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Don’t Count Your Words

By Arjun Basu | Published: November 23, 2013

It’s not a good thing. You get obsessed with the wordcount and not the words. You start to take shortcuts, or want to, because you’re not looking at the right thing, for the right reason, and you’re not doing the work. I know this and I know it to be true, it’s a truism it’s […]

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RIP Lou Reed

By Arjun Basu | Published: October 27, 2013

Lou Reed died today. He lived a great life, a life of art and passion. Full. Calling him a “rock musician” is kind of reductive and diminishes what he did. By a lot. There are already some great obituaries circulating and this is not an obituary. My upcoming novel is called Waiting for the Man. […]

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The March To the Novel: Little Steps To The Real Thing (or, the ISBNification of me)

By Arjun Basu | Published: October 13, 2013

A book is transformed, slowly, from idea to physical creation to consumer product. The transformation from idea to physical thing is long and painful and fraught. Creating the thing isn’t easy and never was and never will be. If it has value, it shouldn’t be easy (though this is a kind of value judgement, I […]

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Ceci N’est Pas Un Blog Post

By Arjun Basu | Published: September 21, 2013

This is not a blog post about anything. This is not a blog post about the unimaginable inanities taking place in Quebec, or Washington, DC, or Syria, or anywhere else. This is not a blog post about what makes a blog post and what makes an essay and whether or not the word blog is […]

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What Do You Mean It’s The End of Summer?!?!

By Arjun Basu | Published: September 2, 2013

Summer was too short. Summer IS too short. I’m Canadian so I mean it. When summer already feels too short (and it does, I said it so it’s established) Labour Day (or Labor Day to my American friends) should not be allowed to fall on the first weekend of September. Or, to be technical, within […]

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Things Montréal Has Given the World Recently*

By Arjun Basu | Published: August 20, 2013

This is obviously a superficial list. Or not so superficial. But Montreal is responsible in many ways for the items on this list. And for some of them, it apologizes….   1. Vice 2. Jessica Paré 3. Georges St-Pierre 4. Jay Baruchel 5. foie gras on everything and the effect this has on everyone else […]

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Tell Me, Tell Me, Tell Me This Headline From Today’s Salon Wouldn’t Make a Great Title for A Great Short Story

By Arjun Basu | Published: August 16, 2013

I know I haven’t written much lately. I don’t have a whole heck of a lot to say. I’m a firm believer in not saying something just for the sake of saying something. I don’t believe in talking for no reason. I don’t think we should do anything merely because we can. (Like the executive […]

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On Vacation

By Arjun Basu | Published: August 4, 2013

You go away with the stated intention of getting “recharged” and that’s just what you do. You get recharged. Recharging involves UNcharging in many ways, unplugging and finding a place off the grid so that all you do is read (and read and read – a bunch of my reviews of stuff I read is […]

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And Yet Another Installment in the March of the Novel (or Slow Cooking is the Best Cooking)

By Arjun Basu | Published: July 18, 2013

The slow (but steady) march toward publishing, as inexorable as a stream finding the ocean, forward. Editing. Done. Copy Editing. Done. First two rounds of drafts for the covers. Yes. (this is going to be a good looking book, I can tell you that, this is the designer’s website) And then there’s more waiting. Holy […]

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Great Pop Culture Bridges (another ArjunBasuList™)

By Arjun Basu | Published: June 26, 2013

Being someone who writes stuff I appreciate the metaphorical power of bridges. I get the whole connecting thing. I’m not alone, of course. Far from it. Very very far. Perhaps too far. See where I’m going with this? Here are the top 5 pop culture bridge references. Well 6. Because 5 is a tie. 5 […]

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