The Guardian had a wonderfully entertaining collection of rules from various writers on Saturday.

Many are prescriptive, and so, are useless. But many are quite helpful and charming bits of advice for writing fiction and living. Here are a few of my faves, but you can find the full list at The Guardian.

1. “Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.” –Roddy Doyle
2. “Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.” –Geoff Dyer
3. “Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.” –Anne Enright
4. “You can also do all that with whiskey.” –Anne Enright
5. “Try to think of others’ good luck as encouragement to yourself.” –Richard Ford
6. “It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.” –Jonathan Franzen
7. “Keep in mind Oscar Wilde: ‘A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.’” –Joyce Carol Oates
8. “You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.” –Will Self
9. “If you have to read, to cheer yourself up read biographies of writers who went insane.” –Colm Tóibín
10. “Write.” –Neil Gaiman

Wow. From their Terms of Service (Terms and Conditions in their title tag), item seven, Rights and Use of the Content:

By submitting or posting User Content using the Service or the Site, you grant to Salon an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license to: (1) use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute the User Content in or through any medium now known or hereafter invented, for any purpose; (2) to prepare derivative works using the User Content, or to incorporate it into other works, for any purpose; and (3) to grant and authorize sublicenses of any or all of the foregoing rights.

Gory details here.

I’m all for giving things away when it may help your career, but this is just crazy. An irrevocable, perpetual license? What if I signed up when I was drunk or something?

Lorina Stephens, a Canadian writer of fantasy fiction, is in the process of launching her second novel, From Mountains of Ice. She’s also launched herself into the changing landscape of publishing, by starting her own independent press, called Five Rivers Publishing. Her previous books include the novel Shadow Song, and a collection of short stories, And the Angels Sang. Lorina’s chosen my little simian-obsessed corner of the web as one of the stops in her virtual tour! I interviewed her (via email) recently, and here’s our conversation:

Mark Rayner: So how is the launch going?

Lorina Stephens: The launch has gone well, thank you for asking. I’m receiving some good reviews, one in particular from Brian Rathbone, author of The Dawning of Power who has said, ‘Among the best fantasy books I’ve read in quite some time.’

The actual (versus virtual) part of the fall tour continues November 28 when I appear at Coles Books, Orangeville Mall, Orangeville, Ontario. After that I’m at Chapters at Stone Road Mall, Guelph, Ontario on December 5, and Smith Books, Heritage Mall, Owen Sound, Ontario on December 11. More details about that can be found on Five Rivers’ website, through www.BookTour.com or Facebook.

MR: Can you tell my readers a bit about the book?

LS: From Mountains of Ice is a classic tale of a fall from grace and subsequent redemption, set in an Italian Renaissance milieu. Sylvio di Danuto has spent the past decade banished from Simare’s court, stripped of land, ancestral home and title – from Minister of National Security to back-country bowyer. But not any bowyer; Sylvio creates bows from laminations of wood and human bone, bows that are said to speak, bows known as the legendary arcossi.

And now, after a decade, he is called back to the capitol, summoned by his Prince whom he suspects is a patricide and insane. His very life is in danger and with it the country he has served through all his days.

I tend to enjoy approaching reality obliquely. Sometimes a message is better carried in metaphor. And in this case I felt I would be allowed greater latitude to examine the concept of honour in a fantasy setting rather than in a contemporary.

There’s also the whole archery aspect of the novel; that is, the fabrication of the arcossi, a variation of a longbow made with laminations of human bone, and bows that, because of my fantasy world’s simpatico (albeit rare) with the dead, are sentient.

MR: I’ve noticed you do a lot of readings around Ontario — how do you get so much exposure?

LS: Do I receive a lot of exposure? From my side of the universe it feels as though I’m shouting into the abyss and no one can hear. I keep thinking of new and better ways of getting the word out to readers that I’m here, that I have something to say and hopefully say it fairly well in a fairly entertaining manner. What exposure I have received is the result of plain old hard work, and the belief that the only reason I’ll be a failure is if I make that a reality. My destiny is my own to shape. So I pick up the phone. I knock on doors. I fire of emails. I research. And with polite persistence I go about my work as a writer.

It also helps that I keep a quotation from Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson running like a mantra through my head: ‘The only failures are those who fail to try.” Almost sounds like something Yoda would say: ‘There is no try. There is only do.’

MR: Yes, that’s one of my favourite lines from Star Wars! So what prompted you to start up your own independent press then?

LS: Frustration with the arrogance of legacy houses — plain and simple. There are so many valid, talented Canadian voices out there who need a break, a chance for their stories to get out there and be read by an appreciative, and I believe a hungry audience who are sick to their teeth of a clone of some vampire tale, or some doomed earth. When I’d forged the distribution channels for Five Rivers, a colleague of mine, Paul Lima, approached me about publishing his writing book, How to Write a Non-fiction Book in 60 Days. He’d received a rather questionable offer from a legacy house, framed with required sales quotients and all, and decided nix to that and asked me to take a shot at it.

Knowing Paul as I do, and trusting implicitly in his integrity and skill, I thought sure, why not? His book lead to another colleague’s dictionary of historic colour names and definitions, which led to a six book deal with Nate Hendley for three biographies, an investigative book on crystal meth, one on China as an emerging super-power and one on the motivational aspects of writing. That in turn led to another book deal with well-known gardening duo Patrick Lima (Paul Lima’s brother) and John Scanlan.

