Geese! The first skein of spring just flew overhead in V formation, calling as they angled toward the river. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. Perhaps this interminable winter will end after all.
Posts Tagged ‘inspiration’
Geese!
Posted in Likes, tagged a skein of geese, awesome, geese, inspiration, snow, Spring, yay on April 2, 2014| 1 Comment »
No Place Like 127.0.0.1
Posted in Likes, tagged artists, arts, creativity, free images, home, inspiration, Nina Paley, originality, Rijksmuseum, work on March 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »
I’m home from a trip and happily catching up on work. Lots to do, so I will leave you with this link to Nina Paley’s essay on The Cult of Originality:
The trick is, what’s completely obvious to you isn’t obvious to anyone else. Many people can tell exactly the same story about exactly the same event, but if each speaks from their authentic point of view, each story will seem “original.”
Well, that helps take the pressure off. Now to see if I can’t apply some of that originality to my current projects. In other news, this weekend I discovered the Rijksmuseum’s terrific online digital library, learned to stack wood, and can now tell a male partridge apart from a female.
Harry Potter Fans Fight Dark Forces
Posted in Likes, tagged awesome, books, fantasy, Fiction, fight child labor, grassroots activism, harry potter, inequality, inspiration, life imitating art, writing, yay on March 4, 2014| 1 Comment »
8 Courageous Things Harry Potter Fans Did to Fight Real-Life Dark Forces by Katrina Rabeler.
If Harry Potter were a real person, he’d fight child labor, voter suppression, and poverty. Here are our favorite ways Harry’s fans have taken his values from the page to the real world.
For more details on what muggles can do when they put their minds to it, check out the full article at YES! Magazine.
Quote for the Day: On Action
Posted in Writing, tagged creativity, Dale Carnegie, finishing, inspiration, Motivation, quotes, Thoughts, work, Writers, writing on February 28, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Leave JK Rowling Alone, She’s Trying to Write
Posted in Writing, tagged books, creativity, Fiction, harry potter, inspiration, JK Rowling, john scalzi, Lynn Shepard, Mark Pryor, more pie, quotes, Thoughts, Writers, writing on February 27, 2014| 2 Comments »
I planned to avoid the kerfuffle around Lynn Shepard’s call for JK Rowling to stop writing, because the idea that Rowling should quit for the good of other writers is flat-out ridiculous. The sensible approach to scarcity isn’t to fight over the last tiny slice; instead, make the pie bigger. Rowling has certainly done that.
Mark Pryor’s article says most of what I was thinking about Lynn Shepard’s essay, and I was glad to see it come out. Here he is on Rowling: “…authors like you actually bring more readers to our books. More books from you means more readers for us, not fewer.”
I do disagree with a point at the end of Pryor’s article, however. The part where the author says that writers don’t write to make money is an old excuse to explain away economic marginalization: “…writers don’t sit down and write books to make money… We write because we love to share our stories.”
It has been said before but bears repeating: Doctors don’t examine you out of the love of anatomy, plumbers don’t fix your pipes for free. Professional writers are, or should be, the same. Yes, most people can “write” in the broad sense of the word, but very few can do it at professional levels. It’s like dismissing an Olympic sprinter because “anyone can run.”
“…this is the sort of thinking, intentional or otherwise, that gives bad people cover to screw writers with regard to money, and gives uncertain writers a reason to shrug off being screwed.”
— John Scalzi
Writers have a lot of motivations, and the pleasure of being read is certainly one. But we also write because (we hope) it pays the bills, because it’s less physically demanding than ditch digging, or because we have something to say. We write to entertain, to connect with other human beings, to understand the world and to communicate what we see. We write to make sense of a problem or an emotion and to pass that knowledge along. We write to provide adventure or mystery or humor or a place of refuge. If we do it well (and that’s what we’re all striving for, is it not?), we give to the reader, not the other way around.
And Ms Rowling does it well.
Inspirational TED Talks for Writers
Posted in Writing, tagged artists, creativity, Fiction, fun, inspiration, Motivation, storytelling, TED talks, Thoughts, Writers, writing on February 21, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.
—Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Perhaps your weekend will be spent climbing Everest or solving cold fusion, but if you plan to spend at least some time facing down a blank page in an effort to write, the following TED talks may be of some use. This collection comes to us via Aerogramme Writers’ Studio and includes a variety of topics and speakers:
- Chimamanda Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story
- Isabel Allende: Tales of Passion
- Andrew Stanton: The Clues to a Great Story
- Lisa Bu: How Books Can Open Your Mind
- Amy Tan: Where Does Creativity Hide?
- Billy Collins: Everyday Moments, Caught in Time
- Elif Shafak: The Politics of Fiction
- Joe Sabia: The Technology of Storytelling
- Elizabeth Gilbert: Your Elusive Creative Genius
- Tracy Chevalier: Finding the Story Inside the Painting
- Jarred McGinnis: Writing is the Only Magic I Still Believe In
- Julian Friedmann: The Mystery of Storytelling
- John Green: The Paper Town Academy
I featured #9 in a previous post but there are a dozen other talks too. A baker’s dozen. … Hmm, baking… Perhaps I’ll make something tasty to go along with the above educational material. Because, cookies. Butterscotch ripple cookies, even:)
Beauty
Posted in Likes, tagged beautiful, inspiration, nature, pictures, snow, Thoughts, winter on February 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Oh look, it’s snowing again, and I realize that I’m on the edge of what I’m calling Snow-Related Stockholm Syndrome. When I start to enjoy the fact that I’m buried under feet of the white stuff, it’s time for a change of scenery. Today, I give you Zion National Park.
Happy Valentine’s Day
Posted in Writing, tagged artists, finishing, inspiration, Michael Faraday, quotes, Thoughts, work, writing on February 14, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Fifty Problems
Posted in Likes, tagged constructive creativity, creativity, design, innovation, inspiration, Peter Smart, practical, problem solving on February 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »
This is the coolest thing: a designer decided to tackle fifty problems in fifty days. I think it’s terrific when creative people find ways to use their talents to fix problems, particularly when they focus on challenges most of us have been living with for years. It’s easy to get used to doing things one way even when that way is not optimal, and once acclimated it can be hard to even see the issue, much less fix it.
This is what happens when creative people look at the world with fresh eyes, and decide that they can, and should, do something to make it better. Constructive creativity for the win.
What “fifty problems” would you choose?
Free Download: “The 2014 Campbellian Pre-Reading Anthology” at Stupefying Stories
Posted in Writing, tagged books, campbell award, free, genre fiction, inspiration, literature, science fiction, sff, short stories, speculative fiction, Stupefying Stories, Writers, writing, yay on February 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Another year, another free Campbellian download!
Stupefying Stories has just made available M. David Blake’s “The 2014 Campbellian Pre-Reading Anthology.” This collection contains more than 860,000 words of fiction by authors eligible for this John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer award. Fabulous fiction, and all free free free!
Limited time offer, get yours today!
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