November 4th, 2009

In very brief

1) Montreal est magnificique! J’etais la pour un presentation des livres a Librairie Drawn & Quarterly avec Kathleen Winter et Amy Jones (on peut voir leurs perspectives sur notre presentations si on lit ses blogs. Notre publie Dan Wells a conduit son minivan, beaucoup des livres, Amy et moi (je pense qu’il y a un probleme de verb avec cette phrase, et peut-etre la plupart de cette paragraphe) et c’etait un adventure magnifique.

2) I was the Inconstant Muse for Hallowe’en! It was was awesome. Like most of my highly conceptual [confusing] costumes, this one requires some explanation: I picture the Muse a bit coquettish/flirty/slutty–she is all eager to hook up and give writers great ideas, but then she takes off and leaves you to execute the idea all alone. So my costume was a brief toga, some laurel leaves, and great first lines of books written in Sharpie all over my arms and legs. Conceptual, I tell you.

3) This hydro-metre thingy is the best: a way to be environmentally friendly in a vaguely competitive, entirely trackable way: you get to see your hour-to-hour, day-to-day energy use, and pinpoint where you are over-indulging in “peak” (ie., most expensive) energy. I don’t have most of the big appliances (dishwasher, laundry/drier, air conditioner) so even at optimal efficiency my savings would still be minimal, but it is so attractive to see it all laid out in colourful drafts. I hope I don’t get obsessed.

4) My post about TTC seating etiquette got picked up on the Maisonneuve blog. This is a silly thing to post here, as if you are a regular Rose-coloured reader, you’ve likely already read that piece, but I am chuffed the Maisonneuve-sters thought it was worth reposting, and Rose-coloured is for all things I’m chuffed about (except the post in question, actually, which is rather snarky).

5) Tomorrow night, I head for the hills, by which I mean Edmonton and the mountains beyond, as well as my incredible friend AMT. I’ll only be gone 5 days, and likely there can be some remote posting, but whenever I leave my comfortable internet orbit, there is a risk of non-access, so you may not hear from me until next week. I’m sure you’ll be just fine without me!

RR

September 16th, 2009

Blogging Tips from the Big Screen

Well, it had to happen: I saw Julie and Julia and loved it, and even better, I got over some of my retro gender stereotypes and saw it with someone of the male persuasion, who loved it too!

Better still (or at least equal), this is the first movie I’ve ever seen about a blogger. Well, half about a blogger…the less interesting half, according to pretty much everyone who has reviewed the film. And it’s hard–Meryl Streep is perhaps the best actress in popular cinema today and Amy Adams is…not bad. Julia Child revolutionized cooking in America and Julie Powell wrote a fairly interesting blog for a while. Julia had Paris, Julie had Queens. It’s sort of depressing to continue in this vein, because the character I identified with was Julie.

And I liked the Julie sections of the film, because they are still pretty interesting though not revolutionary or Parisian, but also because they addressed issues I’ve never seen dramatized before, issues dear to my heart–blogging issues.

*And* this gives me an opportunity to do a blogging-tips post here, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while. The reason I haven’t is, though I love Rose-coloured with all my heart and it is very much as good as I can make it, it is lacking some things that make a great blog. So I really needed an example like Julie Powell, who seems to do everything right (in the film; I haven’t read the actual blog; ironic?) for a little segway into the “do as I say, not as I do” territory–onwards!

1. Make it a blog *about* something, ideally something ongoing: a story that readers can follow and get involved in. Political blogs have the right idea: every day something new happens, myriad new things in fact, and the blogger with an informed and interested mind has his or her pick of things to write about that people will be interested in. A travel blog about an extended trip; a parenthood blog about a baby’s first year; a tv blog about America’s Top Model–I’m not saying I would read all of these, but conceptually they are very sound ways to organize a blog. Like some of the above, Julie made her task slightly harder by being herself responsible for the ongoing thing that she would then write about; that’s two tasks, by my count.

