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Posts Tagged ‘genre fiction’

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
Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash

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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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Photo by Eilis Garvey on Unsplash

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“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?… If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”

― J.R.R. Tolkien

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Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash

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So there I was, wading through old backups and oddly named files and all the other detritus that accumulates on the drives of most computers, when I stumbled across a story start. At some point in the hazy past, I was writing/still half-dreaming/avoiding other work when I came up with a snippet. (I do this a lot. Most of my story starters are corralled into a central file, but apparently this one escaped.)

Does the idea still speak to me? Maybe. Here is its beginning.

The room was twenty feet wide by fifty or so deep, and high enough to stash a semi trailer. The basement warehouse hid inside a larger complex designed to cloak all manner of shady dealings. The walls were concrete, bare in some spots and painted a dull grey in others. Dim afternoon light filtered in through a series of filthy windows set just below the ceiling. The west wall contained a pile of musty wooden crates stacked head high, and the door sported a series of aging and graffitied corporate memos. Whoever Toby was, I could call him for a good time. Dust bunnies occupied the corners. It was the dullest den of iniquity I’d seen yet.

Still, I wouldn’t have minded the decor so much if it weren’t on fire…

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Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

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I could read these Starfleet job postings all day:

Starfleet Jobs

The Best Jobs in Starfleet! Shares a new Starfleet job posting every half hour.

Users may request a job by using keywords “engineering”, “arts”, “counseling”, “trombone” or “user research”.

Example job description from Starfleet Jobs.

But of course it’s Monday, so I won’t.

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Photo by Matt Noble on Unsplash

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Still editing, but I’m this close to done!

“It’s actually very difficult to make something both simple and good.”

― Paul Simon

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Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

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Today I was going to send you over to an asteroid launcher because hey, tweaking the universe’s nose is fun, right? 

Asteroid Launcher

But no, it turns out that once you start lobbing asteroids at the planet, as in Earth, our unique and very populated home, it all gets a bit terrifying.*

Also, despite our successes earlier this year, humanity hasn’t quite figured out the whole “killer asteroid” thing.

In NASA Simulation, Humankind Dismally Failed to Save Earth From Killer Asteroid

Hmm. Maybe Captain Kirk has a bit of planetary encouragement for us?

Last year, at the age of 90, I had a life-changing experience. I went to space, after decades of playing a science-fiction character who was exploring the universe and building connections with many diverse life forms and cultures. I thought I would experience a similar feeling: a feeling of deep connection with the immensity around us, a deep call for endless exploration. A call to indeed boldly go where no one had gone before.

I was absolutely wrong.

— My trip to space made me realise we have only one Earth – it must live long and prosper | William Shatner | The Guardian

No, that’s disturbing too. Surely, there must be something we can do to get the world on the right track.

Time for some hopepunk.

What Are Hopepunk Books, And Where Should I Get Started?

Coined by author Alexandra Rowland in 2017, the term hopepunk was created to be the anthesis of the grimdark genre. Instead of everything being sad and impossible, Alexandra was looking for books that were actually happy….

At its core, hopepunk is just about leaving the reader with hope for the future. Bad things can happen along the way, but they aren’t bad forever.

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Finally, because it’s awesome and at this point I think we can all use more positive thinking, The Amaterasu Railway Now Runs on Leftover Tonkotsu Ramen Broth.

Delicious.

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* For example, an asteroid hitting Lebanon, Kansas, the more or less geographic center of the continental US, would do significant damage via direct impact, shock waves, wind and earthquake. An asteroid hitting Chicago would be incomprehensibly catastrophic.

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Photo by Charles Forerunner on Unsplash

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“We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.”

― Eleanor Roosevelt

Next thing you know, you’ll be ready.

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Photo by ANIRUDH on Unsplash

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What would you do if you could do anything?

The future will not be any% glitchless by Andrea Kriz in Nature’s Futures

I’m working from home. Or trying to. Since the news broke, it just doesn’t seem like there’s much point. Seeing each other on the screen. Or in person. It’s all the same, right?

Ever since we found out the Universe is a simulation.

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Photo by De’Andre Bush on Unsplash

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My Wordle story has run into a minor hiccup: After a couple of weeks, I realized that the main characters should probably be gender swapped. That means going back and reworking what I have so far, and rethinking how the story should move forward. I’ve run a test version past the source of the Wordle story seeds and she approves, so yay.

Now I just need to make it happen.

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Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

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