“The Embankment”
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie …— T. E. Hulme
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Posts Tagged ‘inspiration’
Sweet Dreams
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, inspiration, Thoughts on May 29, 2024| 1 Comment »
The Future Isn’t Written (Yet)
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, Fiction, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers, writing on May 28, 2024| Leave a Comment »
I’m sad that I haven’t written a lot of things, but I’m incredibly happy that I’ve written as much as I have. Because there was a point when I was younger where there was a very good chance that I wouldn’t write anything – I was just too frightened.
— Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
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Follow Your Own Path
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers on May 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Doesn’t Always Feel That Way, Though, Does It?
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, back to work!, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers, writing on May 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »
So I wake up this morning with that age-old cliché in my head: You have as many hours in a day as [Leonardo da Vinci].
Fill in your own preferred goal setter.* Mine changes depending on my current mood and projects. Sometimes it even helps;)
Onward!
* Also, remember that if your exemplar is pre-20th century, your life expectancy is probably double theirs. Strike that, we’re all under enough pressure as it is.
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Legend Reads Legend
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, alice-munro, Fiction, goals, inspiration, short stories, the greats, Writers, writing on May 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »
You may have seen that Canadian author and Nobel laureate Alice Munro passed away this week. A prolific titan of the short story genre, she published her first story in 1950 and continued to produce award-winning work in the many decades since. When asked how she got started in short stories, she said it was because that’s all she had time for.
She certainly made it work.
Here, award-winning Canadian author Margaret Atwood reads Dance of the Happy Shades by Alice Munro.
In this exclusive recording, The Handmaid’s Tale author reads the eponymous short story from the late Munro’s first collection in 1968.
If you’d like to read more of Munro’s work, here are 25 Alice Munro Stories You Can Read Online Right Now.
Enjoy!
“A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”
― Alice Munro, Selected Stories
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Up From the Depths of Time
Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, batty Brits, creativity, inspiration, mudlarking, Thoughts on May 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Once upon a time, children, before mass production and digital copies and backups and cloud synching, it was possible to wipe a thing from the world completely.
Or maybe not? Here’s a fun story about business feuds and artistic obsession!
Remnants of a Legendary Typeface Have Been Rescued From the River Thames
The depths of the river Thames in London hold many unexpected stories, gleaned from the recovery of prehistoric tools, Roman pottery, medieval jewelry, and much more besides. Yet the tale of the lost (and since recovered) Doves typeface is surely one of the most peculiar.
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The Art of Flying
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers on May 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“The Guide says there is an art to flying”, said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
― Douglas Adams
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Color Me Impressed
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, Fiction, inspiration, writer, Writers, writing on May 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »
You may remember that I’ve talked about NaNoWriMo, where intrepid writers challenge themselves to write a 50,000-word novel in a month. Professional writers often do much more than this (Dean Wesley Smith is a poster author for it), but I wouldn’t say it’s common. At all.
Now that AI is a thing, however, it’s easy to put many words in a line very fast. Not good words, mind you, but words.
I just ran across a reference to an author who has decided to embark on a writing challenge, pitting herself against AI.
Alberta author Alison McBain decided to do an “Author Vs AI” challenge. The goal? A well-written book a week for a total of two million words in 365 days. Dang.
She started a week or so ago and is posting daily word counts as she goes.
Here she is ramping up for the starting line: Three Days before Launch… Tips & Tricks to Writing Quickly
Here’s she is, taking off: TODAY Starts 2 MILLION+ Words in 365 days!
Of course, we aren’t really comparing apples to apples here. We’re comparing one person’s ability to convert their history, emotions and expertise into a coherent recipe for another person to experience, versus a predictive extrapolation of the collective yet selective distillation of humanity known as the internet, produced through many (many) hours of training and often poorly-paid drudgery.
(Trying to resist the obvious joke about it not being so different from writing after all, but also obviously failing. Even so.)
Writers write because they have something to say. They’re unable to shut up. They have a point of view. They put themselves through an emotional wringer to get it across, and sometimes lightning strikes and their work resonates with other people. — Ilona Andrews
I love that this writer has given herself a fun challenge, and frankly, she had me at “well-written.”
Color me impressed.
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Good Boye
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, inspiration, medieval times, Thoughts on May 1, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Artistic masterpieces and upper class architecture can tell us a lot about what a society put on a pedestal at any particular time, but those items tend not to touch the lived experience of the 99% (that’s you and me).
Another way of peering into the past is to learn about the everyday, from what people ate and drank to (checks notes) what they named their dogs.
In the 15th century, Edward, Duke of York wrote a list of 1,065 names suitable for a dog.
Find the perfect name for your medieval mutt.
— for more background, check out 100 Weird and Wonderful Medieval Dog Names
If you click through the main link above, you’ll find yourself on an oddly addictive site that does nothing but generate dog names from the Duke of York’s original list.
No Snuggles or Cutiepie for them, but lots of creative medieval spellings like Misavisid, Fyndewell, Sergeaunt, Dere-ybowgt, Argument, Romwlus and of course, Boye.
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Rejoice!
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, inspiration, nature, Thoughts on April 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.”
— Eleonora Duse
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