities(out loud with Chris and the rat, who loves to be read to. Ach, grammar. The rat is listening. Chris is reading.)
• Nurtureshock (for two separate extremely informal book clubs with Anna-the-future-doctor and Nicky-the-current-mother-of-toddlers)
• Persuasion (for when I'm in that Jane Austin mood while eating lunch)
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles (for the second time, but I seem to have stalled at about 90%...I'll get back to it, I swear!)
• The Chicago Manual of Style (because I'm always reading the Chicago Manual of Style)
• And, of course, this month's developmental editing book, which is so much fun to have developing ideas for!

Because everyone's doing e-book stats this week - Of those nine books, three are hard-copy and six are on the Kindle. None of the Kindle books involved me paying money to Amazon. Though they've made sample chapters available over not-wireless, so I can actually get them now, which makes me happy. But not happy enough to buy anything from them. Keep trying, Amazon.

Anyway, leave me alone now. I have reading to do.

The Times has an article today where a longtime publishing professional muses about the atmosphere in publishing houses from the '60s to the present. With the upshot being, of course, that everything is currently much more efficient, much more competitive, and much less fun and romantic.

It's kind of sad, but it helps answer that question I always get about why I'd rather freelance than work in a publishing house. This is why - I'd have loved to work in a '60s publishing house. Now, it's too much like working in any other office.

Syncronicity

Just thought it was funny that this book Shoplifting from American Apparel came out today. Because I live half a block from an American Apparel (don't we all, eh?), and yesterday as I got off the bus on that corner, a couple really heavily tattooed hipster boys were leaving the store, and we both turned the same way so I ended up walking behind them. I was just noticing that one of them had kind of a big butt for such a skinny guy when he stuck his hand down his pants and pulled like three T-shirts out of his ass. It took me at least half a minute to register that he had stolen them - my first thought was honestly "Huh. That guy carries around extra t-shirts in his pants. Do people do that now? To make their butts look bigger?" Logic:1, Erin's Logic:0.

Site changes and editing update

I am very pleased to announce that I now have a proper website for my editorial work at kallisti.ca. This is doubly delightful because, as a new Canadian permanent resident, I'm allowed to have a .ca domain, which I think is very neat.

The site was designed and built by Christopher Kahn, to whom I am eternally grateful. I think he did a marvelous job--I wanted the site to be simple and helpful, and I think that's just what it is. What you don't get to see is the amazing project database he also made for me, which is like magic. It leaves me free to assault misused hyphens and dangling modifiers instead of trying to strong-arm my math skills into properly organizing deposit invoices. Brilliant.

Just in time for the site launch, I got a lovely shout-out on the Self-Publishing Review for my work on Henry Baum's upcoming novel The American Book of the Dead, which I had the pleasure to edit last month. It's been really gratifying to hear some kind words from my authors even after they've spent weeks reorganizing subplots and rewriting their least-favorite scenes because of me! I've heard some horror stories of authors feeling very abused and browbeaten by freelance editors, and I really hope that I can make the experience a little more pleasant for the authors I work with.

Just finished off a YA project, and I'm taking the rest of the week off to finish up all the paperwork I need to do for my residency, all the chores I've fallen behind on...you know. Everything. I'm really looking forward to my next project--it's a delightful novel by an Authonomy author that's already in great shape, and I can tell we're really going to be able to make it shine. That'll probably be my last project for this month, and then I'm accepting submissions for the fall.

Go Pens Go!

We break from our regularly scheduled programming to congratulate the 2009 Stanley Cup champions - the Pittsburgh Penguins! Especially Canada's darling Sidney Crosby, the totally dominant Quebecois goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, and Montreal native Max Talbot, who scored both Pen goals 4TW! Awesome, guys, you deserve it.

At peace

I read best when I'm eating. I can concentrate completely, I'm content, I'm not looking for anything or in a hurry to be anywhere else.

This is actually one of the reasons I want an ebook reader - some books are just so damn hard to prop open when you're disassembling an artichoke.

Celebration!

I would like to commemorate a momentous event: the first instance ever where I have correctly estimated the number of something. That is correct. Usually, this is my greatest failing. Put me in a room full of people and I couldn't tell you if there are a hundred people in it or a thousand. But today I said a book review was 750 words, and it was. It was 700, but seriously. I feel like I've entered a new era of my existence.

Happy Valentines Day

I shall be spending mine fending off the sniffles... I've been sick more than a week now with my famous "rotating cold" (1 symptom per day, with equal intensity, for an indefinite period). My Valentine finally caught it yesterday, but as is always the case with him, if he gets sick at all, it shortcuts straight to tonsillitis. When he woke up with a fever, therefore, I shooed him straight to the doctor, and now he's using his antibiotic-based energy to clean his room, it sounds like. Not quite chocolate fondue and yellow roses, but what can you do.Also, this is what I want for Valentine's day. It's attributed to Gaudi's workshop, and it's on sale for only $40,000.

