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Canadian author Yann Martel just ended his campaign to get Prime Minister Stephen Harper to read a book — not his book, any book.

I have to say, I didn’t particularly care for Life of Pi, but this line from anarticle about Martel’s effort has got to be my quote of the year.

I can’t understand how a man who seems never to read imaginative writing of any kind (novels, poetry, short stories, high-brow, middle-brow, low-brow, anything) can understand life, people, the world. I don’t care if ordinary people read or not. It’s not for me to say how people should live. But people who have power over me? I want them to read because their limited, impoverished dreams may become my nightmares.

Of course, Harper can’t really be expected to reflect, because his kind don’t have reflections.

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Lots of people tell me they’ve got an idea for a children’s book, and ask me about how they can “get” it published.

A friend just asked about this on Facebook, so — based on what I know and have heard — this was my answer:

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I think it’s important to make a distinction here between self-publishing and “getting published”. In the former case, you do everything and pick up the costs, in the latter, once you’ve finished the book, everything else is up to other people.

I self-published my first book in the sense that I wrote it, did all the layout design, then got a press in Toronto to do the production work.

For the next three novels, I did everything myself — writing, layout, printing, and binding.

Kids’ books are a funny thing. A lot of people think they’d be easier to get published because they’re ‘lighter’ (not so serious, so subject to critical analysis, or whatever), but in fact they’re far, far harder to get a publisher to commit to, partly because of competition, partly because the production costs of making a full-colour, hardcover book are so much higher.

So that’s my wet-blanket view of the industry, which is that it is really, really difficult — especially now — to get a publisher to buy a children’s book.

…BUT…

If you’re talking about self-publishing a children’s book, that’s something completely different. The only restriction you have here is what you’re willing to pay.

I produce all my own books, so I couldn’t tell you who could do this for you locally in Ontario. But this is the next question to ask: what kind of book run are you looking at?

Here your choices are either traditional offset, where you pay a lot up front and then receive boxes and boxes of finished books, and you can do whatever you like with those. Or you can take advantage of “print-on-demand”, where the books are produced as you need them. The unit cost is much higher, but your initial outlay of cash is considerably reduced.

Search around for “PoD” or “print-on-demand” and you’ll find lots of people offering these services. Lulu.com is the most well-known, and is generally well respected.

Beware the “authors’ services” companies — or “vanity presses”, as they used to be called — who will make it sound like they’ll do everything for you in exchange for cash. Some of them are downright predatory, and will charge you way over the industry norms, and never deliver on their half-promises of “getting into every bookstore”.

LightningSource is the company that Lulu and similar services generally use to do their production, but to approach them you have to have your manuscript completely ready to be printed. No hand-holding there. But a much lower price.

From there, you move on to issues like distribution (making the book available for bookstores to buy; you need a distributor because most aren’t equipped to deal with individuals) and marketing (letting people know this book is there to buy, and what’s special about it).

I hope that gives you something to go on for starters.

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…Or, “Why I Sold My iPhone”.

 These days, just about everyone you see on a train station platform, in an airport, or even crossing the street is staring into their palm. We’re hardly ever where we are anymore because we’re busy checking in with our digital devices.

I feel safe in saying that 95% of the things I looked up mid-conversation last year weren’t of any lasting use to me. When travelling, I either spent ages trying get a signal and wait for something to download, or the roaming charges were so prohibitively expensive that I didn’t dare use data on a foreign network.

As a self-employed person, my attention is very important, and I’m growing increasingly angry about how easy it is to have vast beaches of time slip through the hourglass while browsing and… checking in.

“Checking in” gets to become a twitch reflex. Any spare moment can be filled with checking the news (“Get angry about something you can’t influence”), reading about the latest technologies (“Your thing is obsolete; here’s a new one to buy”), or following others’ social media conversations for no particular reason. True, connecting with other people is nice, and I like being in touch with folks from hither and yon, then and now.

Still, though, there’s something toxic-feeling about it. “Checking in” feels an awful lot like checking out, like when you shake your head and realise you don’t really know where the last half-hour has gone. And reading someone’s updates isn’t like sitting across from a person, having a coffee together.

