You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.
— Paulo Coelho
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Posts Tagged ‘inspiration’
Even Tuesdays
Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers on February 13, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Natural Allies
Posted in Science!, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, inspiration on February 11, 2024| Leave a Comment »
This is absolutely the sort of article I like to have with lunch:
Study finds bigfoot sightings correlate with black bear populations | Ars Technica
The results suggest that there’s a strong correlation between sightings and the local black bear population—for every 1,000 bears, the frequency of Bigfoot sightings goes up by about 4 percent.
So another way of interpreting this study is that (and correct me if I’m wrong here but really, it just makes sense) black bears and Bigfoot have formed an alliance.
Pretty sure they meet every third Thursday and swap tips on the best berry patches and how to avoid detection by overly-enthusiastic humans.
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Lunar New Year
Posted in Holidays, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, genre fiction, inspiration on February 10, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Happy Year of the Dragon!
2024 is China’s Year of the Dragon
The first day of the Chinese New Year falls on February 10 this year. Also known as the Spring Festival or Lunar New Year, the festival marking the advent of spring is widely celebrated in China and several East Asian countries…
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Inspiration is a Fair Weather Friend
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, genre fiction, inspiration, Octavia Butler, quotes, Thoughts, Writers, writing on February 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice. You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.”
― Octavia E. Butler
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Default Settings
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, characters, creativity, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers, writing on February 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Today, an excerpt from David Foster Wallace‘s 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College. It was made in to a book titled This is Water, but is also available online as text and audio.
It’s the sort of essay that can help if you start tripping over yourself, which everyone does at some point.
It’s also an interesting way for an author to approach their characters. What do they know? What do they take for granted? What do they love? What do they hope for? What do they fear, bone deep?
What is water to them?
If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.
They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom.
— David Foster Wallace, 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College
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It’s the Little Things
Posted in Science!, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, evolution, genre fiction, inspiration, science, Thoughts on January 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »
I have not read Brian Klaas’s Fluke, the book on which the article below is based, but this line made an impression in my busy day.
The big idea: what if every little thing you do changes history?
One hundred million years ago, a shrew-like creature got infected with a retrovirus, eventually leading to the placenta and, by extension, the reason why we don’t lay eggs.
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Start Today
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, genre fiction, inspiration, Motivation, Thoughts, Writers, writing on January 29, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Note to self:
“A year from now you will wish you had started today.”
— Karen Lamb, author
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The Little ‘Copter That Could
Posted in Science!, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, #ThanksIngenuity, inspiration, invention, Mars, NASA, science, space on January 27, 2024| Leave a Comment »
If you’ve seen any space news this past week, you may already know that Ingenuity, the adorable little helicopter that has exceeded all expectations in its exploration of Mars, has ended its mission.
After Three Years on Mars, NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Mission Ends – NASA
Originally designed as a technology demonstration to perform up to five experimental test flights over 30 days, the first aircraft on another world operated from the Martian surface for almost three years, performed 72 flights, and flew more than 14 times farther than planned while logging more than two hours of total flight time.
Ingenuity arrived on Mars with the Perseverance rover almost two years ago. It began as a limited technology demonstration but quickly became a scout for the rover’s mission and a fan favorite. Now, after 72 flights, a difficult landing has caused irreparable damage to its rotor blades.
Here’s what NASA Administrator Bill Nelson had to say about the end, and what the plucky little project managed to accomplish.
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Ingenuity, and its swatch from the original Wright flyer, will remain on the Martian surface as a testament to how far we’ve come.
“That remarkable helicopter flew higher and farther than we ever imagined and helped NASA do what we do best – make the impossible, possible.”
— Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator
This weekend join me in raising a glass to the first powered, controlled flight on another world, and to the little ‘copter that could.
Thanks, Ingenuity.
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New Interview Out Today
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, genre fiction, inspiration, interviews, Thoughts, Writers, Writers of the Future, writing on January 24, 2024| Leave a Comment »
My interview with the lovely Kim Lengling of the Let Fear Bounce podcast is live today!
We had a great time discussing writing, creativity, my experience with Writers of the Future and many other topics, and I hope you enjoy it too.
Check out the interview on YouTube or Spotify, and enjoy!
Pen to Paper: Navigating a Writer’s Reality – Author J.R. Johnson
Let Fear Bounce – Tossing out nuggets of hope | Podcast on Spotify
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What We Can Become
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, free fiction, future, genre fiction, hope, inspiration, short stories, Writers on January 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Released today, Grist’s Imagine 2200 contest brings new, more hopeful, visions of the future.
Imagine 2200: The 2024 climate fiction contest collection | Grist
Grist’s Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors short story contest celebrates stories that offer vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress. From 1,000 submissions, our reviewers and judges selected the three winners and nine finalists you will discover in this collection. These stories are not afraid to explore the challenges ahead, but offer hope that we can work together to build a more sustainable and just world. Through rich characters, lovingly sketched settings, and gripping plots, they welcome you into futures that celebrate who we are and what we can become — and, we hope, inspire you to work toward them.
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