“Go! Confront the problem! Fight! Win! And call me when you get back, darling. I enjoy our visits.”
— Edna Mode, The Incredibles
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Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category
Looking Ahead
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, inspiration, next steps, Thoughts on November 7, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Writers, Rejoice!
Posted in Science!, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, #writingscience, creativity, Writers, writing on November 1, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Typing monkey would be unable to produce ‘Hamlet’ within the lifetime of the universe, study finds
“It is not plausible that, even with improved typing speeds or an increase in chimpanzee populations, monkey labor will ever be a viable tool for developing non-trivial written works,” the authors muse.
So human writer monkeys can rest easy. In case you were worried!
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Who You Are
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, awareness, be true, inspiration, Thoughts on October 31, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“Sometimes, you have to step outside of the person you’ve been and remember the person you were meant to be. The person you want to be. The person you are.”
— H.G. Wells
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Childhood Flashback, Bookshelf Edition
Posted in Entertainment, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, books, classics, documentaries, fantasy, publishing, science fiction, Writers, writing on October 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Funny how something can play a big role in your life without you knowing all the details behind it.
My childhood bookshelves were filled with science fiction and fantasy, and a lot of those books were published by Del Rey.
I’m not sure I knew what was behind the publishing house name, or that it was a she, or that she was instrumental in promoting speculative fiction that did not feature hobbits or Conan. Reading through the list of Del Rey books is a walk through some of the classics. The Sword of Shannara, the reissued The Princess Bride, Foster, Heinlein, Hambly, Clarke, McCaffrey, Anthony and many more.
The woman who revolutionized the fantasy genre is finally getting her due
In publishing, the people who work behind the scenes rarely get their due. But on Oct. 1, 2024, at least, one industry pioneer got the limelight. On that day, PBS aired “Judy-Lynn del Rey: The Galaxy Gal,” the first episode of its new documentary series “Renegades,” which highlights little-known historical figures with disabilities.
A woman with dwarfism, Judy-Lynn del Rey was best known for founding Del Rey Books, a science fiction and fantasy imprint that turned fantasy in particular into a major publishing category.
Read the article or watch the PBS episode for more of the work she did to move this form of fiction into the mainstream.
Here’s the episode:
(Also, as a somewhat related aside, how did I never have a Star Wars Intergalactic Passport?!)
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In This Golden Age
Posted in Science!, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, #C3PO, AI, creativity, innovation, Thoughts on October 28, 2024| Leave a Comment »
A few thoughts on AI from one of the leading sci-fi writers of the day.
Behold! Science has caught up to fiction, and the age of Artificial Intelligence, long promised by science fiction in film, literature, and video games, is here! And in this golden age…tech companies expend vast amounts of energy to create search engine assistants trained on partially or fully stolen data, who tell us it’s okay to eat rocks and put glue on pizza, and chatbots who “hallucinate” answers to queries, i.e. confabulate bullshit based on a statistical regression to the textual mean. Our “AI,” as it turns out, is less intelligent than a chicken, even if it has a better vocabulary.
Will the technology continue to change? Certainly, and with rapidity. Will it move more concretely from “applied statistics” to a more humanized “artificial intelligence”? We shall see!
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The Road Is Made of Words
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, persistence, Thoughts, Writers, writing, writing advice on October 27, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Write. There is no substitute…But start small: write a good sentence, then a good paragraph, and don’t be dreaming about writing the great American novel or what you’ll wear at the awards ceremony because that’s not what writing’s about or how you get there from here.
The road is made entirely out of words. Write a lot…it’s effort and practice. Write bad stuff because the road to good writing is made out of words and not all of them are well-arranged words.
— Rebecca Solnit
So write bad stuff. Good stuff too, just try not to worry too much about which is which.
Just keep going.
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Sounds Like Fun
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, climate fiction, genre fiction, Writers, writing on October 26, 2024| Leave a Comment »
A fall Saturday with a side of free fiction, sounds like fun to me!
Who Walks With You by Premee Mohamed
With her glasses knocked off and, presumably, buried alongside her, it takes a while to realize what she’s looking at. Ah: light entering not through the usual place (the roof, which is transparent) but somewhere else (the wall, which is supposed to be opaque).
That’s right. She remembers now. The outside came in.
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Chase That
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, inspiration, life, purpose, Thoughts, Writers, writing on October 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“That thing that gives you butterflies, that lights you up. That world you see when you close your eyes. Chase that.”
— Eddie Pinero
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A Morning Meditation
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, do you have chill?, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers, writing on October 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Stretched out in bed as morning rays usher in the day, it helps to remember that
today’s weather
the world’s weather
what to write
note: look up major volcanic eruptions in the modern era
if the cat moved two inches to the right I could breathe
bills
donations
bills
ouch, why do my feet hurt
location of the Golden Spike
the garage is a mess
write write
the neighbor cut down the milkweed before it went to seed
odds of a power outage this winter
dinner
breakfast
a certain Tuesday in November and
what comes next
write write write
should have bought more than two boxes of Girl Guide cookies
but at least they’re mint
work work work work work
doesn’t matter
yet, just
Now.
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Nnedi Knows
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, excerpt, free fiction, Writers, writing on October 20, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Read an Excerpt From Nnedi Okorafor’s She Who Knows
When there is a call, there is often a response.
Najeeba knows.
She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What’s just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village.
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