There's nothing to fear

I guess I was lucky, to live my entire youth with all four of my grandparents. I was able to grow up with energetic grandmas and grandpas around me, giving me all the love and normalcy and care that I could hope for. I had holiday feasts and trips to the fair, and dolls and stern moral reminders and pretty hand-sewn dresses. In a childhood where I didn't have much other solid ground, my grandparents were always consistent- one pair in a rich estate by the lake with untouchable china and daily boating expeditions, the other in a beyond-quaint gingerbread cottage with dormers and a gazebo and more hidden treasures than you could ever find.

As of early this morning, all of my grandparents are gone. My grandma Alice, the "grammo-at-the-lake"of my earliest writings, has quietly left us at the end of months of decline. I'm sure she's glad to have it over. I was able to spend more time with her this summer than I had in nearly a decade... we knew it was probably her last year but we couldn't know how soon after the summer's festivities she would leave us for good. The whole summer was a celebration of her life - the whole family was together for the first time in so long, and we played and partied and squabbled and carried on around her just like old times. I hope she was able to enjoy some of it... maybe at least seeing how close my cousin and I have remained made her happy. It was always impossible to know if she was happy. She was a difficult woman. She lived a life that I can't even imagine, and I'm sure none of us will ever understand what was going on inside her.

But she was a wonderful grandmother. Holidays were a dream and visits were like a storybook. My cousin and I, oblivious I'm sure to all the adult drama going on around us, played and made mischief and grew up and bonded, and we had so much freedom there. You can't imagine the freedom unless you've been there and seen it - a private paradise jutting out into the lake, with a paddleboat and a little miniature playhouse that matched the big house, and porthole-style windows and a huge garden and so many places to hide... I can't imagine my life without it.Grandma and grandpa took us to the pumpkin farm every year, and always took us for the ride on the cart pulled by the big draft horses. They took us to the fair and got us armbands for the rides and let us wear ourselves out running through the funhouses again and again. They had a precious nativity scene that they let us put up every Christmas, and tolerated us sending the baby Jesus doll around the tree on the electric train. They took us on a winter caleche ride once as a surprise, with cocoa and a blanket over our knees. They'd take us out for dinner and get tipsy and silly, and use their spoons as catapults to shoot things at us. Grandma would sew us Christmas dresses and halloween costumes, and gave us pearl necklaces that she'd add another pearl to each year for our birthdays. I wonder if they could ever tell how grateful we were, through all our bad manners and bratty behaviour and tantrums... I'm sure they could. If not at the time, then certainly they know now.

I don't know what else to say - there's so much to say. So many memories, so many feelings, so much nostalgia and regret and gratitude. They used to take us to church whenever they could snatch us away from our atheist parents, and I somehow remember one time in particular, when the sermon was about fear, and how you didn't need to be afraid of anything because you were protected by god. When we got home after lunch, they must have asked us to get something from whatever place we were currently pretending was haunted, and we said we couldn't... we were scared! My grandma laughed at us, asking "how can you be frightened, when the pastor just spent the whole sermon telling you that there's nothing to fear?" I don't know what we answered, but I remember how secure I felt then, hearing her repeat that message, and knowing my fear was only something in my imagination. I wasn't so sure god would protect me, but I was positive that she would.

Rest in peace, grandma, and thank you for everything.

Ahem

I feel much less cranky today.

Subjects about which I am irate

1. CTV making fun of Dion "not understanding the question". Look - it was a badly worded question. In fact, it was a crappy, unintelligible question. "If you were prime minister today, what would you have done differently about the financial crisis?" Seriously... two different verb tenses, two different questions, and the man's a francophone - hell, I'm NOT a francophone and I was confused. And then they get all superior about it and are like "we think the Canadian people ought to see this." I guess the Canadian people do have a right to see that CTV can't word their fucking questions...

2. The bartender at Reggie's, who tried to hit on me and then admitted he didn't realize it was the first day of hockey until he arrived at work. Whatever.