In 2009 Five Rivers published three books. In 2010 we’ll publish seven, with another two confirmed for 2011.

MR: That’s exciting. So as a publisher, where do you stand on this whole, give-things away-and-that-will-increase-your-profile approach? Are you in the Cory Doctorow school or the Harlan Ellison camp?

LS: At the risk of sounding like I don’t have an opinion, I’m in the middle of the two extreme camps. I’ve been marketing products for years in one form or another and I know from experience that if you give something away there is a perception the item isn’t worth anything anyway, and hence you aren’t, and so the expectation is that you’ll always give your product, or your time, for free. However, I also think it’s good to temper a ‘pay me or else’ approach with a little humility and good will. It doesn’t hurt to offer a limited-time give-away, to offer to speak for a charity, to pay it forward, as it were.

I’m going to sound rather grey in my approach, I’m afraid, but I believe a moderate, middle course is usually the wiser approach. It works in most life decisions, and there’s no reason to expect it can’t work in a business model. Equally, you have to add some panache to that middle course, else you end up simply pabulum instead of a round mouthful of flavour.

So, yes, I expect to be paid for my work. I don’t expect you to pay for my mortgage every time you purchase my product, but I do expect to be paid. And yes, I’m completely open to distributing promotional copies of work with the complete understanding you’ll live up to your end of the bargain. If you don’t, I won’t rampage. That would be gauche. But I will remember. I do have a very long memory.

MR: I have been warned! So, onto my current obsession: The book. Does it have a future?

LS: Of course it does. I don’t think we’ll ever replace print, not completely. When we started making recordings of music, did that replace the live concert? No. When we started listening to radio, did that replace reading? Certainly not. When we started watching television, did that replace radio? Not at all.

The fact we have digital readers is a thing of marvel and wonder. Instead of carrying a novel in my bag on the commuter train, I can carry a considerable library on that train, while away the time, and then tuck that small reader into the bag without worry of it becoming dog-eared.

However, when I go to bed at night, or when I lay out in the afternoon shade under the apple tree on the hill behind our home, it’s that paper book I’m going to retrieve and allow to fall on my face when I succumb to sleep. There’s a sensual, interactive thing that happens with print that can’t happen with a digital reader, the smell of the book whether old or new, the feel of pages under your thumbs, the way light plays across the page as worlds materialize in your mind.

All of these technologies have a place in our lives, if we choose to allow that. One does not necessarily absent the other.

You see, that middle road, Grasshopper.

MR: A Kung Fu reference too! Thanks for that and the interview Lorina!

From his Wall Street Journal interview, on the question if a 1,000-page book is too much?

“For modern readers, yeah. People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore and people need to get used to that. If you think you’re going to write something like “The Brothers Karamazov” or “Moby-Dick,” go ahead. Nobody will read it. I don’t care how good it is, or how smart the readers are. Their intentions, their brains are different.”

What do you think? Are books getting shorter? If so, do they have to be? Are our brains and intentions demanding it?

Read the full (interesting and rare) interview at the Wall Street Journal. Photo of cover by Lissalou66.

Rick Salutin has a serious go at CBC (TV) news in the Globe and Mail today, and I think his criticisms are richly deserved. I’m not a regular viewer of The National, the CBC’s flagship news program, but I did catch it a couple of times this week. I was struck by how hard it was to pay attention. I was distracted by the lack of chairs.

“Why is everyone walking around? Why are we watching a conversation between Peter and that reporter babe (does anyone else find the proportion of gorgeous young women working as reporters there suspicious) in PROFILE? Shouldn’t we be cutting to their faces at least a little?”

I dunno, maybe I’m an old fart, but Rick’s article focuses on the content issues, which are legion.

I have a life-long love affair with CBC Radio, but I’ve always been baffled by CBC TV — why, for example, is there so much advertising, and American programming — and indifferent to CBC news. The latest make-over does not endear me any more, but Rick says it better:

The CBC execs are beside themselves with the thrill of it. Their endless in-house memos rely heavily on triple exclamation marks as punctuation: “The energy in the building is palpable … The torch has been passed … We have moved from a Buick to a Ferrari …!!!” (Oddly dated images, by the way, and insulting.)

It’s as though it’s all about them: their new sets and graphics, full-page ads, U.S. consultants. Watching CBC news now feels like living inside English-language boss Richard Stursberg’s head, the man who endowed the CBC with a “factual entertainment” department. Yet, oddly it is still a public network, paid for by all of us. In ancient times, the founder of the National Film Board, John Grierson, used to remind employees daily that they were there to serve the people of Canada, not his own abundant ego. That simple thought out of Richard Stursberg’s mouth is unimaginable. Instead, the people who pay are treated as bottom-feeders not worth a reference to a former premier or a translation from the Greek in yesterday’s Olympic torch feed from Athens. (CTV had a translation.) Let them eat sets and graphics. Low-rent TVO’s nightly hour, The Agenda , now outdoes anything on CBC.

I was relieved to see that they gave the At Issues panel (one of the segments I always enjoy, even if it leaves me gnashing my teeth some days) and Rex Murphy chairs. Old farts shouldn’t have to stand.

And kudos to Rick for mentioning The Agenda. Excellent program!