Are you already sensing how Rose-coloured doesn’t fit this rubric? Cause the day-by-day “happening” I’m supposed to be covering here is me being a writer, but if I limited posts to announcements of publications and readings, I’d be lucky to post monthly, and if I tried to cover each time I actually wrote fiction, a) I’d never actually write fiction and b) we’d all be bored. Which is why this blog turned out to be a miscellany, linked more or less by the themes of writing, reading, and me (which is of course far too loose–I’m learning to write reviews, but posting one of a shoe is dubiously far from the original theme of writing. Sigh.)

2) Want to do it. Julie’s blog was so satisfying to readers because it was satisfying to *her*–it was her idea and she was proud of herself and eager to share her experiences, thrilled when people related to them. One of the most depressing conversations about the state of publishing I’ve had recently was with a group of writers who felt they “had” to start blogs to promote their books and didn’t want to. They wondered what it would be like, how much work it would be, how many books they would sell. I said I loved my blog, considered it my hobby, and found it little effort compared to what I learn in the process and get back from readers. But I wasn’t sure the blog had in fact sold any books. Someone responded, “Well, discounting “hobbyists” like Rebecca, what do we figure the sales increase would be?” Oh, yeah, I want to read your daily musings. (note: not exact transcript of conversation; I may have added snark).

I hope if nothing else, it’s clear from Rose-coloured that I love Rose-coloured, and look forward to posting. I wrote for months when it was basically Scott and Fred reading, and if all I could keep were those two, I’d go right on. Blogging is my golf, or my knitting, or macrame or whatever; it is the companion to the fiction I write. Yes, I started the blog partly as a publicity thing for the last book, but writing the wide variety of prose I’ve been experimenting with here has also helped immeasurably as I write the *next* book.

3. Post regularly. Julie had 500+ recipes to make and report on in one year; I’m guessing it was a pretty well-updated blog. A blogger can totally set her definition of regularly, from a couple times a day to once a week, to…whatever you want. But I think it is important to set a loose standard that blog readers can expect. Julie rants on the phone to her mom about being accountable to her readers to do what she set out to do, and within reason that is true. You shouldn’t be putting off real life to blog, but as a blog reader, I am so sad when someone who’s daily comment I look forward to goes AWOL for weeks. By the time the blogger returns, maybe I’ve licked my wounds and moved on.

This is why #2 is so important. If you don’t want to blog, you won’t–blogs are not necessary to anything, no one pays you, and friendly readers are only that. You’d be suprised, if you surf around, how many blogs are mainly just apologies for not posting more, interspersed with long silences. And really, the silences are fine–it’s the apologies that are silly. With the advent of Google Reader, I no longer have to go looking for updates on most blogs, because they come to me, which is perfect for those blogs that really are just publication and reading announcements for writers I like. That’s not the way to get a large and devoted fandom or a book deal–but we’re not all after that.

4. Have a personality in your blog. Some bloggers tell everything about their jobs, friends, family and sex lives (I’ve stopped linking to Ms. Trunk even for comments like this; argh!), some talk strictly about their subject matter and never even mention what they ate for lunch, but a distinctive and human (and humourous–Julie made lots of witty asides about her own ineptitude) voice is what draws well, me, anyway, to a blog. You could info on Wikipedia, after all.

5. Read it over before you post. Ok, I have no idea if Julie did this and, ok, I totally get that blogs are new form of nonpublishing publishing and that they aren’t held to as rigid standards as say a newspaper. I’ve seen typos in my own published posts and *let them go* because I know if it was posted more than 3 days ago, the post has probably had most of the readers it is likely to get. But if there are flying leaps of logic, non-sequiteurs to the point of illogic, so many typos things can’t be understood, if there are no paragraphs (common and v. annoying in the blogsphere) it seems like you didn’t care much about the piece at all. So why should the reader?

That’s it–the best Julie and I can come up with with regard to blogging. I know I know: there are like 100 000 blogs don’t conform to all this, including mine, and some are pretty good–please don’t feel like I’m rigid on this stuff. But I do feel that many people get excited by and then frustrated with the blogging experience, and these might be some good ways to keep the excitement going. Anyway, it worked for Julie.