3. The entire staff of Banana Republic. On the topic of Banana Republic - what kind of name is that for a store? I wrote them an irate letter... must've been 10 years ago, the internet was pretty new. I said that it was a stupid, arrogant, offensive name for a store - like calling your store "The Holocaust", or "Homeless Brand Clothing" (which exists in Spain - true story). Anyway, I was attempting to be reasonable about the fact that they can't really change their name at this point, especially in light of the fact that I actually fit in their clothes, which doesn't happen in just any store. But the staff... jeesh. First off, how does a store on Ste. Catherine and McGill not have any bilingual staff? That seems like poor business practice. But whatever, I can shop in French. The really annoying thing was that none of the sale merchandise in the petite section has the markdown price actually labled on it. It just says "sale." So I asked the guy when I came out of the changing room "do you know how much this is?" He was confused. He read the price off the tag. I explained that it was in the sale rack. He said he didn't know what that meant - maybe it was a mistake. I should ask at the counter. So I asked the girl who was actually in the department. She gave me this whithering look and said "Well, *I* certainly don't have the price of every item memorized..." Huh. She figured it wasn't on sale, and somebody had put it there by mistake. Even though it was the only one of its kind, and there were 20 actual things on sale in that section, max, so you'd think she'd recognize them. So I took it to the counter and asked the guy at the cash, who checked my *other* item's tag, and then when I corrected him gave me this look of total exhaustion, and checked the price for me with absolute resignation to the stupidity of life in general. In the end, the poor sweater cost too much, so he just sighed and tossed it aside and rang up my other shirt and didn't give me any tissue paper in my bag. Hmph.

4. Metro handrails. Many times, I've been walking down the stairs in a metro, and thought "huh. You could really hurt yourself on those 'safety feature' bumps they put on there." Like, they put little rectangular-solid attachments at regular intervals down the rail, presumably to keep people from skateboarding or sliding down them. But seriously... if people are going to be dumb, they'll find a way to get hurt. Why should you try to protect them at the expense of thousands of people who are just trying to use the stairs? Sure enough, today I was trotting down the stairs at Vendome, listening to music, and BLAM! I whack the side of my hand against one of those bumps. I wasn't going very fast, but I must've hit my hand just right, because I swear I thought I'd broken my finger for hours after the fact. I couldn't really move it, and it hurt, and I got a huge purple bruise that took most of the day to go away. Vicious bastards.
5. This profile description: "I'm a left wing, free thinker girl: meaning I'm a feminist anarchist queer . So please don't write if you don't have the same basic values." Oh my god.

Actifed II

Nothing yet. Nothing besides somewhat reduced sniffling, that is. We might have a winner.

Actifed I

I'm waiting to see if Actifed makes me high.

It's just all been boxes lately. I've cut a swath of destruction through the upstairs storage areas... many besequined 80's clothing items and cassette tapes will be making their way to a Goodwill near you any day now. I hit some boxes of delicate little things, though... there's a thumbnail-sized fuzzy kitten statuette that I petted and kissed so much that the fuzz on its ears and paws is worn away... so sweet. I also have what may properly be referred to as a Unicorn Collection. So being a little girl must not have been so bad *all* the time.

Well, so now I'm back in the homeland. My trip was pretty uneventful... no trouble at customs, only slight trouble walking in "heels" with nylons, no major fallout from eating nothing but mini-pretzels and tomato juice for 5 hours.

My first full day home was the 4th of July, and definitely my biggest dose of US patriotism in a good long while. Excellent times. We saw fireworks, we set off fireworks, we ran about with little American flags. I ended up hanging out with a whole pile of my better friends from middle school - some have changed a fair bit, some not at all. One's married to a girl who seemed quite nice but said very little, one's engaged to a guy who was quite nice to me but seemed rather taken aback by the "oldschool" crowd. The Glendale fireworks were actually pretty wicked - they went totally overboard, and it was a rather damp night so there were a bunch of misfires and low-explosions, which really just made it better. The cloud of smoke blew in our direction, so that by the end of the fireworks we had about five feet of visibility, and a lot of foreboding shadows wandering in the mist. We then went back to the nearest house, watched this fantastically hokey movie Swimfan, drank soda (or in the case of a couple of us Bud Light, which is about the same thing), and then set off a whole box of ranch-themed fireworks, which was just about the most fun I've had in this country ever. I'll get up some pictures when I figure out how to do that with the laptop.

The rest of the time I've been wheedling my dad through the process of cleaning up the upstairs. He did a great job on my room before I got here, and now I've added a few little touches and am starting to feel pretty happy with the homeyness of it. Curtains and a photo frame and a new light fixture are definitely in order, but there's a fairly good chance that'll happen in the next couple days, so all is well. The main project so far has been the next room over, the one always known as "the dressing room", but which since my departure in high school seems mainly to have been used as a dumping ground for all the things that need dumping but don't fit in the hallway. I've always wanted that room (my room and this one are west-facing over the yard and woods, and get gorgeous sunlight and a beautiful green view for most of the day) for a reading room, and I think I've really sold him on the idea. Now if only we could get, say, 20 more boxes of stuff out of there. It could happen.