Writing advice and commentary from the editors at Essential Edits / SFeditor.ca
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Interview with Moi
Interview with me and two other authors from the Tesseracts 15 anthology at Totally Tesseracts blog as part of Tess 15 launch.
Monday, November 14, 2011
SF Writing contest
The Friends of the Merril Collection are running a Speculative Fiction Short Story Contest in order to raise awareness of, and funds for, the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy.
The Friends of the Merril Short Story Contest will be open to entries as of Nov. 15, 2011. There are 3 monetary prizes to be won: 1st place $350 (CDN), 2nd place $100 (CDN) and 3rd place $50 (CDN). Winners will also have their fiction published both on the contest website and in a limited edition hand crafted booklet (5 copies – 1 to be archived in the Merril Collection, 1 to be retained by the artist crafting the booklets, and the others to be distributed among the winners). We are accepting only original, previously unpublished Spec Fic (SF/F/H, Magic Realism, Slipstream, etc.) short fiction of up to 4,000 words. The hard deadline for submissions is Feb. 15, 2012. International entries are welcomed. All subs are judged blind. There is an entry fee of $5(CDN).
Entrants are encouraged to visit http://friendsmerrilcontest.com for a full set of entry rules, contest FAQs, and other contest related information and updates.
The Friends of the Merril Short Story Contest will be open to entries as of Nov. 15, 2011. There are 3 monetary prizes to be won: 1st place $350 (CDN), 2nd place $100 (CDN) and 3rd place $50 (CDN). Winners will also have their fiction published both on the contest website and in a limited edition hand crafted booklet (5 copies – 1 to be archived in the Merril Collection, 1 to be retained by the artist crafting the booklets, and the others to be distributed among the winners). We are accepting only original, previously unpublished Spec Fic (SF/F/H, Magic Realism, Slipstream, etc.) short fiction of up to 4,000 words. The hard deadline for submissions is Feb. 15, 2012. International entries are welcomed. All subs are judged blind. There is an entry fee of $5(CDN).
Entrants are encouraged to visit http://friendsmerrilcontest.com for a full set of entry rules, contest FAQs, and other contest related information and updates.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Ethical Editing
Highly entertaining article on cheating at university The Shadow Scholar: The man who writes your students' papers tells his story. Well worth a read.
This is, needless to say, not a service provided by SFeditor.ca. And why the blurb on editing theses and dissertations emphasizes "ethical" assistance. So far, no one has asked me to help them cheat, so not a problem with which I've had to deal.
I am somewhat sympathetic to the article-writer's position that the profs who get these falsified assignments deserves them, since they are the product of bad assignment structures, poor assessment practices and a lack of proper help to students who need it. As I teach my student teachers, if they use authentic assessments, students won't want to cheat because it will be about the learning, not the grade; if they are providing formative assessments, they will be coaching students through the process, so they will know something is up if the paper that is handed in is not the one that was in process for the three weeks before; and if they are using properly designed rubrics, the sort of inflated rubbish they get from these bought papers won't pass muster. And, if universities were serious about stopping students using these services, cheating would have negative consequences for the cheaters rather than for the professors who report it.
But it is fascinating to think that that so many of these papers pass through the system without a blink. So many out there with credentials they don't deserve, certifying competencies they don't have.
My favourite term paper story is the student who handed my own term paper into me. I'd written it ten years before as an undergrad, and when another student approached me and asked if he could borrow it -- because I'd gotten an "A-" whereas he'd gotten a "C" and he wanted to see what he had to do to get an "A" next time -- I said sure. Apparently my "friend" had photocopied it and put it in his fraternity's term paper file, where it had, apparently, had a long and prosperous career as a paper in that course. Since the course was almost always taught by grad students, and that grad students only teach the course once before graduating themselves meant that the rapid turnover prevented anyone from seeing the paper twice. But then I was a grad student teaching that course and suddenly had the strangest sense of deju vu reading a student paper -- but being the compulsive hoarder I am, I actually had copies of all the papers I've ever written back to Grade 9, so I pulled mine out and sure enough, this was it.