I go where I go on my own two feet
RR

July 17th, 2009

Oh, look!

I don’t usually link to blogs that haven’t been going for a while, in case they don’t continue, but I’m too excited to wait to tell you that The New Quarterly has a blog now, The Literary Type. And really, I have no doubt that TLT will thrive with all the good energy and talent that lives at TNQ behind it, and with their wonderous managing editor Rosalynn Tyo at the helm.

Yay!

The flower said it wished it was a bee
RR

June 12th, 2009

Saving you from boredom, one link at a time

Did you know that AMT has a blog? And that’s it’s fabulous, and contains regular updates about dogs, the Weather Network, and all the other various ways life is amusing? I have been dreaming of (and campaigning for) this for *years*, and now I am happy. You go read and be happy, too.

Another thing I’ve been wanting for a while is the re-emergence of rob mclennan’s fascinating series of author interviews, 12 or 20 Questions. And now it’s back, and being posted regularly on rob’s clever blog. Hooray! (Am I now going to get everything I’ve wished for? That would be odd. Maybe only blog-related things I’ve wished for.)

Finally, Penelope Trunk has a good post on prioritizing. Actually, it’s a slightly snarky post about how people who don’t read blogs are dumb and slow (I don’t agree with that; much as I like blogs, they are a personal choice, like a New Yorker subscription. Or heroin.) But she makes some really good points about how we have time for what we care about, and less time for what we, consciously or not, regard as unimportant. This is a good truth to acknowledge for me, and it’s stuff like this that keeps me reading PT although she a) is mean and b) talks a lot about her sex life for no reason. But actually, neither of those things are boring either!

Happy reading!

Thank you stranger for your therapeutic smile
RR

March 31st, 2009

Not Terrible at All

Today this blog turns two years old and, possibly, enters its hair-pulling, tantrum-throwing, finger-in-light-socket years. We hope not. It’s been such a great ride so far.

One year ago I was here, being glamourous and alarmed. Two years ago I was starting this blog, and the first non-meta-blog post was this, about snark and story-telling.

Five jobs. Several publications. Myriad irritations. One book. Braces, illness, surrealism, and confusion. And…whatever post is after this one.

Cheers to that, and thanks for reading, responding, laughing and scoffing. It’s been so very much fun so far.

RR

March 23rd, 2009

Quel anti-climax

I’m now truly sorry I complained about my lost courier package last week, since a shared mystery demands a shared denouement, and the denouement in this case is stupid.

It was not a summons, it was not a dairy product, it was a set of advance-screening movie tickets that I “earned” through a corporate rewards program. These are a) small enough to fit handily in a mailbox, b) not relevant for close to 3 weeks and c) probably worth less than the cost of delivery. I have no idea why anyone would have couriered them.

And, before you ask, they are to a truly embarrassing movie, much as me and my partener in cimatic silliness are looking forward to seeing it. I shall never ever ever reveal the title, lest it sully my reputation as a serious person (even more).

Dire times call for dire faces
RR

March 22nd, 2009

Elsewheres

I’ve been posting elsewhere again, Writers Writing Blogs and This is a call, both at Thirsty. You are encouraged to read, and, if so inclined, answer the call!!

But I never answered his letter
RR

March 11th, 2009

Be a friend to books!

I’m going to start doing the occasional guest post over at my publisher’s blog, Thirsty, and to kick things off on the right foot, I’ve done a little photo essay on how to be kind to the books in your life. It’s called Books Are Our Friends!! and I am sure you already know all my hints and tips, but perhaps you would like a little refresher?? I hope you enjoy it!!

We ain’t gonna live forever
RR

January 7th, 2009

On Alert

There is nothing like the vertigo you experience when someone says, “Hey, I read that thing about you,” and not only do you not know the thing they are referring to, the information is in some tiny way incorrect.

