Tip of the Quill: A Journal

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Panic attacks at Barnes and Noble.

I’m posting this because I know I can’t be the only one who gets these. Last night I went out to run some errands and then stopped off at the Barnes and Noble on Rockville Pike. My goal was to research the current state of the short story and the general-interest magazine, so I gathered […]

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On omnipresent tools.

When you are a writer-designer-webdork like me, you will likely have the following applications running constantly on your computer: PhotoshopBBEditEntourageSafariTransmitWord In Mac OS X you develop a certain rhythm to your workflow, so you can command-tab your way back and forth between these apps at great speed. The failure to have any one of these […]

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Update on the backyard project.

The brick pathway leading from the steps to the patio by the pool is finished, and it looks nice. I’m also in better shape than I thought, I guess, because I’m nowhere near as sore as I thought I would be. Rock.

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On the virtues of lying fallow.

I should probably add that when Inkblots returns, it’s most likely going to return to its quarterly state. My good friend Emily Leachman pointed out to me that my trying to make Inkblots into a daily was trying to fix an unbroken thing, and in fact this particular attempt actually did more damage than good. […]

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Small updates.

One, regarding Geoff, Nick and Nick’s Amazing Backyard Adventure… I overdug the trench for the path by about four inches. One, that’s a lot of digging, and two, it’s a lot of gravel necessary to fill it back up to where the bricks need to be. On the upside, I feel really buff. We’re pouring […]

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The Big Dig.

Today, we started excavating the back yard of the house in order to install a brick pathway from the gate at the side all the way back and around the pool. Boy, am I going to feel this one tomorrow. Shovelling is great exercise, and it’s going to look great once it’s done, but right […]

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Also in trouble: Reading Rainbow.

Wow. I hadn’t realized that Reading Rainbow, the PBS show hosted by LeVar “Geordi LaForge” Burton, has been going on for twenty years. I remember that show from when I was a kid… And now it’s in danger of going off the air if additional funding cannot be found. Full story at cnn.com. Any wealthy […]

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The return of the genre magazine?

Between Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists and The McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, I’m wondering if we’re seeing a literary resurgence towards “genre” fiction. One can only hope – a swing away from the midlife-crisis-on-paper school of literature can only be healthy. That, and there’s a real shortage of good, literary genre magazines […]

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Quick polish on The Kingdom.

I just did a quick polish job on the design I’d posted on The Kingdom, for any of you that checked that out yesterday. Feedback, as always, is appreciated.

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Save Fantagraphics!

For those of you who enjoy the work of Chris Ware (of Jimmy Corrigan fame) or The Comics Journal, the time has come to take action. Fantagraphics Books got hosed to the tune of $70,000 when their distributor went bankrupt last year, and now they need to move as much inventory as possible to stay […]

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