When I was a kid, I used to spend all day drawing. My God, if I swapped my browsing-time now for drawing-time, I’d have a whole other career!

At the end of so many days now, I lament the lack of anything to show for my time because I spent so much of it interacting with the computer. And life feels so different, so much healthier, when I lift my head, look around, talk to real people, do my own thing instead of following what zillions of other people are doing.

I grew to hate my iPhone, and when I was in Canada at Christmas I refused to interact with it (“C’mon! Look it up! Check something! Fill your time with me!”). Instead, I asked people on the street for directions. I engaged with the world instead of fumbling to get out and squint at my little sliver of tech.

Last week I sold it. Used, with a screen full of dust, it still sold on eBay for more than a month’s rent.

My solution isn’t exactly the paragon of virtuous disconnection, because it involved a lot of purchases, but the things I bought feel like they get me out of the constant stream of connection and consumption: they do what they do, that’s all they’re meant to do, and I won’t need them to do more. (The iPhone, on the other hand, was designed as a portal for consumption — buying songs and apps, each new year’s model fixing annoying features of the previous one.)

So here’s my setup:

1) My day-planner. A while back, I switched from using software for my project management and scheduling. Digital appointments got lost in synching, and I had to make an effort, to dig, to see anything or enter anything.

I can physically tell where I am in this, and I can order my thoughts it my own natural way. Plus I made it. It’s mine in many ways.

2) A proper camera. I’m a crap photographer; I accept this. I haven’t got the eye. Still, for years I’ve been pursuing the convenience of “converged” devices that do everything, and my experience is that, in the end, they do a bit of everything, but badly. All the phone cameras I’ve had too rubbish photos.

So I got myself a real camera. And it’s shockproof, waterproof, and dustproof. Hallelujah to that last item, ‘cause all my stupid smartphones got dust under their screens.

3) A phone, just a phone. I got a phone designed for old people. It does calls and text messaging. That’s it. I will never expect or need it to do more.

I was considering John’s Phone, a really stripped-down phone — just buttons on a rectangle — but then I saw a picture of one in situ, and it’s a brick, bigger than an iPhone. I’m happy that killed it for me, because, in practice, not having text messages would have been a problem. That’s how most of us communicate here in the UK, unless we really, really have to make a call.

4) An iPod. Yeah, I know, this seems contradictory, but I do like to listen to music while I write or walk, so I didn’t want to lose that — and I didn’t want something that was about buying content or reconfiguring it overmuch, so the new iPod Nano was perfectly suited to my needs. The screen and the capacity aside, this is basically like my first MP3 player. My needs in that regard won’t be changing, so this should do indefinitely.

5) A typewriter. I’ve been toying with the idea of using a typewriter for a while, and I finally took the plunge. Will I actually write novel-pages on it? I’m not sure. But it feels great to write on this, and I love the idea of a single-purpose thing that doesn’t have any other tasks running in the background for me to switch to.

When it arrived, it had some problems. At first I was gutted, thinking I’d have to send it back, but then it occurred to me that this is a machine. I can flip it over, I can open it up, and I can see what it’s doing. And if it’s not working, I don’t have to throw it out — I can fix it.

First I fixed the space-bar, and was overjoyed to see the carriage moving along as it should. Then, yesterday, I fixed the bell (actually important, otherwise you get stuck at the end of the line mid-word). I even managed to get the model paint (or whatever it was) off the hood.

So now I have a brand-new East German typewriter from 1959. And it has a deliciously bad industrial smell, an oily smell like the workings of a streetcar.

Technology can be great: It’s enabled me to do work I love without having to be on-site to do it, being able to print my own books has changed my life, and my husband’s family was able to participate in our wedding via Skype — stuff like that. But it can also be an insatiable life-stealer, so this is all one step toward getting that in balance with the things I want to be doing.

I want to get out more. As a publisher, like. So I went looking for indie publishing events in the UK and discovered there’s quite a bunch of them.

In case this list might be of use to anyone else, here’s what I’ve found so far.

If you know of any others, or have any insight (either ‘yay’ or ‘nay’) about any of these, I’m happy to hear about it.

