Deconstructing the Author Photo

Let's be honest. Writers used to be a homely lot and most of them still are. The general unattractiveness that spurs them to write in the first place (versus, say, leaving the house) is compounded by a characteristic, bloodshot squint earned through hours of deciphering Canada Council grant applications and the night before's Molson marinade, downed to obliterate the rejection-letter blues. Lighting and soft lenses can only hide so much. Yet publishers insist on including the author's photo on the book jacket, their unsightly portraits like roadside accidents from which you can't turn away. Trolls belong under the bridge, not on the bridge's architectural brochure.

Boucher, Lorie. Writer's Block (2002). Articles>Publishing>Marketing

I Punctuate; Therefore, I Am

It is punctuation that mirrors our personality, punctuation that exposes our true spirits, punctuation that reveals the soul. The punctuation that saturates our writing, that is, the punctuation marks we choose to overuse, is the real ink blot test of personality.

Boucher, Lorie. Writer's Block (2000). Humor>Writing

Making the Rules: A Day in the Life of a Regulatory Drafter

David Spicer, Senior Regulatory Drafting Officer with the CFIA, discusses the regulatory drafting process, writing complex texts in the context of federal plain language principles, and what it’s like to write the words that define and protect Canadians.

Boucher, Lorie. Writer's Block (2003). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

The Podiatrists of the Writing World: In Defence of Non-Literary Writing

Lorie Boucher disputes the notion that creativity is the mysterious, unattainable claim of the writing world's gifted elite, and that its application in literary pursuits is worthy of higher praise than its expression in any other writing field.

Boucher, Lorie. Writer's Block (2000). Articles>Writing

What Makes a Text Canadian: The Citizenship of Its Author or the Culture-Specific Insight of Its Prose?

Assigning nationality to a text is common practice — a method of categorizing a chaotic assembly of works into easily recognizable, and saleable, slots. The citizenship of an author is considered, by some, to be an adequate marker of the type of texts he or she creates. Yet the notion that Canadian authors produce 'Canadian' texts is problematic and restrictive. It presupposes a definitive Canadian culture on which the author may draw, an inability of the author to supersede his or her cultural inputs, and an acceptance that individual voices can speak for a diverse nation. So why do we gather unlike texts under the 'Canadian' umbrella? Unity is comforting, but diversity is reality in the realm of Canadian literature.

Boucher, Lorie. Writer's Block (2000). Articles>Writing>Regional>Canada