Once upon a time, I lived in a country that was emerging from socialism into capitalism. Locals were highly educated and poorly paid, essential goods were rationed, industry was inefficient, bureaucracy bloated, tourists were awarded a higher rate of exchange, and the black market outperformed the official one. Times in the old country were historical […]
Flipping the Switch, or the Coin? Read More »
All writers face this terror at one time or the other: the blank page. What to write next when all that must be said has already been written, when the next chapter of revelation lies just out of reach. During these moments, the desire to write is propelled by the need for output, the sign
A new source of funding, but will it last? I have been following this new phenomenon as it relates to fiction writers, and have often wondered where it would lead. On the surface, it looks like a pretty cool thing – a funding source that never existed before, a replacement to the publisher’s advance, this
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The above are new terms that have emerged to describe the young, middle•aged and old people in our digital society today; a radical immigration model for a new world where one’s degree of foreignness grows with age. The theory goes that young people, “the digital natives,” i.e. those born after the Internet know nothing about
Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants & Resident Aliens Read More »
We live in an abundance of printed matter but we are facing a famine of time. Every time I write an article, a short story, or even commence writing a novel, I feel like a thief. With this act, I am suggesting that another soul sets aside her time to read my work and assimilate
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I was on a TV interview last week, promoting my recent book, and was asked whether print is dead? How could I answer this but with a resounding “NO!” me, a writer who churns out reams of print matter all the time? How dare the interviewer ask me this question when I was on the
I have been writing a blog for over five years, so I took the time to pause and review what I had written. I have written over 180 articles, averaging three a month, on a variety of subjects, all of which I thought were quite original and topical at the time. But when I re•read
A Writer’s Repeating Themes Read More »
I was watching a news program in which a young man was proposing the “Un•University.” I wondered whether it was another buzzword like the Un•Mortgage, a.k.a. a different mousetrap, but then I slowly realized that this young man was making a lot of sense, with a few caveats. The Un•University works on the premise that
Is it time for the Un-University? Read More »
We go on about the decline of the West and the rise of the East but that seems to be an oversimplification of a more fundamental problem. A couple of centuries before, when colonial empires were at their height, we may have proposed the reverse. I have tried to come up with my own reasons
Why the West is in Decline Read More »
I recently contributed a story to an anthology titled Everything Is So Political (Roseway Publishing). In keeping with the book’s title, my story was called “Suicide Bombers”—how more political could that be, I thought. But then I realized that most stories, if not all of them, are political. Politics has many definitions. Here are some
Are all stories political? Read More »