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 ‘Thoughts’
Even Tuesdays
Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers on February 13, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Wanted: Cookie Recipes
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, #distraction, cookies, food, Thoughts, work on February 12, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Wanted: recipes for cookies that go well with afternoon tea. Because how am I supposed to work when all I can think of are cookies?
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Who Am I Missing?
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, authors, genre fiction, sff, Thoughts, weird lists on February 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »
I decided to make a list of science fiction and fantasy authors based on my reading history, organized by the starting letter of their last name. (That’s normal, right?)
This is off the top of my head and while I read a lot my memory isn’t the best. I have certainly forgotten many authors, and of course there are many more that I have not yet read. And I haven’t put everyone in here, but focused on the ones engraved into my longer-term memory banks. (As such, it tends toward the classics.) Even so, I was surprised to find that most letters have at least some entries.
Most, but not for Q, U, and X.
Here’s my list in progress. Who am I missing?
A is for Asimov, Atwood, Adams, Abercrombie, Andrews, Addison, Anders, Anthony
B is for Butler, Bradbury, Bujold, Banks, Bacigalupi, Bester, Butcher, Burroughs, Baum, Bull, Beukes, Bradley
C is for Crowley, Chiang, Card, Crichton, Arthur C. Clarke, Cronin, Chambers, Corey, Susanna Clarke, Carroll, Cooper, Cherryh
D is for Delany, Dick
E is for El-Mohtar
F is for Farmer, Farland, Feist, Fforde, Flint, Foster
G is for Grant, Gibson, Gladstone, Gaiman, Gabaldon, Green, Goldman
H is for Harrison, Herbert, Huxley, Heinlein, Haldeman, Hamilton, Hobb, Hopkinson
I is for Ishiguro
J is for Jemisin, Jordan, Diana Wynne Jones
K is for King, Kowal, Kingfisher, Kay, Kurtz
L is for Leckie, Lem, Ken Liu, Le Guin, Lewis, Lem, Lunch, Cixin Liu, L’Engle, Lowry, Lord, Leiber
M is for McCarthy, Miller Jr, Muir, Martine, Miéville, Martine, McGuire, McCaffrey, Matheson, Moorcock, Milne, Macdonald, McKinley
N is for Niven, Novik, Norton
O is for Okorafor, Orwell
P is for Pournelle, Pratchett, Pullman
Q is for …
R is for Robinson, Rothfuss, Rowling
S is for Scalzi, Shelley, Stephenson, Simmons, Sagan, Stross, Samatar, Sanderson, Sawyer
T is for Tolkien, Tchaikovsky, Tiptree Jr., Tepper
U is for …
V is for Vonnegut, Verne, VanderMeer, Vinge
W is for Weir, HG Wells, Martha Wells, Willis, Whitehead, Walton, Williams, TH White, Wilhelm
X is for …
Y is for Yolen, Yu
Z is for Zelazny
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Let Me Dream
Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, chilling, Thoughts on February 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
I know it’s only Thursday but I am so ready for the weekend. Just let me dream for a minute, ok?
. . .
Thanks:)
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Little Busy Today…
Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, Thoughts on February 7, 2024| 2 Comments »
… but that’s ok.
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.
— Edward Everett Hale
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I Remember
Posted in Entertainment, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, art, memory, music, Thoughts on February 6, 2024| 1 Comment »
I tried to resist posting the Tracy Chapman / Luke Combs duet of Chapman’s “Fast Car” because it is everywhere. Why did I break down and change my mind? Because music, like writing and other forms of art, is a transformative time machine.
Tracy Chapman Duets “Fast Car” with Luke Combs
Listening to the performance, I remember who I was when I first heard the original song. I remember the road I’ve travelled to get to where I am. And I remember running down the steps at the Harvard Square T station and realizing that Chapman had been there before me, playing to distracted commuters as she built her own road to the future.
It’s also just a really good song.
And I love that a new generation is getting to hear it in a way that emphasizes the shared humanity, challenges and goals of its singers, and listeners.
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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 Come to This (Groundhog Edition)
Posted in Holidays, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, #groundhogday #punxsutawneyphil, Groundhog Day, Thoughts, winter on February 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Today is Groundhog Day and despite Phil’s prognostications in Gobbler’s Knob, I find myself hoping for more winter.
I’ve never been a big fan of the cold, but it’s the beginning of February and crazy warm here. Rain is the order of the week. Winterlude, Ottawa’s big celebration of winter, starts today and the Rideau Canal is closed to skaters for safety reasons, and I’m wondering if all the ice sculptures are going to melt.
And so I find myself wishing for more snow and celebrating the winter we have left.
Sorry, Phil!
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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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