Archive for August, 2007
The First Church of Words and Starry Wisdom is In Session
by David Niall Wilson
When I was younger, I had a plan that involved growing up to be a minister. In a way, that plan never left me, since I did become ordained through the Universal Life Church, an ordainment every bit as legal as any other, but probably not taken too seriously in most [...]
MORE FORENSIC DETAILS
R. C. Jones
The buzzing sound began as I started down a narrow set of stairs leading to a large basement room. I had never been there before, but I knew what the source of the buzzing must be. It was the sound of a small vibrating saw cutting off the top of someone’s [...]
Five Things I Know About World-Building
–Sarah Monette
1. The more fun you have, the more fun your audience will have.
World-building should be fun. That’s what it’s for. You don’t have to approach it like a history textbook with all the dates and the names and the dry tedious facts. You only have to talk about the good bits, [...]
Night Of The Two Moons
As I write this in longhand early on the 27th, the printing plant is silent, has been since a transformer was hit by lightning during last Thursday’s storm. I hadn’t heard an air raid siren in years and a moment later the sound from past the loading docks was that of a truck being flipped [...]
Your Story Is Ugly, And Your Mother Dresses Your Manuscript Funny
Let’s talk about the bad news.
And by bad news, I mean getting a negative response to something you’ve written. It may be a bad review. It may be a reader slagging the book on Amazon.com or on a message board. It may be a critique from a professional peer or agent or member of your [...]
What Is A Memoir?
by Janet Berliner
As I began to write my memoir–which may or may not ever see the light of day–I tried to get a fix on what that meant. Is a memoir “Just the facts, Ma’am?” or is it, as Gore Vidal wrote in Point To Point Navigation, “…how one remembers one’s life.”
More than whether [...]
On Waiting
A friend sent me a very timely email today, in which he quotes the wise Tom Petty:
“The waiting is the hardest part.”
Tell me about it, brother. I’m a writer, not yet a professional one (by my standards anyway) but I keep trying. I devote about three hours a day to writing. The [...]
Layers, Cells, & Constellations
By Richard Steinberg
“The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture,” Raymond Chandler
It’s an interesting moment.
Dark and light seem completely [...]
The Big Con
I just got back from Gen Con late Sunday night, and I’m still beat. It’s a long-standing tradition (at least for me) to hit any con I hit hard. If I’m going to be there, I go all-out. This year, my fourth in a row as a guest of honor, was no exception.
During any convention [...]
This Is Not The Essay: further thoughts on matters of perspective
by Justine Musk
This is not the essay I intended to write.
I write this in a lodge somewhere in Iceland where
I’ve been staying the past two days with my spouse,
assorted extremely-bright accomplished people, and a
famous actress. This gathering is meant to be a kind
of think tank retreat/salon concerning one issue in
particular. I won’t say what [...]