• Brighton Zinefest, 19 February
• The Bristol International Comic & Small Press Expo, 14-15 May
• The London Art Book Fair, 23-25 September
• London Zine Symposium, 17th April
• Alternative Press Fair (was November last year)
• Leeds Zine Fair (was November last year)
• Artists’ Book and Independent Publishing Fair, Walsall (was in November last year)

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At last, I’ve put up a gallery of pictures my nephew, Andrew MacDonald, took at my wedding.

I’ve been wrestling with getting this post up, partly because I feel like I should try to describe the day, or share our ceremony and vows.

But I’m not going to. It was a space, a moment. And it was ours. Lots of people I love couldn’t be there, but the Internet can’t fix that.

My mum, on the other hand, stayed up late a night or two after it was all over and wrote a wee diary about the event. This is just one more giant feather in her cap, because she’s the one who organised the whole event. I could never thank her enough for the perfect day we had.

So, without further ado, here’s a link to the photos:

And here’s my mum’s account of the story:

Joan’s Journal of Hamish & Craig’s Wedding
December 28, 2010

It was too bad the weather turned so nasty yesterday as the day went on — which had Craig commenting that at least it made it “a white wedding”! Ian delivered Hamish & Craig to the Inns on Great George around 1 p.m., where they took their overnight things and changed into their wedding clothes — new hand-made MacDonald and Cameron kilts and “all the “go-withs” — and met up with us at The Loft at 2:30 p.m. We then hooked the laptop up to Skype to include Craig’s family members who had gathered together in Stirling (Scotland) to see the ceremony. Before the formal ceremony, Craig and Hamish had us share a drink of prosecco — like champagne but with a bit more fizz and a nicer flavour.

Everything went without a hitch and the soft lighting and dozens of little candles lit the place perfectly. Seven covered chairs with dark fabric and burgundy chiffon ribbons around them were set up in a semi-circle in the far corner of the room facing where the ceremony took place. Hamish had also made what looked like a little program booklet for everyone, but was lovely romantic readings. The “service” (non-religious) and vows were written by Hamish and Craig, other than the required words for the marriage vows, and they exchanged silver wedding bands they had hand-crafted for each other. Both of them and Ian and Ellen, who read quotes from relevant pieces of their own choice, got a bit choked up and I think we were all a bit weepy when it was over (including our only non-family guests and best friends, Rob and Jean Robinson).

After the ceremony, we went downstairs to 42nd Street Lounge for some picture-taking and a toast, with the grooms drinking out of the quaich cup I had bought them for that purpose. We toasted with a dram of single malt scotch with a splash of water — I always said I hated whiskey, but it was actually quite nice. Then we went back upstairs for a fantastic dinner, with more wine and toasts. Then back down to 42nd Street Lounge while they dismantled the dinner table, etc., for the Open House. We started dinner about 4:45 p.m. with the idea we would be finished 6 p.m. — wrong, we were just finishing up around 7 p.m., the time the Open House was planned to begin.

Fortunately, there were no patrons in the Lounge, and about 7:10 p.m. Hamish’s oldest friend here — Tina Mill (the person assigned to show him around school his first day in January 1982) and her sister Lana arrived, immediately followed by our whole Trivia gang en masse, which pretty well filled the Lounge. With drinks in hand, very shortly after we went back upstairs to The Loft and the party began with most people coming and staying for the evening — we finally got everyone out by about midnight — by then it was mostly the friends from Ian’s teen-age years, who are a bit like our trivia gang, hang out together any chance they can, especially since some of them are just home for the holidays, and with whom Hamish has become friends over the years too.

It really was a totally magic day, full of emotion and love — the room added to the magic with the candles and very dim, soft, lighting, and Hamish and Craig had put together a CD of appropriate music for the occasion — which soon faded away as the conversation level rose.

Regardless of the dreadful weather, the room was soon filled with people who didn’t seem to have trouble interacting among themselves and with “the grooms” and everyone seemed so happy to be sharing the event — some meeting Craig for the first time, and some meeting Ian and Ellen and Andrew (grandson/photographer) for the first time also.

