Tag: writers

Drowning in RSS

So, I’ve been writing so much that I’ve let gobs and gobs of intarwub stuff pile up in my Google Reader. I’ve tried to quit “starring” anything, at least until I got caught up. Yeah, right. I just piled shit into Google Bookmarks.

Anyway, here’s a random sampling of stuff I’ve accumulated, mostly writing related.

1
From Dar Kush (Steven Barnes) on reading.

The point is that your output will be one step down from your input. You can’t read comic books and write classics. Sorry. Here’s a joke I always tell students: ‘If you want to write comic books, read pulp fiction. If you want to write pulp fiction, read popular fiction. If you want to write popular fiction, read bestsellers. If you want to write bestsellers, read classics. And if you want to write classics..? Choose your grandparents very carefully.’

2
Steve Perry on writers workshops (part one of two)

Damon [Knight]’s personal taste is not the same as an intrinsic flaw in the piece, and you have to be able to tell the difference, else you wind up producing stories that please the workshoppers but don’t sell …

Here’s part two.

3
Another POV on critique groups from Bev Vincent.

4
Sarah Monette talks about Five Things I Know About Worldbuilding

5
Paul Jessup writes about The Newbie Writer Cycle.

Jay Lake follows up with The Early Career Writer cycle

6
There is NO….number 6.

7
From Warren’s Bad Signal mail a few weeks ago…

But I did note that apparently the Gene Hunt role in the
ill-advised American remake of LIFE ON MARS is going to
good old Colm Meaney. And god knows Meaney’s made some
crap to pay the mortgage, but he tends to elevate a thing —
or at least let some light into it — just by showing up. So I
might give the remake a look after all, even though it’s
almost guaranteed to be a train wreck…

And there you have it. Vital bits of information that, only by the grace of God, I’ve managed to survive without blogging about until today.

So That’s How It’s Done

Elizabeth Bear writes in Storytellers Unplugged: Passion and the single blogger

And that’s what makes [certain blogs] readable–compulsive, even. Because they’re committed. They’re there laying it on the line. This is what I do, and this is how I do it.

And that? Is interesting. And it’s interesting in ways that apply to fiction writing, too. Because characterization counts. I mean, let’s be honest here: Shakespeare couldn’t plot his way out of a wet paper bag. And he knew it, too, which is why he lifted stories from everywhere and anywhere, with the peculiar light-fingered pickpocket’s touch of his. But the man could write characters–people–better than just about anybody.

A good weblog is about character.

Stars Must’ve Aligned

…if I’m reading this not two weeks after discovering this person’s name via the Great American Prose Poems anthology, which is yet another book added to my goodreads list before I’ve finished the 100 other things on it.

Charles Simic Receives Poet Laureate Post, Plus $100,000 Award
By Jeffrey Burke

Aug. 2 (Bloomberg) — Charles Simic, a Pulitzer Prize- winning writer, will receive two major honors today. He will be named the 15th poet laureate of the U.S. by the Librarian of Congress, succeeding Donald Hall, and he will receive a $100,000 award from the American Academy of Poets.

Fanfiction

Whatever: My Policy on Fanfic and Other Adaptations of My Work:

“First: I do retain and reserve all rights to my work. I’m not very squishy about that fact. Just so you know. If you play in my universe, you implicitly accept I have the right to come around, say ‘mine!’ and then stomp off with all your pretty toys. Yeah, I know. I’m a dick. What can I say.

Second: As long as you can deal with that first point, as far as I’m concerned, you may play in my universe(s) as long as the emphasis is on ‘play.’ This means that nothing you do in my universes may:

a) Generate any sort of economic benefit for you, in any form;
b) Generate any sort of economic benefit for any third party;
c) Cause me economic detriment of any sort.”

Not that I ever expect anyone to ever write fanfic about anything I create. Nor have I ever written any fanfic of any kind (unless you count a DOCTOR WHO story I wrote back in the 7th grade as an assignment).