The other week, I mused about giving your young’uns a steady diet of scares, inspired in part by reading an article by artist Greg Ruth. Well, as probably comes as no surprise, Ruth also has some thoughts about the eternal struggle to make a living from one’s creative work and yes, it’s naturally pertinent to illustrators, but I think his points should resonate with writers as well. By the way, if you want to check…
Let me start by giving credit where credit where credit is due. The inspiration for this post, and indeed the title above, comes from a post this past May by Russell Nohelty on his Complete Creative site. His post hit on the current issue I have with Jabberwocky Audio Theater. It’s perhaps the most difficult metaphorical needle I’ve ever had to thread — and so I’m writing it about it here in case you’re in…
I have often mentioned Scriptnotes, the screenwriting podcast hosted by John August and Craig Mazin, as a source from some really good information and inspiration for writing. On the one hand, I could arguably link to them just about every week, but if I had to pick just one this year, this week’s unprecedented solo effort by Craig Mazin is one you should listen to if you’re about to embark on writing a feature film…
Look over a score of “tortured artist” memes and you won’t have trouble seeing ones with writers. Writers are often portrayed as full of angst, indecision, indecision because of angst, angst because of indecision. Basically, the archetypical writer is in need of a good therapist. And what better therapist than a writer who’s become a therapist? That’s what screenwriter Dennis Palumbo decided to do… and he recently talked with screenwriter Ken Levine all about it.…
Time for a little shameless self-promotion. Most of my writing these days is for Jabberwocky Audio Theater, so when a sci-fi writer was looking to interview other sci-fi writers about their writing, well, that’s what I talked about. I also muse about Star Trek vs. Star Wars, sci-fi authors I like, and other fun topics.
Back in 1983, prolific writer Isaac Asimov was asked to imagine what the world would be like well into the 21st Century: 2019 to be precise. Now, considering that much of his prolific writing was science fiction, it’s well worth reading. Remember, this is the guy who wrote the Foundation series which had the field of “psychohistory” that was able to predict future trends. I found his predictions to be prescient in some aspects and…
Lest Monday’s post seem insufficiently motivational, I figured I’d pass along this article by Charles Chu about how Isaac Asimov managed to be such a prolific writer. In case you’re not aware, Isaac Asimov wrote hundreds of books… and not just in science fiction, for which he’s perhaps best remembered. In fact, his books cover most of the categories covered by Dewey Decimal Classification. Not only that, he seemed to love to write. He wrote…
One trend I continue to follow is the decline of “mid-tier” creative works, whether they be “mid-budget” movies or “middle tier” novels. I touched on this just over two years ago when I was looking at the film Warcraft in particular and film budgets in general. At the time, I also noted how the erosion of the mid-budget movie and how a similar trend seemed to occur with “mid-list” authors. Now, superhero movies in general…
As mentioned earlier this week, I will be appearing at this year’s Escape Velocity on Memorial Day weekend, both presenting a producer’s guide to moviemaking and with Jabberwocky Audio Theater (JAT) doing a live performance. Last year, JAT did an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic War of the Worlds since it was the 80th anniversary of Orson Welles’ 1938 radio broadcast. It was great fun to update a radio adaptation to the present day and set it…
Last week, I got confirmation that Jabberwocky Audio Theater has a thumbs up to do a live performance at the Museum of Science Fiction‘s annual science-expo-meets-pop-culture-convention, Escape Velocity! Escape Velocity 2019 Promo from Museum of Science Fiction on Vimeo. We had a chance to do a live performance of War of the Worlds last year which was well received (and a lot of fun to do as well). We don’t know the exact date and time of our performance –it’ll be…