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!
Posts Tagged ‘writing’
Welcome to Diagon Alley!
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 »
Joe Hill Writes Like… How About You?
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.
Fauna Report
Posted in Other, tagged fauna, get outdoors, i should be working, inspiration, Motivation, nature, Thoughts, vacation, work, Writers, writing, yay on June 20, 2013| Leave a Comment »
[written from The Bush, as they say]
Greetings from Northern Ontario, where I sit at a table in a cottage overlooking a broad grey lake. Most mornings the lake sits still and calm, its surface and the encircling hills a chalice in which to hold mist. Like so many others in this region, this lake is surrounded by birch and pine, underpinned by the heavy, flat bedrock of the Canadian Shield. A small grassy lawn surrounds the house, illuminated by daisies and orange hawkweed.
It’s beautiful here, in the stark, almost frantic way of northern climes in summer. The sky warms around five o’clock in the morning and doesn’t fade until almost ten at night. Local wildlife takes full advantage of the long days, and I try to do the same.
Speaking of local wildlife, in addition to the usual chipmunks, rabbits, hawks, etc. I have seen the following in northern Ontario:
It’s raining now, providing me with the perfect reason to stay in and keep working. But even work is better in the woods!
Iain Banks, 1954-2013
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.
Passport to Galactic Citizenship
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)
Endless Nightmares, Russian Spies, and Other True Tales of Rejection
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!
Thought for a Busy Day
Posted in Writing, tagged arts, awesome, creativity, finishing, inspiration, Motivation, quotes, Thoughts, work, Writers, writing on May 8, 2013| Leave a Comment »
I’m still busy, mostly with non-writing work, and that makes it harder to focus on being creative than I’d like. That said, you just have to knuckle down and do it. Even when you’re stuck. Even when your work is hard.
Queue this quote. As the Harvard article cited below says, Maya Angelou has been a “cook, streetcar conductor, waitress, singer, dancer, editor, teacher, civil rights organizer, and actress” and oh yes, a writer. If anyone knows how to live a courageous life filled with productive creativity, she’s it.
I realized that one isn’t born with courage. One develops it by doing small courageous things—in the way that if one sets out to pick up a 100-pound bag of rice, one would be advised to start with a five-pound bag, then 10 pounds, then 20 pounds, and so forth, until one builds up enough muscle to lift the 100-pound bag. It’s the same way with courage. You do small courageous things that require some mental and spiritual exertion….I understood early that not everything I did was going to be a masterpiece, but I would try to do it the best I knew how. I’ve listened to an inner voice and had enough courage to try unknown things.
— Maya Angelou
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