The tartan trimmed wedding cake was lovely — also trimmed with edible dark red roses that we thought at first were real, they were so perfect. The top tier was taken off before they cut the cake, for the boys to take back to Craig’s family in Stirling, where they will be staying over New Year’s en route back to Wick. The cake was dark, rum-soaked(!) fruit cake with marzipan in the middle and covered with smooth fondant icing and everyone commented on how delicious it was.

Also commented on was the table centrepiece of purple and white heather, thistles, evergreens, holly, and three lovely yellow roses, with two tall white candles in the middle. The men’s boutonnieres were small sprigs of thistle and heather and Ellen and I had a white and pink orchid with sprig of white heather.

We had booked a room for the newly-weds at The Inns on Great George last night and when they arrived, they found it had been upgraded to a two-level suite with king-size bed, jacuzzi and all the trimmings. Our friend, Rob, had arranged for a bottle of champagne to be waiting for them, so they got the royal treatment.

After we picked them up today, we all went to the Merchantman for lunch and a nice family time together. Since everyone arrived last week, Ian and Ellen have been up west to take her Dad and brother out for dinner and a visit, shopping, and gadding about with their buddies, so we haven’t spent a lot of time all home together.

Hamish and Craig leave Thursday, December 30th, and Ian and Ellen will be here until January 2nd.

Apart from a jump in the household from 3 to 7 and normal routine turned completely upside down, it has been a dream-filled time that we will treasure forever. It is very obvious that Hamish and Craig intend to spend the rest of their lives together and we couldn’t ask for a more loving, sensitive son-in-law. We used to feel sad that Hamish would never be allowed the opportunity for the married life Bryson and I have shared together — and now it has happened.

That’s my wedding planner/mother of the groom/mother-in-law of the groom wedding day epistle for any friends who might be wondering how things went. Hope you can feel some of the excitement and joy of the event our family and friends here shared.

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A key part of my working process, I’ve come to realise, is setting the stage — creating structures around getting things done. So starting 2011 was difficult when I knew I was missing a key organisational element: my day-planner!

While, yes, I realise these can be bought for about 95p, crafting these things for myself is an important step. Happily, I’d made something like this for my brother’s Christmas present, so I already had the page templates done. Unfortunately, I miscalculated the number of pages, so it’s an orca of a thing which, it turns out, has enough pages for two years. Ah well!

Calendar pages:

Pages for ideas (there are also pages for things to follow up on):

And, of course, pages for project design:

Let the year begin!

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One of my commitments for this year is to blog regularly, rather than simply peeing my thoughts away on Facebook and Twitter.

To that end, I am stepping over the sleeping rhino in the room, which is the obligatory description of my wedding, along with a photo gallery of same. This will come, but at the moment it’s occurring in my mind as a big task, and big tasks are easy to put off in the face of more pressing, immediate demands.

So, for now, a few stray thoughts related to the wedding:

Being married is not a compromise, not “settling,” not being boring and conformist. It’s an adventure that takes maturity, commitment, and true resolve — not the silly, flitty “hat over the fence” kind of impulses of my youth, but a true desire to make a good life.

This morning I went to see a doctor here for the first time (nothing serious.) I mention her because she, like everyone else I’ve encountered here, was so kind and open-minded when the specifics of my “lifestyle” came out.

Craig, too, said he’d “outed” himself to several people at work when they asked if he’d been anywhere or done anything interesting over the holidays; he felt it would be wrong not to answer the question truthfully. In a few cases, telling others about the wedding created a new level of openness with that person, who then shared specifics about their life.

I’m not so naïve as to assume there’s no one in this town who would object, but when I look at my own experience (versus the hate-baiting that happens in the news), I’ve never directly encountered nastiness about this in my adult life. So at what point do we stop projecting distrust onto others and start assuming the best of them?

My mum asked who carried whom over the threshold. In answer, no one, because Craig wouldn’t let me!

P.S. Completing my registration yesterday for the medical practice here, I had my first opportunity to fill in the status “Married”. I smiled to myself at that.

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A lot of people are excitedly claiming that e-books will spell the death of paper books. I think they’re wrong — and hope they’re wrong, for the sake of our culture.

