Posted in Writing, tagged artists, arts, creativity, death, Discworld, Fiction, genre fiction, inspiration, neil gaiman, persistence, RIP, speculative fiction, Terry Pratchett, Writers, writing on March 12, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, dies aged 66
The Guardian reports that Sir Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series and many other books, has died at home “with his cat sleeping on his bed” and surrounded by family. His intellect, creative abilities and incisive sense of humor will be sorely missed.
I think I’ll read Good Omens next, to remind myself of Pratchett’s genius, the power of writing (and humor in the face of the apocalypse), and the pearls we can leave behind if we’re willing to keep pushing ahead.
Addendum: A lot of nice tributes are going up online but I thought I’d direct you to one in particular, Jo Walton’s “Reminiscence” at the Tor.com blog. She says it well: “The writing will live on. Death sucks.”
Posted in Writing, tagged artists, books, creativity, dark chocolate, Fiction, finishing, gaming, genre fiction, Imagination Olympics, interviews, Lightspeed, Patrick Rothfuss, podcast, sff, speculative fiction, The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Slow Regard of Silent Things, Writers, writing, writing process on March 10, 2015| 1 Comment »
Back in the fall, The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy interviewed Patrick Rothfuss about his new book, The Slow Regard of Silent Things. In it, he touches on the details of his writing process, the likelihood that he revises “more than anyone else in the genre,” why his prose sounds like “dark chocolate,” role-playing games and many other topics.
… because we have the ability to have fantastic plots and armies clashing and magic and dragons, it’s easy to leave out other things and one of the hardest ones to do is language.
If you’re interested in the process of fiction, in Pat’s writing, or in why he thinks you might not want to buy his new book, check out the full transcript now posted by the good folks over at Lightspeed.
* As an added bonus, the interviewer describes fantasy and science fiction as “the imagination Olympics.” So true!
Posted in Science!, Writing, tagged cartographic history, cartography, creativity, fantasy, Fiction, genre fiction, Gerardus Mercator, latitude and longitude, maps, Mark Monmonier, Mercator projection, science, sff, speculative fiction, urban fantasy, Writers, yo ho ho on March 5, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Gerardus Mercator was born today in 1512. Yes, that Mercator, as in maps, as in one of cartographic history’s groundbreaking creations, the Mercator Atlas. The Mercator projection* displayed latitude and longitude as a grid, which (while causing all sorts of difficulties with pole-proximate object scales that persist to this day**) allowed sailors to plot their courses in straight lines. Sounds like a simple thing? Try calculating where you are, and where you need to go, while tossing up and down on the deck of a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, using hand-held scientific instruments and a flattened, rum-stained ellipse with sea monsters at the edges, then see how you feel;)
In honor of Mercator’s 503rd birthday, I want to point my fellow writers to an article on the right ways (and wrong ways) to build a cartographic history for your fantasy land:
10 Rules For Making Better Fantasy Maps
I particularly like suggestion #3 for urban fantasists; when it comes to understanding city form, it’s hard to go wrong with Kevin Lynch at your side.
Map: a useful distortion of reality.
* For more on Mercator’s process and the social context in which he produced his maps, see this excerpt from Mark Monmonier’s Rhumb Lines and Map Wars, via the University of Chicago Press.
** Check out this interactive puzzle map for a fun demonstration of size distortions.
Posted in Writing, tagged Book View Cafe, books, creativity, fantasy, Fiction, genre fiction, Kazuo Ishiguro, sff, speculative fiction, Thoughts, Ursula Le Guin, Writers, writing on March 3, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Ursula Le Guin has an interesting piece up at the Book View Cafe blog about Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel The Buried Giant. She has issues with specific elements of the book but the part that caught my attention was the reason she felt compelled to write the piece in the first place.
In an interview, Mr. Ishiguro wondered whether his readers would label the book as fantasy. And, as Ms Le Guin says, “It appears that the author takes the word for an insult.” Regardless of Ishiguro’s intentions, this provides Le Guin with a jumping off point for discussion. Her defense of fantasy is concise and compelling.
Fantasy is probably the oldest literary device for talking about reality.
As she lays out the case for fantasy as more than “childish whims,” I am again reminded that the value of imagination lies not in its escape from reality, but in its distillation of significant questions of life and death, purpose and perils, loss and joy. In short, the human experience writ across the universe.
That’s big. I’d better get back to work.
Posted in Funny, Likes, Writing, tagged artists, creativity, criticism, Fiction, Iain S. Thomas, learning, Motivation, persistence, quotes, rejection, Thoughts, work, Writers, writing on February 3, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Writing, tagged artists, books, creativity, Fiction, finishing, genre fiction, inspiration, Jeff VanderMeer, persistence, publishing, science fiction, sff, speculative fiction, work, Writers, writing on January 29, 2015| Leave a Comment »
This week there’s a fascinating piece in The Atlantic by Jeff VanderMeer, author and editor, on the experience of writing:
From Annihilation to Acceptance: A Writer’s Surreal Journey: The author agreed to publish three novels in one year—and then things got weird.
In it, the author details the terrors, trials and triumphs that went into the making of his latest series. Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance make up the Southern Reach trilogy, about “a dysfunctional secret agency called Southern Reach and its efforts to solve the mysteries behind Area X, a strange pristine wilderness.”
I’ve had this series on my books to read list and now plan to bump them up to the top. For more on the books, including sample chapters and links to retailers, or on the author, check out the links above.
Posted in Writing, tagged artists, creativity, Fiction, inspiration, j k rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, literature, Nora Roberts, persistence, publishing, Thoughts, work, Writers, writing on January 26, 2015| 1 Comment »
Here’s an encouraging article for writers via HuffPost:
New Authors, Fret Not. Most Successful Authors Made Their Mark After 30
The headline sums it up but if this topic interests you it’s worth checking out the attached infographic. It allows you to highlight author age at first published book, at their “breakthrough” book, and also shows a nice timeline of the number of books published before and after death. J.R.R. Tolkien was 46 when The Hobbit was published (also, Nora Roberts is a publishing machine, and I mean that in the best possible way).
So fret not, and keep at it. Because writing well is a skill, and skills take time.
Posted in Writing, tagged artists, boundaries, creativity, David Farland, Fiction, inspiration, John Cleese, Monty Python, persistence, that pesky muse, Thoughts, work, Writers, writing on January 13, 2015| 1 Comment »
There are a lot of books, essays, posts and (no doubt) scratchings on cave walls discussing ways to be more creative. One of the most useful and compact versions I’ve found so far is a talk (via David Farland) by John Cleese, Monty Python funny man and deep thinker on this and other topics.
The video is only ten minutes long but does a terrific job of summarizing the essential requirements one needs to be creative. You don’t have to quit your day job or win a year-long fellowship or even trap your very own Muse. It’s simple really, and not what one might guess when thinking about the problem. We don’t need “more,” we need less. We need boundaries. Specifically, boundaries of time and boundaries of space.
If you’d like to hear Cleese in a longer discussion on the topic, check out his speech from 1991 as well.
Enjoy!
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