My favourite dissertation story I only have second hand: A colleague told me that when he was in seminary he had attended a dissertation defence, his faculty using the public defence model. Apparently the appointed External on the committee had suffered an attack of appendicitis and been unable to attend at the last minute; but to the supervisor's delight, had recommended the leading German authority on the topic, who by complete coincidence, happened to be attending a conference in the neighbouring city. It had been a simple matter to contact him and have him add a short extra jog to his trip to Canada to attend the defence. The problem of course came when the newly appointed external arrived, opened the dissertation and discovered it was his dissertation. The miscreant had found his unpublished dissertation and translated it from the German, thinking, what were the odds of anyone on his committee ever finding an unpublished dissertation in another language? Again, the irony of a seminarian cheating to become a qualified man of god is hilarious; but the coincidence of the original external getting sick and being replaced by the one guy on Earth who could call it looks to me to be the direct hand of god! Mysterious but hilarious ways! Made for, apparently, a highly intense defence since the external made the point of announcing his find at the public portion of the defence, lest, I assume, someone tried to cover it up. Spectacular end to that career, I would think.
This is, needless to say, not a service provided by SFeditor.ca. And why the blurb on editing theses and dissertations emphasizes "ethical" assistance. So far, no one has asked me to help them cheat, so not a problem with which I've had to deal.
I am somewhat sympathetic to the article-writer's position that the profs who get these falsified assignments deserves them, since they are the product of bad assignment structures, poor assessment practices and a lack of proper help to students who need it. As I teach my student teachers, if they use authentic assessments, students won't want to cheat because it will be about the learning, not the grade; if they are providing formative assessments, they will be coaching students through the process, so they will know something is up if the paper that is handed in is not the one that was in process for the three weeks before; and if they are using properly designed rubrics, the sort of inflated rubbish they get from these bought papers won't pass muster. And, if universities were serious about stopping students using these services, cheating would have negative consequences for the cheaters rather than for the professors who report it.
But it is fascinating to think that that so many of these papers pass through the system without a blink. So many out there with credentials they don't deserve, certifying competencies they don't have.
My favourite term paper story is the student who handed my own term paper into me. I'd written it ten years before as an undergrad, and when another student approached me and asked if he could borrow it -- because I'd gotten an "A-" whereas he'd gotten a "C" and he wanted to see what he had to do to get an "A" next time -- I said sure. Apparently my "friend" had photocopied it and put it in his fraternity's term paper file, where it had, apparently, had a long and prosperous career as a paper in that course. Since the course was almost always taught by grad students, and that grad students only teach the course once before graduating themselves meant that the rapid turnover prevented anyone from seeing the paper twice. But then I was a grad student teaching that course and suddenly had the strangest sense of deju vu reading a student paper -- but being the compulsive hoarder I am, I actually had copies of all the papers I've ever written back to Grade 9, so I pulled mine out and sure enough, this was it.
My favourite dissertation story I only have second hand: A colleague told me that when he was in seminary he had attended a dissertation defence, his faculty using the public defence model. Apparently the appointed External on the committee had suffered an attack of appendicitis and been unable to attend at the last minute; but to the supervisor's delight, had recommended the leading German authority on the topic, who by complete coincidence, happened to be attending a conference in the neighbouring city. It had been a simple matter to contact him and have him add a short extra jog to his trip to Canada to attend the defence. The problem of course came when the newly appointed external arrived, opened the dissertation and discovered it was his dissertation. The miscreant had found his unpublished dissertation and translated it from the German, thinking, what were the odds of anyone on his committee ever finding an unpublished dissertation in another language? Again, the irony of a seminarian cheating to become a qualified man of god is hilarious; but the coincidence of the original external getting sick and being replaced by the one guy on Earth who could call it looks to me to be the direct hand of god! Mysterious but hilarious ways! Made for, apparently, a highly intense defence since the external made the point of announcing his find at the public portion of the defence, lest, I assume, someone tried to cover it up. Spectacular end to that career, I would think.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Kobo becomes Publisher
News story on Kobo following Amazon's example to become a publisher as well as a book seller: http://t.co/8avHPQxT
What drives me crazy in this media frenzy about Amazon and Kobo etc "cutting out the middleman — the publishers" is that is not what is happening at all. It is a complete misstatement/ misunderstanding of what publishing is and what publishers do. This sort of coverage greatly adds to the confusion around developments in the publishing industry and increases the likelihood of new writers making serious mistakes.
