I'm using Google Docs to do my marketing assignment, and it's kind of awesome. Especially using Google Chrome. Oh Google, why do you have to be so easy?

You know what would be really cool? Writing on Google docs, for fun. I shall say no more until later, in case someone else steals this idea... :P

Have you ever felt like your writing is running away with you?

I've been staring at my computer screen, meticulously structuring my editorial essay for the past 3 hours. Sure, the essay is starting to take form. I may have made it more complicated than necessary, adding in a big Foundation-Year-Programme worthy metaphor to a short essay on whether or not editors should interfere with writer's creation.

I feel like I'm doing the 3 Day novel contest or something. I like, really want to take a break. I want to go take out my contacts and distract my other publishing friends who are also doing the essay. I want to eat Wheat Thins and make popcorn. But I can't tear myself away because I feel like I'm having some sort of weird epiphany, like suddenly philosophy and publishing are coming together to form some sort of super child that I have been chosen to give birth to.

Or, I'm a crazy person and I really need to get away from my computer screen.

Digital Short: Great Day

This video is kind of making my life right now. It never, ever stops being funny.

By the way, this is me and my degree. Sorry if the picture is slightly low quality, my sister took it with her phone, and I stole it from Facebook. The degree was framed (originally it came rolled up in a little tube) and is written in Latin.

I now officially have a combined honours degree in journalism and psychology. Thanks to all who offered congratulations, and now, onward!

This is what my schedule looks like for the next week.

Monday is a holiday, thank God. All I've been doing mostly is sleeping after coming home from my grad--which was awesome, by the way. They played a fanfare for the journalism students before they went and got their degrees. Super epic!

Tuesday, I have two assignments due. One of them is a production assignment, where I have to cost three different kinds of books--hardcover, original trade PB and a PB takeover. A takeover is when a hardcover is converted to a softcover. Yay for terminology.
The second assignment I have to do for Tuesday is for Tech class, where we have to layout a website, on bristol board. Could tots do it up for reals online, but I guess we're not ready for that yet?

Wednesday, I have a production test and an essay due for Editorial. Should probably get started on that.

Thursday, we have to write up an option clause for a contract. Yay for legal yet not jargon filled language.

Friday, we have a marketing plan due for a book and a profit and loss statement for a self help book we made up.

Then, hopefully Saturday I get to sleep some more please?

I will be in Nova Scotia until Friday, because I will be wearing an awesome gown and fur hood---yep, I'm graduating!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

No more journalism!!

So as of tomorrow afternoon, I can officially say that I have a combined honours in journalism and psychology. Wooooo!

Then I'll jump on a plane again and come back to Toronto, where my Creative Book Publishing adventures will resume.

Bachelor Duck staying positive in the sun. Don't you worry, you'll win back your lady love soon!

Everyday when we walk to school, there is a lone duck that sits on the grass beside the cottages. He's usually just squatting there, all alone, sometimes nibbling at the grass. He doesn't seem to notice the students walking by and doesn't really seem super disturbed when you try to approach.

"He's an exile," I told my friends. "He was wrongfully accused of something, and now his wife hates him. Now he sits there alone."

His wife and the other ducks live down by the park by the lake--ocean?--off Lakeshore Blvd West. We walked there today and saw his wife with another man duck. Perhaps that is why our exile duck is so unhappy.

But he has not given up hope; he will win back his lady love. He was hatching a feather-brained scheme with one of his friends, who he convinced that he was wrongfully accused. That was a few days ago, however. The scheme must have failed, or perhaps it's not set into motion yet.

Stay tuned for more updates on our lone duck and his adventures...

Yesterday I attended the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and it was awesome. It was at the Toronto Reference Library downtown, and after navigating the subway, we arrived to a surprisingly quiet room of people browsing rows of tables filled with indie art. We joked that everyone was busy reading and scared to make noise in the library.

There were so many things to see! I'm not really a big comic book person myself, but I've always been an admirer. If only I could draw as good myself I'd probably be doing that than making pictures with words, haha. We saw my friend Colleen, who was selling her wares at table 118. We also attended a panel called Comics in Strange Places. It was dominated by Chip Zdarsky, a really funny newspaper comic. I guess I never really thought of newspaper comic artists following the same journalism ethics as the other reporters in the office, and there were some interesting discussions about things they were either free to make jokes about/draw, and the things they weren't allowed to touch. (nudists and seniors; mocking other artists' styles respectively)

The other panel we attended was about Kill Shakespeare, the new comic book series coming out. It's these guys who took some of Shakespeare's heroes and pitted them against Shakespeare's villians, while they fight to save or kill Shakespeare himself. The artwork is really cool and it seems like an interesting concept, though the first issue was pretty short--45 pages. Though the artist at the panel said that he did the whole comic in a month--45 pages in one month. That's like...roughly 2 pages a day. So much work! Apparently it's sold out in Toronto and New York and Delaware. Lucky for them, Shakespeare already having a built in audience. Very sneaky, and very smart. ;)

Makes me want to take drawing classes. Or just capture Jessie and feed her my story ideas and make her draw them. Muahahaha you will never escape!