One of my readers regularly sends me articles about e-books and on-screen reading, and at least once a week I see an article claiming that paper books are dying and will go away.

The link he sent me today was to an article about a “new species of book” — an iPad app from publisher Canongate. Ironically, the piece contained a Flash-based demonstration of the book that I couldn’t see on my iOS device.

This book app is referred to as a random-access “argument.” Essentially, it’s a collection of articles whose inline graphics just happen to be animated or virtually tiltable. Of course, though, this was heralded as a revolution that will change everything about books and publishing forever! And paper books will die!

Speaking of death, I downloaded The Book of the Dead yesterday as research for something I’m thinking of writing. The Book of the Dead is a long and rambling text; there’s no way I want to read it on-screen. That’s not me being philosophical or political; I just find it really difficult to concentrate on on-screen text, and it wearies my eyes.

The folks who write these “Books will die!” pieces are like sailors justifying why it’s good they’re navigating toward the sirens’ song. Personally, I’m sick to bloody death of how frail these gadgets are, how quickly their batteries get depleted, and how very rapidly they’re obsoleted by their manufacturers.

Lovers of e-reading have Stockholm Syndrome.

Personally, I’m happy to have the real-world ability to turn these texts into physical books. Take away all the technological aides in some kind of End Times scenario, and I’d still be able to print and draw and bind a book. I’m proud of this, but it’s also not that difficult a task, versus being beholden to giant media/hardware corporations that get to shape and control what’s said and how you get to experience it.

New inventions are exciting. I can understand why people want e-books to wipe out books: it somehow justifies their interest in this new form, like a born-again friend who can’t simply rest in his faith; he needs everybody else to be converted, too. It’s unnecessarily binary, dualistic thinking.

Leave me alone with my books. When your iThingy has particles of dust glowing under its screen (because every one of my pocket devices over the last decade has had this flaw), or when it gets scratched or cracked and can’t carry out the digital gymnastics this quarter’s new model does, you won’t be so happy to have your facts and stories trapped inside it.

Fans of the digital random access model, or of community co-creation, are being wilfully ignorant of the quality of coherent thought and authorship. Here’s an exercise:

• Choose a project you want to work on.
• First use the web. Browse around for ideas about the topic and how to get this project done.
• Then turn off all your tech, take out a piece of paper, and ask yourself what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how you could do it.

I’ll bet you a donut that the first method leaves you feeling informed, but frazzled, disjointed, unsure. You may even decide not to do it after all (“There’s too much involved”, “Somebody else has already done something like it”, &c.).

With the second method, though, you gain access to your mind, your imagination, your values, and your skills.

Lord, it’s like people are queueing up to sell every part of themselves to the machine.

Toys are fun, but they can break or be taken away…

Unless you know how to make your own toys.

Gosh, time is running out: I leave for Canada next week.

I’ve been off work since Tuesday, trying to use up my leftover vacation time for this year, but I’ve spent the whole whole week working, just on different stuff. I’m scrambling to get things made, because I need to have a stash of wee gifties when I travel at Christmas — in case I get ambushed with surprise gifts.

I know, that sounds crappy, but I find it stressy, this externally mandated giving-time. I prefer to give things all year long as ideas and people connect in my brain. I wish we used Christmas as an occasion to just be with each other, which is far more important.

I’d love to show you what I’ve made, but… they’re gifts.

In related news, the fella and I triumphed at jewellery-making class last night: We made our wedding rings!

This is a breakthrough, because, while I’ve been enjoying the class, the things I’ve produced in it so far have been a cavalcade of horrors.

This is unusual for me, because I’m accustomed to being able to think of something and, most of the time, create it.

But jewellery-making involves blowing torches, melting metals, and talc-like glass powder that has to be melted in an 800-degree oven, so it’s much harder to get the right hands-on result.

So, phew, one more piece falls into place for the wedding. And I’m excited about the idea that we didn’t buy these, we made them for each other. (I also referred to this when writing our ceremony, so, like I said, phew!)

Right. I’ve got a complicated book to make. The last present.

A look at what’s involved in creating a website — to serve as a platform for you as an author and your books.