Writing | J.R. Johnson

Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

To a Future of Promise and Ingenuity

Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, #ChooseYourFuture, books, climate, climate change, climate fiction, creativity, environment, free fiction, green futures, inspiration, Writers on January 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Perhaps you remember me mentioning the submission call for this year’s Grist climate collection. Folks submitted (1200 of them!), editors did their editing thing, and now we have a brand new collection of free climate stories for 2025!

Here’s the full collection, including twelve new stories with the goal of looking “beyond the current moment to picture what could be.”

Imagine 2200 climate fiction contest: The 2025 collection – Grist

Welcome to the 2025 Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors collection. For four years, this contest has celebrated stories that invite us to imagine the future we want — futures in which climate solutions flourish and we all thrive. These stories have never pretended the path will be easy — some of the most compelling Imagine stories showcase the struggle as well as the successes — but they all offer the promise that through the transformative power of radical imagining, we can envision a better world and work toward making it our reality.

Yes, please!

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Be That Spark

Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, Thoughts on January 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

— Albert Schweitzer

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If We So Choose

Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, #ChooseYourFuture, books, creativity, inspiration, Octavia Butler, predictions, Thoughts, Writers, writing on January 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »

My mother sent me an article about Octavia Butler, one of a number I’ve seen recently in the wake of the LA fires. Butler was an award-winning sci-fi and fantasy author know for her all-too-realistic versions of the future. Although she died in 2006, a week of devastating fires in LA fit right in with her vision of 2025.

In fact, she was once asked how she was able to predict the problems of the future as accurately as she did, and her answer is a telling lesson for writers but also for people who want to make a difference.

“A Few Rules for Predicting the Future” by Octavia E. Butler – Seven Good Things

“I didn’t make up the problems,” I pointed out. “All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.”

Ouch.

But that’s not all Butler said. I recommend you read the essay in full. It’s not long, but it packs a punch.

“Okay,” the young man challenged. “So what’s the answer?”

“There isn’t one,” I told him.

“No answer? You mean we’re just doomed?” He smiled as though he thought this might be a joke.

“No,” I said. “I mean there’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers, at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”

I so choose, and I hope you do, too.

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Real Heart

Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, Thoughts, transformation on January 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »

“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”

― Clive Barker, Abarat

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One Step

Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, #noresolutions, just life, Thoughts on January 10, 2025| 1 Comment »

I recently heard that the second Friday of January is the day for broken resolutions (colloquially known by the uninspiring name of Quitter’s Day). This year, that day is January 10th.

Oh wait, you may be thinking, that’s today.

Indeed.

If you signed up for a gym membership, started a diet, or otherwise laid out an optimistic Plan for a Future New You™, you might be losing steam about now.

No worries, it happens. I’m here to say that even if you slept through your “definitely getting up an hour early and going to the gym” alarm, that’s okay.

What matters is not whether you are holding fast to the letter of whatever law you set for yourself, but how you think about the type of person you want to be this year.

I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions but I do appreciate the chance to take stock of where I am and what I’m doing (or not).

A personal example: Am I writing as much as I’d like? No, but I’m working on it, and starting a new year gives me a chance to step back, reassess my current approach and think of ways to improve.

So whether you went to the gym today or not, wrote or not, checked off your resolutions or not, imagine what you want your life to be like. At the end of the day, the month, the year, what do I want to have done?

Today, take one step in that direction. Then take another. If those steps take you to the gym, great. If they keep going to some new and better vista, even better. Just keep moving, one step, then the next.

Your life is waiting for you.

“A good beginning makes a good end.”

— Louis L’Amour

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*Photo by Javier Santos Guzmán on Unsplash*

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The Power of Imagination

Posted in Entertainment, Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, #ChooseYourFuture, #wotf39, LA fires, risk management, Thoughts on January 9, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I write science fiction, but I don’t always like living in the future.

Consider the fact that a century ago, many of the innovations we find commonplace were the stuff of dreams.

I do love advances in things like clean air and water, energy, infant mortality, waterproof shoes, effective moisturizers, trash collection, the postal service, public libraries and so much more.

The sci-fi-level post-apocalyptic wildfire situation currently playing out in Southern California? That, I could do without.

I’m not a Californian but I am an American, a North American, and a human being. Extreme weather events also aren’t uncommon anymore. That, plus the fact that one of the fires surrounding Los Angeles is less than two kilometers from the hotel we stayed in for the Writers of the Future workshop helps make these events even more concrete.

I feel for the people in the fire’s path today, and for the risks we all face tomorrow.

It’s also easy to imagine bad outcomes when we see them in the news. It can be harder to remember the good already incorporated into our lives, and what could be waiting for us up ahead.

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The other night, Mr Man and I realized that we’d never seen Bullitt, Steve McQueen’s 1968 classic movie. It was a well-told story but also a trip down memory lane. I spent a good part of the show saying things like “Oh right, you could smoke most everywhere back then” and “Hang on, that’s how they used to track your pulse?” or “Looks like seatbelts were optional” and “So much of this plot revolves around the fact that you had to stop to find a phone” and “Lord, that is a lot of smoke coming out the back of those giant gas guzzlers.”

The movie’s world was certainly recognizable, but in the way your grade school classroom might be, years later.

Things change, much as it doesn’t always feel like it.

Let’s try to make it change for the better.

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What Do You See?

Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, artists, creativity on January 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Good advice to artists of all kinds, as quoted in this article on “Les Archives de la Planète” in 77 Stunning Color Photos Of The World’s Cultures A Century Ago:

“I ask only one thing of you,” Kahn said… “It is that you keep your eyes wide open.”

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Follow Your Own Tune

Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, Thoughts, Writers, writing on January 2, 2025| Leave a Comment »

“Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it’s up to you to know with which ear you’ll listen.”

― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

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Should Strikes Again

Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, #ItsAlwaysSomething, tech troubles, Thoughts on December 28, 2024| Leave a Comment »

You know when you need a bit of new tech and you spend ages researching what you want and reading all the fine print to ensure that everything looks good before finally hitting the Buy button, only to have it arrive and (fill in the blank).

Maybe the module doesn’t sync with the old system, even though it absolutely should. Maybe the form factor was altered in non-obvious ways that keep the new thing from matching the old thing. Maybe the cable that looks perfect mysteriously does not work.

A lot of things can go wrong, and it has inspired a new phrase: Should strikes again.

It should fit. It should match. It should connect.

It should work, dammit, but it just doesn’t.

Does it make me feel better to know that this type of problem is super common?

No. And yes.

A little:)

So the next time your best-laid plans backfire, remember, it’s not you. It’s just life’s little shoulds, striking again.

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