8 Courageous Things Harry Potter Fans Did to Fight Real-Life Dark Forces by Katrina Rabeler.
If Harry Potter were a real person, he’d fight child labor, voter suppression, and poverty. Here are our favorite ways Harry’s fans have taken his values from the page to the real world.
For more details on what muggles can do when they put their minds to it, check out the full article at YES! Magazine.
Posted in Likes | Tagged awesome, books, fantasy, Fiction, fight child labor, grassroots activism, harry potter, inequality, inspiration, life imitating art, writing, yay | 1 Comment »
I’m very pleased to tell you that my new story Catch of the Day is now out at SQ Mag, a delightful speculative fiction zine from Australia. This “tale of magical artefact smuggling, full of betrayal and twists and turns” is now freely available online. Enjoy!
Posted in Writing | Tagged Australia, creativity, Fiction, finishing, free, genre fiction, sff, short stories, speculative fiction, SQ MAg, work, writing, yay | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Writing | Tagged creativity, Dale Carnegie, finishing, inspiration, Motivation, quotes, Thoughts, work, Writers, writing | Leave a Comment »
I planned to avoid the kerfuffle around Lynn Shepard’s call for JK Rowling to stop writing, because the idea that Rowling should quit for the good of other writers is flat-out ridiculous. The sensible approach to scarcity isn’t to fight over the last tiny slice; instead, make the pie bigger. Rowling has certainly done that.
Mark Pryor’s article says most of what I was thinking about Lynn Shepard’s essay, and I was glad to see it come out. Here he is on Rowling: “…authors like you actually bring more readers to our books. More books from you means more readers for us, not fewer.”
I do disagree with a point at the end of Pryor’s article, however. The part where the author says that writers don’t write to make money is an old excuse to explain away economic marginalization: “…writers don’t sit down and write books to make money… We write because we love to share our stories.”
It has been said before but bears repeating: Doctors don’t examine you out of the love of anatomy, plumbers don’t fix your pipes for free. Professional writers are, or should be, the same. Yes, most people can “write” in the broad sense of the word, but very few can do it at professional levels. It’s like dismissing an Olympic sprinter because “anyone can run.”
“…this is the sort of thinking, intentional or otherwise, that gives bad people cover to screw writers with regard to money, and gives uncertain writers a reason to shrug off being screwed.”
— John Scalzi
Writers have a lot of motivations, and the pleasure of being read is certainly one. But we also write because (we hope) it pays the bills, because it’s less physically demanding than ditch digging, or because we have something to say. We write to entertain, to connect with other human beings, to understand the world and to communicate what we see. We write to make sense of a problem or an emotion and to pass that knowledge along. We write to provide adventure or mystery or humor or a place of refuge. If we do it well (and that’s what we’re all striving for, is it not?), we give to the reader, not the other way around.
And Ms Rowling does it well.
Posted in Writing | Tagged books, creativity, Fiction, harry potter, inspiration, JK Rowling, john scalzi, Lynn Shepard, Mark Pryor, more pie, quotes, Thoughts, Writers, writing | 2 Comments »
Oh, this is sad news:
Harold Ramis, ‘Ghostbuster’ Actor And ‘Groundhog Day’ Director, Dies : The Two-Way : NPR
Posted in Entertainment | Tagged artists, Caddyshack, death, entertainment, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Harold Ramis, Thoughts | Leave a Comment »
Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.
—Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Perhaps your weekend will be spent climbing Everest or solving cold fusion, but if you plan to spend at least some time facing down a blank page in an effort to write, the following TED talks may be of some use. This collection comes to us via Aerogramme Writers’ Studio and includes a variety of topics and speakers:
I featured #9 in a previous post but there are a dozen other talks too. A baker’s dozen. … Hmm, baking… Perhaps I’ll make something tasty to go along with the above educational material. Because, cookies. Butterscotch ripple cookies, even:)
Posted in Writing | Tagged artists, creativity, Fiction, fun, inspiration, Motivation, storytelling, TED talks, Thoughts, Writers, writing | Leave a Comment »
It was this or a picture of snow.
You’re welcome:)
Posted in Likes | Tagged cats, home, Neko, photos, sleepy cat | Leave a Comment »
Oh look, it’s snowing again, and I realize that I’m on the edge of what I’m calling Snow-Related Stockholm Syndrome. When I start to enjoy the fact that I’m buried under feet of the white stuff, it’s time for a change of scenery. Today, I give you Zion National Park.
Posted in Likes | Tagged beautiful, inspiration, nature, pictures, snow, Thoughts, winter | Leave a Comment »
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