When Amazon announces that it is publishing 122 new books this year, this is not an example of authors going direct to consumers, this is an example of a distributor adding a publishing house to their business. Amazon is doing, with these 122 books, everything that a publisher does — providing for cover art, book design and extensive editing — the whole 9 yards. This isn't cutting out publishers, this is joining the ranks of publishers. It's a development with all sorts of interesting implications: what if Amazon gives preference to its own titles over other publishers titles in its distribution arm. In the long term, the danger is that a few massive online distributors like Amazon may be the only market left standing, with worrisome issues about monopoly and censorship. But it is NOT a story about "eliminating the publisher".
The story that Amazon is "cutting out the middle man--the publisher"— is already long past. Amazon has been selling self-published ebooks for years. Selling self-published ebooks for which the author has found the coverart themselves and foregone editing and book design is an example of cutting out the middleman, because these books have been written but not published. (I would argue that there is an analytical difference between Arthur Slade self-publishing books that have been professionally edited, designed and have professional coverart, and the authors that Krista has been complaining about who put their books up on Amazon without even proofreading their drafts. The former is self-publishing, the latter is non-published.)
For years the public and many beginning writers have believed that publishers took an author's book, distributed it, and skimmed off 90% of the profits in the process. The steps of refereeing, editing, design, marketing, etc remain largely invisible to the public, and mere annoying barriers to many beginning authors. Media coverage of the emergence of publisher-distributors like Amazon is not helping to resolve this confusion, but rather compounds it. The result, I am afraid, is many more authors choosing to 'go with Amazon' by which they will mean uploading their unedited, underdeveoped, manuscripts rather than submitting to Amazon's publishing arm and getting (from all accounts) really good covers and editing....
What drives me crazy in this media frenzy about Amazon and Kobo etc "cutting out the middleman — the publishers" is that is not what is happening at all. It is a complete misstatement/ misunderstanding of what publishing is and what publishers do. This sort of coverage greatly adds to the confusion around developments in the publishing industry and increases the likelihood of new writers making serious mistakes.
When Amazon announces that it is publishing 122 new books this year, this is not an example of authors going direct to consumers, this is an example of a distributor adding a publishing house to their business. Amazon is doing, with these 122 books, everything that a publisher does — providing for cover art, book design and extensive editing — the whole 9 yards. This isn't cutting out publishers, this is joining the ranks of publishers. It's a development with all sorts of interesting implications: what if Amazon gives preference to its own titles over other publishers titles in its distribution arm. In the long term, the danger is that a few massive online distributors like Amazon may be the only market left standing, with worrisome issues about monopoly and censorship. But it is NOT a story about "eliminating the publisher".
The story that Amazon is "cutting out the middle man--the publisher"— is already long past. Amazon has been selling self-published ebooks for years. Selling self-published ebooks for which the author has found the coverart themselves and foregone editing and book design is an example of cutting out the middleman, because these books have been written but not published. (I would argue that there is an analytical difference between Arthur Slade self-publishing books that have been professionally edited, designed and have professional coverart, and the authors that Krista has been complaining about who put their books up on Amazon without even proofreading their drafts. The former is self-publishing, the latter is non-published.)
For years the public and many beginning writers have believed that publishers took an author's book, distributed it, and skimmed off 90% of the profits in the process. The steps of refereeing, editing, design, marketing, etc remain largely invisible to the public, and mere annoying barriers to many beginning authors. Media coverage of the emergence of publisher-distributors like Amazon is not helping to resolve this confusion, but rather compounds it. The result, I am afraid, is many more authors choosing to 'go with Amazon' by which they will mean uploading their unedited, underdeveoped, manuscripts rather than submitting to Amazon's publishing arm and getting (from all accounts) really good covers and editing....
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