Or I guess I could build her a tower as part of my mansion, for her studio. AND LOCK HER INSIDE IF SHE DOESN'T DO MY BIDDING MUAHAHAHAHA.

Please draw me pretty pictures now? :)

We had our first marketing class today. I didn't really know what to expect, but I found myself pleasantly surprised. I think I even liked it better than the editorial class, which is weird.

But I think it might be because I spent so much time researching how to market myself and my books that a lot of the information was fairly evident. My journalism degree also helps, because you're always asking yourself, who do I speak to that can give me that the information I need? Except the question has changed: Who can I speak to that can give me what I want, and I can give them something they need?

You know what the one thing my proffs have been repeating over and over for the past three days?

"If you're going into publishing for the money..." *snicker, laugh* "...Yeah."

Sad face.

Yeah, I know. Books are expensive. They are not easy to sell. But because I'm a Leo and therefore the universe revolves around me, I choose to believe that this comment applies to everyone else in the room except me. I do have a mansion to build, you know.

Sigh, if only.

Part of me holds on to the belief that if I write and publish my own books I may in fact make more money, therefore maybe me turning a profit. But it's harder to market self-published books...harder to get them into bookstores, and as we're learning, Indigo-Chapters is where people go to buy books...and if you're not accepted there...it's hard to get accepted anywhere else in terms of book selling.

Well, you know what that means.

I'll just make my book covers so irresistibly pretty that no bookseller or buyer will be able to resist them. I'll spare no expense on those shiny, reflect in the sun, vibrantly, feel-good-bumpy covers!

So if you're going into publishing to make money...:P

There are two within me--the writer and the publisher.

As a young publisher, we must balance two parts of ourselves. One, is the writer, the creative force that only wants to give birth and drive things into existence. Ideas are bountiful and there is no stopping her. She makes the flowers grow.

Second, on the other side of the lake, is the publisher. She is also driven, but she is a collector, she collects the fruits of the writers' labour, and brings it to the village to share.

Together, the two of them must work together to feed the public. The two forces within me will join and there will be no stopping them.

I do not need another.

Also...

May the 4th be with you.

Fiction isn't just about writing about stuff that isn't true.

It's about letting go.

It's about allowing yourself to experience past anxieties and make them present and forever on page or screen. It's about unzipping yourself and letting your inhibitions fly free. Whatever you are or were afraid to say or do in real life can be expressed in a world of your own creation and will.

It's what I do.

Dad left today for home. Now I'm in Toronto by myself.

I spent the day reading The Perilous Trade by Roy MacSkimming, a history of the Canadian Book Publishing industry. It's the book for my history class tomorrow. The classes for my Creative Book Publishing Course are 9-5, Monday to Friday. Finally, I finished it, right after concluding a Dungeons and Dragons game via Skype. Got a chance to use my new headset that way.

Now I'm working on The Disappeared, by Kim Echlin. She's a Canadian author that came to speak to us on Friday. We got to choose a free copy of one of her three books, and she signed every one. Everyone copied down the titles of her other books, eager to rush out to the library or bookstore to acquire a copy. Meeting the author really does sell books. Or, makes you eager to read them at least.

I'm going to make time every day to read a bit of fiction. With my hectic schedule, I'm going to need it.

Dad and I went shopping in downtown Toronto today. So many shops...did you know that there's a place called the Condom Shack? Businesses you wouldn't think could stand on their own, do. Then again...it is condoms.

Also, SUPER COOL: I think today was free comic book day or something. We came across a store called the Silver Snail that was jam packed full of people. I went inside while dad waited at the front, and the line ups for signings and at the cash was crazy. It's a little three storey place filled with action figures, comics, graphic novels...and...guess what I found?

Star Wars Roleplaying Books.

I was so excited I almost drooled all over them.

Except they were like $40 each, hardcover, and there were at least 5 of them. Maybe some other time...

Dorian and Colleen, if you are reading this, we should totally do a Star Wars campaign. It would be totally awesome. Especially if it were set in the Old Republic, which I know you don't really know much about but it's still totally cool. Like, the coolest.

Okay, I'll stop now and actually get to the point of this blog post, lol.

We went to three different bookstores today, and because I become a zombie slave near the written word, of course I didn't come home empty handed.

I bought...

Firesong, by William Nicholson: This is the third in a British trilogy called The Wind on Fire. I've been looking for this one for a while, since I've already acquired and read the first two. So excited to finish this one, since the last two were super epic.

The Declaration, by Gemma Malley. Seems to be a dystopia young adult book. Found it in hardcover in the cheapee book section, and then realized it's the beginning of a trilogy. Yay me.

The Faerie Path, by Frewin Jones. Just adding to my collection of Girls-Who-Turn-Out-To-Be-Fairy-Queens section on my bookshelf.

Wake, by Robert J. Sawyer. Canadian!! The second book in this trilogy was just released, so I got the first one to a) build up my Canadian library and b) because the covers look super awesome.

On Thin Ice, by Jamie Bastedo. Canadian!! Published by Red Deer Press, it's about polar bears and a young First Nations woman with a sort-of psychic link to them. Excited to read this.

I'm going to do my best to read these AND finish the 150 pages I have to read for Monday for my history class in Creative Book Publishing.