Writing and Editing

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My guest today is Dr. David Williams, who is an associate professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo, located in Waterloo, Canada. He has a five-year academic grant of over $250,000 to continue his work on the Oxford English Dictionary, with two main goals, which we talk about.

David Williams
https://uwaterloo.ca/english/people-profiles/david-williams

The Life of Words: Poetry, Lexicography, and Computing
https://thelifeofwords.uwaterloo.ca/

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I talk about the word doomscrolling and make some searches in dictionaries, in a linguistics corpus, and in Google advanced search to try to get an idea of when it first started being used. I end with a brief etymology of the very old word, doom itself.

Merriam-Webster: Words We’re Watching
“On ‘Doomsurfing’ and ‘Doomscrolling’”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/doomsurfing-doomscrolling-words-were-watching

OED
https://www.oed.com/

NOW Corpus (News on the Web)
https://www.english-corpora.org/now/

The Decibel
“The Problems with the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/the-decibel/article-the-problems-with-the-first-time-home-buyers-incentive/

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My guest today is Furkhan Dandia . He’s a first-time author of Pursuit of Self-Love: 30 Uplifting Messages and Reflections, which he paid to have published by the hybrid publisher Friesen Press, in Manitoba, Canada, just this past March.

A bit more background here before I get to my conversation with Furkhan. If you’re a regular listener to the podcast, you may remember episode 152 in March, when I told the general story of my efforts to get Friesen to answer two simple questions for me: why are there books priced anywhere from 30 to 100 percent more on Amazon than they are on the Friesen site, and do they inform authors of this before contracts are signed? I ended up talking directly to the president, who hinted she might sue me, but refused to answer the questions.

Furkhan is one of two Friesen authors who told me that in fact they were never informed of the Amazon pricing issue, and he agreed to come on the podcast to talk about his experiences regarding the editing of his book as well.

This is “A New Author Talks about His Disappointment with Hybrid Publisher Friesen Press,” episode 180 of the podcast.

Furkhan’s Website
https://www.eunoiazen.com/

Furkhan’s Book on Friesen’s Site: $21.99
https://books.friesenpress.com/store/title/119734000249077816/Furkhan-Dandia-Pursuit-of-Self-Love

Furkhan’s Book on Amazon.ca: $48.13
 https://www.amazon.ca/Pursuit-Self-Love-Uplifting-Messages-Reflections/dp/1039156177/ 

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My guests today are Susan Gabriel and Steven Eurioste. Susan runs a Christian publishing house with an eight-member team, including Steven. She’d contacted me about being a guest on the podcast, and I agreed as long as we could also talk about theism and atheism. She was amenable to that and brought along Steven as well. We don’t agree on much, but we have a good discussion.

Soul Sonshine
https://soulsonshine.com/

Susan Louise Gabriel
https://susanlouisegabriel.com/

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Sitting on a bench by a beach in my home city of Ottawa makes me think of "bad faith," and in this episode I talk about one very specific meaning of the term, one fairly specific, and the general meaning that most people are familiar with (but I also give a bit of its etymology).

Being and Nothingness, by Jean-Paul Sartre
https://archive.org/details/beingnothingness0000sart/page/n5/mode/2up

"Bad Faith," Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith#Negotiation_theory

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My guest is Frank King. Frank has a long career in comedy, even as a writer for The Tonight Show. After, in his words, he held a gun in his hand and found out what the barrel tastes like, he changed. He didn’t pull the trigger and now focuses on public presentations for corporate and other groups in which he uses comedy as a way to talk about the difficult topic of suicide.

Frank King
https://thementalhealthcomedian.com/

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My guest today is Sebastian Schug. I invited him on the show to talk about the indie publishing house he ran, but the conversation shifted to his many other interests and talents and experiences. He’s smart and articulate, and we talked mostly about satire and multimedia art. He’s a man in his 20’s who’s accomplished a lot already, and a name to watch for.

Seabass
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL3XHwlaRxEnyxEr_wM-WkQ

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I talk about this relatively new word in English, which actually has its origin in science fiction. The word follows a common pattern for words that start with a very specific meaning in a field or discipline, and then once they're in use in standard English they develop their own meanings and history. I wrap up by comparing it to the word schizophrenic, which has behaved similarly, but with a bit of a twist.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR)
https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction
https://sfdictionary.com/

Dictionary of Psychopathology, by Henry Kellerman
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/dictionary-of-psychopathology/9780231146517

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I talk about these two types of clichés to avoid. I use "verbal cliché" to mean hackneyed phrases and worn-out imagery that may have been imaginative and fresh at some time in the history of the language now, but has since gone stale. I use "narrative cliché" to mean the use of familiar tropes and situations in the story you are telling. This episode mostly is about fiction and film.

Garner's Modern English Usage
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/garners-modern-english-usage-9780197599020

Imagining and Knowing: The Shape of Fiction, by Gregory Currie
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199656615.001.0001

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Have you ever wondered how kids in elementary school are taught how to write these days? Do they learn the ins and outs of grammar, or do they learn writing through practising? My guest today is directly involved in teaching this important skill as a full-time teacher in rural Vermont. Samantha Bovat is a writing practitioner as well, with a blog called The Life of a Teacher and a book that was published just last year: The Little Kids: Lessons Learned from Our Perspectives.

Book: The Little Kids, https://www.thelittlekids.us/

Website: https://www.samanthabovat.com/