I’m working on a couple writing deadlines, so keeping the motivation up is important and I find Kurt Vonnegut to be a good source of pithy motivation. I’ve referred to him before, most recently in regards to routines, but Emily Temple made a collection of some of his ‘greatest hits’ for Literary Hub back in 2017. I should note that Literary Hub appears to like Vonnegut a lot, so you might respond to some of…
Ursula K. Le Guin, who died in 2018, once described imagination as the “single most useful tool mankind possesses. It beats the opposable thumb. I can imagine living without my thumbs, but not without my imagination.“ It therefore feels right that her in Portland, Oregon is set to become a home for future writers, working to unleash their imagination and engage with the community in the best way. This plan was evidently set in motion…
Being a fan of Peter Rabbit, tricksters, and folklore in general, I had a trifecta of reasons to dive into this scholarly article by Emily Zobel Marshall from The Conversation about the how Beatrix Potter’s stories owe more than a little to some influences far from the English countryside.
How I managed to miss this article last year is something I chalk up to the vast depth of the Internet, but still: I love The Expanse and part of that ardor is absolutely the multi-layered world-building. Those of you who have checked out my space opera Rogue Tyger and its ever-growing “Encyclopedia of the Imperium” will not be surprised at that fact. So I was all into this article by James Hoare for The…
I grew up reading Ray Bradbury stories and loved it when 13 of his short stories were adapted for radio (because, you know, I’m into that sort of thing). So, naturally, I’ve checked out some interviews and lectures where he talks about writing and his thoughts on it. This hour-long lecture comes from when Bradbury was around 80, so it should come as no surprise if your curmudgeon detector goes off. However, other videos can…
Considering I shared some interviews of Rod Serling on writing earlier, what are the odds that I’d share an interview with Neil Gaiman after last week’s post? Pretty darn good. So here’s a good 100-minute interview with Tim Ferris from 2019 where Neil Gaiman goes into all sorts of things from his formative years to fountain pens to his writing process (and I have to say, I do like the change in format enforcing the…
It’s always interesting to figure out how various writers work and this long article by George Saunders, which explains the genesis and creation (and recreation) of one of his novels, is a great window into a process that had me going “aha,” and nodding in equal measure.
Besides the inevitable barbecues in the U.S. this long weekend, it’s a good one for reflection (not the least given the reason for the long weekend). So that got me thinking about ideas and inspiration and a recent article by David Robinson for the BBC about how people get ideas… and how a certain professor is testing some assumptions of how people get and choose ideas. The article goes a lot into brainstorming and business…
Many of you already knew this and (spoiler alert), there’s good reasons why he abandoned the ideas as the video goes into, but I was not aware — and it does touch on some of his writing process and his motivation to write in any case.
Since I did a Monday motivational post last week about writing, I figured I’d delve into that well again, especially since motivational YouTuber Evan Carmichael went ahead and did a compilation video of another well known speculative fiction author. Truth be told, I actually haven’t read much of George R. R. Martin’s work. I commented to friends that I’d try his landmark series, A Song of Ice and Fire, after the TV show Game of Thrones…