Things to Think About in Writer World

A SHORT POST before a long drive.  Up early for the return trip to Canada after a quick jaunt in New York, shows & a spate at the Algonquin.

For now, from today's NY Times, I call your attention to three articles to view through your writer's filter.  Your world and your audience are changing faster than you can conceive.

First ...  a few years ago, when I was still teaching regularly at Ryerson University, I learned pretty quickly never to respond to student emails at weird, off hours -- because then that was the "new normal."  You could explain to somebody that you were a part-timer there two hours a week -- but they didn't see that, and didn't see why they shouldn't be able to reach you on the weekend -- multiple times if necessary.


The Times expands on that with Brad Stone's notion of "mini generation gaps" caused by the experience of technology. Read it. Then think about how you're going to tell stories going forward.  I think whether the challenge fills you with terror or trepidation, or excitement -- probably says what kind of writer you are...

My 2-year-old daughter surprised me recently with two words: “Daddy’s book.” She was holding my Kindle electronic reader.

But these are also technology tools that children even 10 years older did not grow up with, and I’ve begun to think that my daughter’s generation will also be utterly unlike those that preceded it.  

Researchers are exploring this notion too. They theorize that the ever-accelerating pace of technological change may be minting a series of mini-generation gaps, with each group of children uniquely influenced by the tech tools available in their formative stages of development.

“People two, three or four years apart are having completely different experiences with technology,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. “College students scratch their heads at what their high school siblings are doing, and they scratch their heads at their younger siblings. It has sped up generational differences.”

Second, here's Thomas Friedman on Green Tech and China.  Hey, good thing we've closed Parliament till March.  Tick Tick Tick.


Oh, and finally -- if I was pitching a story right now, I'd try to make the villain, oh...mmm....let's see...can't really do Middle Easterner's and be PC...can't do Africa...mmm.... oh yeah. 


Those Wall Street guys.


Oh, yeah. And, y'know... the Leno thing.  And the Aftermath.


(Seriously?  David Shore + Rockford Files?  What is NOT to love about that idea, retread or no?  And after THE CLOSER it will be interesting to see if they can actually do an American PRIME SUSPECT.)


 Heh heh heh.  And is it really 20 years of The Simpsons?  I remember actually getting in trouble for wearing a Bart Simpson Tshirt to my job at the video store. 


Don't have a cow, indeed.


(And right now I'm watching the Morgan Spurlock Simpsons Doc in my hotel room, and he's telling me stuff I didn't know about The Simpsons.  I mean, who knew there was new stuff to know about The Simpsons?)


So it's been a good break for me.  I've had a car for two years, but never really driven on a big trip with it.  But three weeks away has taken me to see cousins I don't see enough in Vero Beach, Florida. I got to travel the Autotrain, twice,  caught a crazy-fabulous Jazz Night in downtown Orlando, was shocked by the beauty of the moment of the drive of the bridge that connects Delaware to New Jersey...


...I know. New Jersey.


...and now this weekend I got to write a bit in the Algonquin hotel, sit at cafe tables on the new closed Broadway, seen Mamet's new play and the revival of Ragtime before it closed,  had a fabulous pidgin French convo with a colourful older French woman in Molly's Shebeen, watched the Jets game, and got to take in a Raptors victory over the Magic with my Dad.


Oh, and somehow the research I was doing for the new CBC project got done too.


All in all, enough to say, I hope your holiday was great.  Let's crush 2010. 


See y'all soon.