Samantha Garner, Freelance Web Writer & Editor

A few days ago, Anne Wayman wrote a blog post listing what was on her writing desk. I thought I’d respond with a post of my own, though I’m afraid my list isn’t as exciting as hers. We do have an office, but I actually do most of my work in the living room – better light. As such, my “writing desk” here will really be “coffee table.”

• My laptop support thing. I have no idea what these are actually called, but it’s pillowy underneath with a flat surface on top. It sits on my lap and my laptop sits on top of it. Good for when my laptop gets warm from the intensity of my writing (or something).
• An empty mug of tea. A friend of mine brought it back from the UK and it’s oversized and lovely.
• A copy of Why Do We Say It?, a book given to me by a fellow word-liker friend. He and I used to sit next to each other at work, and almost every day we would come across some phrase everyone takes for granted, like “flash in the pan” and wonder how it entered our lexicon. We also used to proofread junk faxes our office received, which often had hilarious grammatical errors. Oh, good times indeed! I’m reading it again to harvest the best ones for a blog post.
• The second volume of Doris Lessing’s autobiography – blog post coming about that too.
• My cell phone, battery low.
• A notebook and pen. I bought this notebook to prove to myself once and for all that I don’t like perfect-bound notebooks. I still don’t, but I will power through.
• An Xbox 360 controller for when it’s time to take a break!

Imagine a bookstore, in a heritage building, that had three storeys of books to browse through. The shelves were laid out in small angled groups. Some were even arranged in a little nook, with chairs inside that you could relax on and browse through. There was even a restaurant on the top floor – a really authentically good restaurant – where you could peoplewatch out the window, or look the other way and enjoy the sight of people enjoying books. And sometimes there would be readings or workshops in this bookstore restaurant.

This bookstore is – was – McNally Robinson, Canada’s largest independent chain of bookstores, and I loved the Calgary location until it shut down, citing high costs of real estate and labour. I was even more sad when the company declared bankruptcy. I thought, for sure, Chapters had won.

But today, I read an article on the CBC website that said McNally Robinson has emerged from bankruptcy protection. Hooray! Good news! Hope!

I’m still mourning the loss of the Calgary location, however. There’s a SportChek in there now. Sigh.

A few weeks ago, I turned on the TV randomly to find PBS was airing a special on Mavis Gallant. I watched happily, because I love her. I discovered her quite late, via a Writers & Company podcast a few years ago. To be honest, I haven’t even read too much of her work, but I love her all the same. I like that she’s kind of scrappy and refuses to answer any questions she feels breaches her privacy. I like that she hasn’t lived in Canada for decades and isn’t a particular paragon of the CanLit “scene,” yet we haven’t turned our backs on her.

I like her more now that I’ve finally stopped confusing her, for some reason, with Doris Lessing, who have little in common besides their relative age and scrappiness (I’m sensing a theme here). I had my notebook ready to write down things Gallant said during her interviews, but I was so focused on listening and wrote nothing down. These photos I took will have to do!

I’ve been hearing about Biznik lately and finally checked it out for myself – here’s my profile.

Wow, that sounded like a commercial, didn’t it? Either way, Biznik seems pretty neat so far. It’s social networking amongst other entrepreneurs who are into sharing ideas and information. It sounds like LinkedIn, but it seems more geared towards relationship building rather than getting connections. Here’s an article about it from the Duct Tape Marketing blog.

Anyway, I’ve created my profile and am still getting my bearings, but it seems fun! Let me know if you’re on Biznik too!

No really, do. Akismet is really good at catching them and keeping them away from my blog, so all I have to do is delete them. Except, first, I read them. And some of them are hilarious.

I got a couple of different variations of this one in my spam queue:

Intimately, the post is actually the sweetest on this notable topic. I harmonize with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your next updates.

Let this be a lesson to you writers out there: if you have a voice, just go with it. Don’t think a thesaurus will make you sound any better! It will make you sound kind of like Yoda!

I also recently got one advertising Blind Melon torrents. Blind Melon? The same Blind Melon that had that one hit in the ’90s? Aw. I kind of almost feel sorry for this spammer. I think he might be a narc, actually.

I’m proud to say I haven’t gotten tricked by a spammer since the last time I, embarrassingly, did. Now, they just provide amusement for me. Don’t ignore your spam queue, people! It can provide minutes of fun!

Anyway, I should get back to my writing. I’ve got a couple of enewsletter articles to write, as well as making my middle-of-the-night story idea scrawl into something that makes a modicum of sense. Hope everyone’s having a good end of the week!

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about different confusing things that’ve happened around my name. He mentioned it’d be a good blog post, so here it is. Let it not be said I don’t take suggestions well!

Over the years, both before and after I got married and changed my name, I’ve encountered a few other “Me”s. Here are my favourites:

1) My Twin From the Other Side of the World

The main reason I took my husband’s name when I got married is because I liked it better than mine. Another – minor – reason is that my old last name was often mispronounced and misspelled and, after so many years, it really bugged me. However, I received some comfort when I stumbled upon another woman with my exact name online. The funny thing is – she was a writer too! We even had similar writing styles. If she didn’t live on the other side of the world I might have been a bit more creeped out about it than I was. Shortly after I’d Googled myself and found her, she’d Googled herself and found me. We exchanged emails and she was quite charming, though emailing “myself” was very surreal. My name was unique enough that I’d never encountered someone else by that name before. Sometimes I feel like I should email my twin now and tell her, “You win – the name’s yours!”

2) The Bizarro Me

On a certain social network which shall remain nameless, there exists a Samantha Garner who is my age and lives in my city. However, she is very much not me and, if prospective clients Googled me and thought she was me, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t ever hear from them. Don’t get me wrong, whatever Bizarro Me wants to do on her slice of the internet is cool and I don’t begrudge her anything, but it’s why I put a photo of myself up on this site in the latest redesign. My name is my brand, so I want to make sure I’m representing myself accurately. Future clients need not worry – I keep my private life locked down tight on this here internet.

3) The Other Wordscience

The name of my blog, Wordscience, follows a theme I’ve used often in names for things online. It started from a phrase I misheard on TV: “new science.” At the time, it resonated with me. I thought that new science would be a pretty neat thing to experience. The sound of the phrase and its attendant imagery stuck with me, and I used variations of it over the years. So, it made sense that I’d call my blog Wordscience. The problem is, when I went to register Wordscience as a Twitter name, I discovered it already existed – and her name was Samantha too! Fair enough, she got there first. And so WordscienceBlog is my Twitter name. It’s also why I use the word “blog” in the blog’s name even though that’s gauche. Sometimes necessity is the mother of gaucheness.