Posted in Entertainment, Likes, tagged arts, awesome, books, books in real life, entertainment, fun, google maps, harry potter, j k rowling, literature, magic, sff, Writers, writing, yay on July 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Google Maps Street View now features an up close and personal tour through the Warner Brothers version of Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley. If that’s not fun for a Sunday morning, I don’t know what is. Thanks go out to the magical imagination of J.K. Rowling, and enjoy!
Posted in Funny, Writing, tagged artists, arts, books, cory doctorow, creativity, david foster wallace, fun, funny, genre fiction, j k rowling, joe hill, literature, ray bradbury, sff, work, Writers, writing, yay on June 22, 2013| 2 Comments »
I was feeling a little blue and I was looking for something on the internet to cheer me up and Warren Ellis has a post on his tumblr pointing to a website, I Write Like, so I thought, oh, hey, why not? Warren got David Foster Wallace; I was thinking, huh, maybe it’ll tell me I write like John Steinbeck! Hell, maybe David Mitchell!!!
Thanks to the above post by Joe Hill I’ve discovered an entertaining website called “I Write Like.” Unlike him, however, my stylistic tendencies seem to be more varied. Depending on the story, I apparently write like Cory Doctorow, J.K. Rowling, Ray Bradbury, and David Foster Wallace. I think the minds behind the site put this fun tool together to raise writers’ confidence levels; who wouldn’t want to be told they write like any one of the people on that list?
I don’t write like Stephen King, though. Joe Hill’s got that all wrapped up.
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged artists, arts, books, cancer, creativity, iain banks, illness, literature, Motivation, neil gaiman, patrick nielsen hayden, pnh, Writers, writing on June 10, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Iain Banks, 1954-2013 | Tor.com
This piece by Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden gives a kind remembrance of author Iain Banks, who died yesterday from cancer. I particularly liked this description of Banks’s personality:
In the social world of British SF, Banks will be remembered as a larger-than-life figure—irrepressible, fearlessly outspoken, a boisterous lover of life’s many pleasures, and given to unsung acts of kindness and generosity.
We might all wish to be remembered so. And as Neil Gaiman says in his own reaction to the news:
If you’ve never read any of his books, read one of his books. Then read another. Even the bad ones were good, and the good ones were astonishing.
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged arts, awesome, creativity, genre fiction, inspiration, literature, Motivation, science, sff, Thoughts, Writers, writing on June 4, 2013| 2 Comments »
In a broader sense, all science fiction prepares young people to live and survive in a world of ever-continuing change by teaching them early that the world does change.… In a more specific sense, science fiction preaches the need for freedom of the mind and the desirability of knowledge; it teaches that prizes go to those who study, who learn, who soak up the difficult fields of knowledge such as mathematics and engineering and biology. And so they do! The prizes of this universe go only to those able and equipped to reach out for them. In short, science fiction is preparing our youngsters to be mature citizens of the galaxy… as indeed they will have to be.
— Robert A. Heinlein (in “Turning Points: Essays on the Art of Science Fiction” by Damon Knight, ed., pp. 26-27)
Posted in Writing, tagged arts, books, creativity, genre fiction, inspiration, literature, Motivation, reading lists, rejection, sff, speculative fiction novels, Thoughts, work, Writers, writing on May 29, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Check out io9’s entertaining new list of classic speculative fiction novels originally rejected by publishers. It’s like a mashup of English reading lists from school and some of my favorite books.
Just goes to show, eh? Keep writing!
Posted in Writing, tagged arts, awesome, creativity, finishing, genre fiction, inspiration, literature, Motivation, Thoughts, work, Writers, writing on May 1, 2013| 2 Comments »
Today I’m going to pass along a great piece of advice from Brandon Sanderson, author of the Mistborn series and many other excellent books. It helps when I don’t feel like writing (or more likely this month, when I think I have too much to do).
“Sit in a chair and write,” Sanderson says.“Ignore this thing they call writer’s block. Doctors don’t get doctor’s block; your mechanic doesn’t get mechanic’s block. If you want to write great stories, learn to write when you don’t feel like it. You have to write it poorly before you can write it well. So just be willing to write bad stories in order to learn to become better.”
— Brandon Sanderson (as quoted here)
J.R. Johnson 
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