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Posts Tagged ‘writing’

“Growth starts where comfort ends.”

— Arnold Schwarzenegger

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The world is a distracting place. If you’ve been having trouble finding the time and energy to focus on your writing, this free class from award-winning author Mary Robinette Kowal might be useful.

Free Class: Barriers to Writing

Hey there… have you been having a hard time writing? Yeah. There’s a lot of that going around right now.

This class looks at what keeps people from writing. It’s less about problems with the story and more about all the external things. It covers environmental factors, mental health, and tricks for compensating for all of this to write.

Thanks, Mary!

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The power of science fiction, fantasy, and related genres including “the speculative” lies in its ability to create new ways to talk about old and ongoing problems in our societies. We are surrounded by people who wonder what they are going to do with the moment in time they inhabit—time-travelers fixed to this one instant in a long continuum of human struggle—and we are crafting new vocabularies of comfort, courage, and creative energy for them and for ourselves.

— The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the power of building new worlds

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“We’re only here for a short time. So why not go for it?”

— Belle Burden

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It’s a good day when I can promote a friend’s fiction, and today is a good day!

Here’s the latest flash fiction from the always terrific Arthur H. Manners in the excellent Nature: Futures (if you can’t see the full text, the easiest way to get access is to log in with a Google account):

A troubleshooting guide to your flat-pack planet

Got a problem? The Sandbox Corporation makes every effort to provide a seamless world-building experience, but occasionally issues occur. Please see our comprehensive troubleshooting guide, with more than 1015 scenarios covered.

Confused? Contact a customer service representative today*. Or, better yet, see below for our curated FAQ of common issues.

It’s funny because it’s (going to be) true;)

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You don’t have to be miserable or suffer to create art; but you do have to be honest, and honesty is terrifying.

— Elizabeth Bear

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It’s a new year and a new opportunity to take a breath, reassess, and target new (or old!) goals. That doesn’t mean you have to join a gym or swear off every. single. one. of your favorite guilty pleasures or anything like that. That approach tends not to be sustainable.

(You may remember that I don’t really do resolutions, but I do like to take advantage of the January “fresh start effect” to reset… and to forgive myself when things don’t always go to plan🙂

That said, January is a good time to remember what you like, what you’d like to do, and to do more to get there.

If you’ve been working but feel you’re not making as much progress as you want, this piece might be useful:

How to practice effectively…for just about anything

This video focuses on physical tasks, but writing and many other tasks are also mind-body processes. And the idea of focused, targeted repetition with a concrete result in mind? 

That’s the kind of goal I can get behind. 

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“You must find the place inside yourself where nothing is impossible.”

― Deepak Chopra

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“Scared is what you’re feeling. Brave is what you’re doing.”

― Emma Donoghue

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“That’s what literature is. It’s the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!”

— Connie Willis

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