Most people will twitch violently if they see their name misspelled on *anything*, including a *TV Guide* subscription sticker–any representation of self ought to be as accurate as possible. Of course, that way lies madness–how long, exactly, are you willing to stay on hold with the *TV Guide* people? But one likes to at least keep track of what’s being said.

Hence the incredibly self-absorbed step of setting up a Google Alert for my own name–I just like to know. Mainly, the alerts contain my Rose-coloured posts, articles and reviews I would’ve heard about in other ways, and the occasional negative thing that no one wanted to mention to me. I also see the odd gem that I actually wouldn’t have seen sans alert. Love it!

A random bonus to the whole alert thing is that I set it up wrong, for only my last name rather than first-n-last, so I get notices when *any* Rosenblum does anything. I’m not innundated, there aren’t that many of us, but actually, I didn’t know about *any* of these folks before the Alerts, so it’s kind of fascinating and impressive to see what others are up to:

—Michael Rosenblum is an innovator in TV news.
—Mort Rosenblum is a journalist who wants to save the world.
—Matthew Rosenblum is a composor and professor of music
—Walter and Naomi Rosenblum are photographers
—Mary Rosenblum writes mysteries and science fiction novels.
—a whole bunch of Rosenblums make wine (I’d actually heard of those guys before–it’s a pretty respected winery, I’m told)

I’m not related to any of these folks, or at all familiar with their work, but it is nice to know that they are out there, doing the name proud.

I wonder if this post will turn up on *their* Google Alerts, and what they’ll think about that?

Except for the drilling in the wall
RR

November 25th, 2008

Journals, Diaries, Logs, and Blogs

I’ve always been rather worked up over journals. As a bookish kid, I was forever being given pretty little notebooks in which to record my deep thoughts, and thus was perpetually disappointed that I didn’t have any. So many adorable diaries, fabric-covered or pleather-covered, some with little tiny keys, and only the first dozen pages filled. Even when I managed to keep one for a few months, it was deadly dull going–a routine litany of school, piano and arguing with my brother. And months-long absenses, followed by passionate exclamations of self-disgust, and resolutions to be more faithful. The most interesting material in those old journals is all rather meta-journal.

And yet, the absolute worst thing imaginable was my journal falling into the hands of a parent, sibling, school frenemy or, horror of horrors, a stranger. Who knows, I don’t actually remember now, but I think I was actually keeping those books as a record of my *artistic progress*, or possibly as notes for my autobiography. Oh dear.

Good thing the internet came along and allowed me to be a bit more focussed in my journalling. Of course, as an adult, I can make a better effort at the interest factor–I no longer play the piano nor argue with my brother (much), and I definitely don’t feel bound to keep anything so dull as a *record of what actually happens to me*.

Because, you know, who cares? Of the 1000s of actions anyone takes in a given day (“make microwave oatmeal,” “have 3-minute conversation about insects with neighbour,” “get hit by door on way off bus”) only a few are even vaguely interesting, and even fewer are relevant to people who aren’t going to be eating that oatmeal (or plagued by those insects).

Rose-coloured is mainly a public space for me-as-a-writer–what I’m writing, what I’m reading, what’s being said about my work, what I’m saying about other writers. I try to keep interesting. For more boring matters, I do keep an everyday workbook, on paper, wherein I describe the work that I managed that day on whatever story I am absorbed in. Those entries are quitte regular and quite painless, being mainly a sentence or two each. And then I keep a reading log, where I write don’t titles and authors and, again, a sentence or two about what I thought.

I guess I *am* a record-keeping type, after all, in my way. Making this blog was my reward for finishing my Master’s thesis, and I’ve rarely so enjoyed a self-given gift. I like to write through my ideas to know what I think, and I like to know what others think, too. It definitely makes my day when someone responds to something I’ve written, be it in print or on-line.

So, if you’ve read this far, thanks for reading, and thanks for thinking about stuff I think about. I guess I natter a lot, but I do enjoy it.

Something underground / gonna come up and carry me
RR