April 2013
2 posts
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“Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is...”
– From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg. Via Flavorwire.
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Stupid Writer Tricks →
I have an obsession with reading about writers’ writing routines myself. I didn’t realize the Paris Review interviews are all online! Happy procrastination time …
December 2012
2 posts
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“Second, I did my sweat. That’s a technique I learned in Hollywood, where...”
– George R.R. Martin, on his editing process. Not A Blog - Talking About the Dance
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“I’ve always wondered who I am when I write, because once I’m doing...”
– Stephen King, as quoted in the Sun Herald.
November 2012
1 post
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September 2012
5 posts
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The 22 rules of storytelling, according to Pixar →
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A Sweet Animated Short about a Man Whose House... →
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“I’m devoted to the idea that the use of images can not only transform our...”
– Lynda Barry
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“The image world is not part of our mind - our mind is part of the image world.”
– Lynda Barry, Picture This
August 2012
7 posts
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“I love music. Various pieces have inspired each of the books, and I’m...”
– Louise Penny, in Acknowledgments, The Beautiful Mystery
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“I wondered what I’d learned, and found myself remembering something Gene...”
– Neil Gaiman, on finishing American Gods
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“It’s like the people who believe they’ll be happy if they go and...”
– Silas, in Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book
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Nine Exoplanets Discovered in Solar System's... →
Food for thought:
As we continue hunting for exoplanets, it’s only a matter of time until we make the groundbreaking discovery of an Earth-mass world orbiting its sun-like star within the habitable zone — the distance from a star where water may exist in a liquid state.
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Neil Gaiman interviews Stephen King →
“Absolutely – you reach out and it’s there. The time that it happened the clearest was when Ralph, my agent then, said to me ‘This is a bit crazy, but do you have any kind of idea for something that could be a serialised novel like Dickens used to do?’, and I had a story that was sort of struggling for air. That was The Green Mile. And I knew if I did this I had to lock myself...
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“But paper and ink have conjuring abilities of their own. Arrangements of lines...”
– Lynda Barry, What It Is
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“Imaginary enemies are not hard to conjure into being. Adults are especially good...”
– Lynda Barry, What It Is
June 2012
1 post
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“Hope is an essential thread in the fabric of all fantasies, an Ariadne’s...”
– Lloyd Alexander, from The Wand in the Word
April 2012
5 posts
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March 2012
14 posts
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How Turning My To-Dos into a Story Boosted My... →
This is crazy clever! I’m wondering whether to do it using third person narrative, or first person. But I’m definitely taking this idea for a spin!
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Creativity Machine →
I love this idea of making my own Creativity Machine! It’s basically a DIY prompt generator, but finetuned to your own preferences. There are so many different categories I can think up for writing purposes.
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An Exceedingly Simple Guide to Keeping a Journal →
I’ve never had any luck with consistently keeping a journal but maybe my problem is being too elaborate. I like the simple points in this post from Zen Habits.
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“Forget about the goal and find the fun.
This is the most crucial key to...”
– 5 Keys to Unlock Your Creative Motivation | The Creativity Post
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Learning best when you rest →
I’m not surprised by this study - this is what I’ve always taught my kids. I’d help them study right before bed, so their brains could do all the hard work while they were sleeping!
Now if only there was a way to write while I’m sleeping …
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Traditional Publishing: The Query And The Funnel →
I’ve read several John Grisham novels, but I didn’t realize this was how he got his start: “John Grisham’s first novel was A Time To Kill. He self-published it and sold it out of the trunk of his car and at meetings of local garden clubs. When his second novel The Firm took off, Doubleday picked up A Time To Kill. Both books went on to become blockbuster movies.”
The...
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How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big... →
From the article: “Now, in response to The_Quiet_Earth’s question about time-traveling marines, Erwin started typing. He posted his answer in a series of comments in the thread. Within an hour, he was an online celebrity. Within three hours, a film producer had reached out to him. Within two weeks, he was offered a deal to write a movie based on his Reddit comments. Within two months, he had...
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The value of fiction and your brain: a... →
Reading fiction can be a very valuable experience for your brain, from a neuroscience perspective:
The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.
The article concludes:
Reading great literature, it has long been averred, enlarges and improves us as human...
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One Sci-Fi Author Wrote 29 of the Kindle's 100... →
Looks like people really like to highlight passages from Suzanne Collins’ HUNGER GAMES trilogy,
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Video: To Kill Predators, Japanese Honeybees... →
Reading this article, I was reminded a little of Neil Gaiman’s short Sherlock story in A Study in Sherlock, “The Case of Death and Honey” - especially this, from the article:
“Secondly, in studying the Japanese honeybees the researchers have detected a previously undiscovered kind of neural activity that takes place when the bees engage in “hot defensive bee balling.”...
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A Blank a Day →
I’ve always loved the idea of doing “X” a day, whatever that might be. I once drew a mandala a day over the course of three months, and really enjoyed the process and yes, the discipline of that. Reading this makes me want to try another “theme a day” project!
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“I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done, so now I just...”
– Steven Wright
February 2012
4 posts
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January 2012
6 posts
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“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but...”
– Isaac Asimov (via ender-andrew-wiggin)
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“If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, film, comic...”
– Ray Bradbury
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December 2011
1 post
Planning for 2012 →
November 2011
7 posts
2 tags
