Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, back to work!, creativity, Fiction, Thoughts, Writers, writing on January 19, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Where has this day gone? Despite constant motion since pre-dawn, I have accomplished exactly two of the many things on my list for today. Ok, fine, three if I stretch it. It’s time to buckle down and finalize the edits on this story.
“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
― Alexander Graham Bell
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, creativity, inspiration, Thoughts, writing, yay on January 18, 2023| Leave a Comment »
“You are perfectly cast in your life. I can’t imagine anyone but you in the role. Go play.”
— Lin-Manuel Miranda
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Posted in Likes, Science!, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, inspiration, random facts, travel, volcano lair on January 17, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Research for my supervillain lair: Welcome to Volcano Roots – volcanoroots.org
Scientists have been trying to image the intricate plumbing of volcanoes to help understand their dynamics and better predict eruptions… and plan better supervillain lairs.
They didn’t really say that last part. But they should have.
As an example, here’s a handy explainer showing the depths beneath Santorini, a beautiful but geologically unstable Greek island in the Mediterranean. The graphic shows why.
It also tries to give a nod to the volcanically disrupted Minoan culture, late of Santorini, but the Latin placeholder text is less than useful. Here’s a link to help with that: Santorini 1600 BC and the End of Minoan Civilization.
If you have a chance to visit the island, I recommend it. Because nothing says a supervillain lair can’t be pretty.
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, editing, Thoughts, Writers, Writers of the Future, writing on January 16, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Today’s post-day job project is to start editing the final proof of my Writers of the Future story. Because words are magic, even when they have typos.
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, creativity, Fiction, Thoughts, Writers, writing on January 15, 2023| Leave a Comment »
“Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, creativity, Fiction, free fiction, genre fiction, Marissa Lingen, Nature's Futures, short stories, writing on January 14, 2023| Leave a Comment »
For today’s bit of fun, here’s a Nature‘s Futures story by Marissa Lingen: So your grandmother is a starship now- a quick guide for the bewildered.
Your grandmother is becoming a starship! She has gone through many phases in her life already — infant, child, teenager, young adult, student, worker, in many cases spouse, parent, retiree. She has had hobbies like knitting, volleyball and carbon mitigation. She has travelled in planetary atmosphere whenever her circumstances allowed. Now she is uploading her consciousness into a starship! The circle of life is beautiful.
I am now going to imagine that my grandmother is a spaceship.
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, creativity, genre fiction, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers, writing on January 13, 2023| Leave a Comment »
On the off chance that you’re having doubts about how you stack up against others, in writing or elsewhere, here’s a thoughtful quote. Follow the link for his whole piece, which is part of a series of posts worth reading.
…I think it’s clear our pop culture and what passes for our media discourse have a dangerously romanticized view of creative work.
“Oh, what a talented person,” our stories go, “oh, how powerful their inspiration must have been!” Talent certainly exists and inspiration certainly exists, but I fear our popular view of creativity artificially centers both, eliding struggle, practice, failure, and the investment of time. Too often, we talk about something akin to magic, about early purity of vision, about the notion that we are chosen or anointed for certain tasks, and while I cannot speak to how the secret machinery of the cosmos operates, I can testify that most of my own moments of lovely inspiration have been purchased with long hours of study, planning, and practice.
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— Scott Lynch, The Post of Christmas Past
Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, human problems, Thoughts on January 12, 2023| 1 Comment »
Today’s date caught my eye: 01.12.23, written American style. Sequential, repeating numbers.
There are repeating dates (12.12.12) and palindromes (which read the same forward or backward, like 21.02.2012), squares and primes and of course pi. I have yet to find a name for a date like today’s.
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, computer woes, macs are usually better than this, posted for posterity but not really very interesting sorry!, problem solutions on January 11, 2023| Leave a Comment »
tl;dr To fix Mac Mail’s link preview problems, go to Settings > Mail Privacy Protection. Disable “Protect Mail Activity” and enable “Block all remote content.”
This post is pretty particular, but I’m posting it here in case you, like me, run into this problem and have a hard time finding a solution. (And if this isn’t your thing, you can still have fun trying to draw perfect circles instead.)
I upgraded to Mac’s Ventura operating system over the holidays and hoped I’d have time to let it settle in before I needed to get back to work. It went… mostly fine, but the bits that were not fine were really, really annoying.
Today’s example: Link previews in Mail.
Problem:
Dragging a browser link over to a draft message used to copy over the hot-linked page title, like this: Draw a Perfect Circle. (This is good because I need both title and the link, and there are times when I need to make lists of many, many links.)
After updating the OS, dropping a link instead popped up an oversized preview image and description, like this:
The only obvious way to get rid of the image is to click the caret symbol by each link and Convert to Plain Link. That left me with a URL and no page title.
Ok, no. I need a list, I need page titles, and I need them for dozens of links at a time. Changing each one and copying over titles is both impractical and deeply annoying. And that stupid caret kept mocking me. Rude!
/insert search montage with sped-up clock in the foreground
In Mail, go to Settings > Mail Privacy Protection. Disable “Protect Mail Activity” and enable “Block all remote content.”
Intuitive? Not at all. Helpful? Yes.
Do I feel better now? Yes, yes I do.
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, creativity, Fiction, genre fiction, Writers, writing on January 10, 2023| Leave a Comment »
If you can write beginnings and ends, you can make a nice living as a writer. If you write middles, you win Pulitzers and Nobel Prizes and stuff. But with beginnings and ends, you’re going to do okay.
— James Patterson
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