Look up! Looking up gives us freedom and causes the shadows to slip right down our backs.
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Posts Tagged ‘Writers’
Look Up!
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, hope, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers, writing on March 30, 2025| Leave a Comment »
The X% Rule
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, action, creativity, productivity, Thoughts, Writers, writing on March 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Here’s a way to approach projects, and life, from Oliver Burkeman:
The Imperfectionist: Seventy per cent
The 70% rule: If you’re roughly 70% happy with a piece of writing you’ve produced, you should publish it. If you’re 70% satisfied with a product you’ve created, launch it.
Do I believe this, as in, do I think that 70% is “good enough”? Not entirely.
Would I be more productive if I did? Absolutely.
And is most of my reluctance to sign onto this rule based in my little problem with perfectionism? Again, absolutely.
I do very much agree with the general idea:
I’m convinced it’s also the way to cultivate a particular kind of sane, action-focused, peaceful-but-energised approach to life that’s becoming more essential by the day. At the risk of offending any sticklers for traditional mathematics, I’m even tempted to argue that 70% is actually better than 100%, at least in this context.
So I think I’ll try to work my way down toward 70%. Will I get there? Maybe not, but when it comes to clearing away barriers to productivity, every step counts.
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(Drumroll Please) The Nebula Award Finalists
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, Nebula Awards, Writers, writing on March 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Recently announced, here are the finalists for this year’s Nebula Awards! I don’t know about you, but I could use some alternate worlds to explore.
From MetaFilter, links for most stories in the short story and novelette categories:
Nebula Award for Novelette
- “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video,” Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld)
- “Katya Vasilievna and the Second Drowning of Baba Rechka,” Christine Hanolsy (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
- “Another Girl Under the Iron Bell,” Angela Liu (Uncanny)
- “What Any Dead Thing Wants,” Aimee Ogden (Psychopomp)
- “Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being,” A. W. Prihandita (Clarkesworld)
- “Joanna’s Bodies,” Eugenia Triantafyllou (Psychopomp)
- “Loneliness Universe,” Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny)
Nebula Award for Short Story
- “The Witch Trap,” Jennifer Hudak (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet)
- “Five Views of the Planet Tartarus,” Rachael K. Jones (Lightspeed Magazine)
- “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole,” Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld)
- “Evan: A Remainder,” Jordan Kurella (Reactor)
- “The V*mpire,” by PH Lee (Reactor)
- “We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read,” Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed Magazine)
See the complete list here: SFWA Announces the 60th Annual Nebula Awards® Finalists!
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It Will All Make Sense
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, advice, art, creativity, Thoughts, Writers, writing on March 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“Don’t throw any of yourself away. Don’t worry about a grand scheme or unified vision for your work. Don’t worry about unity — what unifies your work is the fact that you made it. One day, you’ll look back and it will all make sense.”
— Austin Kleon
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A Simple Act
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, art, creativity, persistence, Thoughts, Writers, writing on March 14, 2025| 2 Comments »
If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head.
— Mark Manson
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Free Fiction for You
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, free fiction, speculative fiction, Writers on March 7, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Oh hey, I think I missed sharing this collection of free stories from Reactor Magazine. I haven’t read all of these but Reactor tends to have very high-quality fiction, and all for free free free! Check it out, browse, and enjoy.
Some of the Best from Reactor: 2024 Edition!
The 2024 edition of Some of the Best From Reactor is out today! This bundle features just some of our favorites from the thirty-five original stories published on Reactor in the past year.
Of course, you can always read the selected stories—and all other Reactor stories—for free whenever you’d like! To make it even easier to catch up, we’ve gathered all our stories from 2024 in one convenient post.
Because life’s too short to read bad stories.
“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
― Philip Pullman
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I Remain Optimistic
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, Thoughts, Writers, writing on March 4, 2025| 1 Comment »
The good news is that I’m writing. The less good news is that I am not writing as much as I might want, but hey, that’s pretty much a requirement for the position of “Writer.”
In 1974, the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis published a paper titled “The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of ‘Writer’s Block.'” It contained a total of zero words.
— Mental Floss
I remain optimistic. Time to spend more time in the writing chair!
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Writers For the Win
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, ideas, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers, writing on March 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
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Good Hunting, Artists
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, art, artists, creativity, quoteandaprettypicture, Thoughts, Writers, writing on February 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence.”
— Tennessee Williams
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Leveling Up
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, art, creativity, current events, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers, writing on February 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Storytelling is good for so many things: entertainment, shared cultural touchstones, lessons from elders, or other instruction manuals for living. Even so, speculative fiction has always been burdened by accusations that it is less able to comment on reality than, say, literary fiction.
I disagree.
In fiction or nonfiction, no matter the genre or approach, storytelling is always, always, grounded in the cultural currents from which it springs. It’s how we pass on what’s important, even if it isn’t always “real.” Whether it shows us futures to avoid, goals to achieve, values of importance or daily ways to survive, the work’s foundation always reflects its context.
On a related note, here’s a short document on surviving difficult times, written in the form of an RPG-style guide. It wouldn’t surprise me to see an actual game follow soon.
Because life and art are two facets of the same die. And we’re all just players, trying to level up.
“The idea that any of us can do everything is instant failure. We all have our own skill sets and our own passions and we will accomplish the most if each of us works within those arenas to do what we’re already good at, what we already care about. You don’t have to do it all. Just a little.”
— Bree Bridges
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