Especially good advice for fantasy writers.
(thx, Craphound!)
Archive for October, 2008
xkcd on writing
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008man booker winner 2008
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008If for some reason you’ve been cryogenically frozen for the last few weeks, it was Aravind Adiga.
Not that there’s anything wrong with being cryogenically frozen. Obviously I just thawed out, or this would’ve been up, ya know, back when it was news.
tws deadlines approaching
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008From The Writers’ Studio @ SFU, deadlines for applying to TWS and the Adjunct Writer 2009 are next week.
Short version:
- Deadline to apply for TWS 2009: October 27th.
- Deadline for Adjunct Writer: October 31st.
The Writer’s Studio was a very good course, I recommend it. The Adjunct Writer course is only open to alumni, but I’ve heard good things.
man booker shortlist 2008
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008The six titles on the list are:
- Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger
- Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture
- Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies
- Linda Grant’s The Clothes on Their Backs
- Philip Hensher’s The Northern Clemency
- Steve Toltz’s A Fraction of the Whole
I haven’t read any of ‘em. Tune in tomorrow (or all over the web tonight) for the winner.
turkey city lexicon
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008What the? It’s a list of terms for common deficiencies in fiction, to make it easier to workshop. Made me laugh, and also useful.
This manual is intended to focus on the special needs of the science fiction workshop. Having an accurate and descriptive critical term for a common SF problem makes it easier to recognize and discuss. This guide is intended to save workshop participants from having to “reinvent the wheel” (see section 3) at every session.
The terms here were generally developed over a period of many years in many workshops. Those identified with a particular writer are acknowledged in parentheses at the end of the entry. Particular help for this project was provided by Bruce Sterling and the other regulars of the Turkey City Workshop in Austin, Texas.
And here’s one at random:
Not Simultaneous
The mis-use of the present participle is a common structural sentence-fault for beginning writers. “Putting his key in the door, he leapt up the stairs and got his revolver out of the bureau.” Alas, our hero couldn’t do this even if his arms were forty feet long. This fault shades into “Ing Disease,” the tendency to pepper sentences with words ending in “-ing,” a grammatical construction which tends to confuse the proper sequence of events. (Attr. Damon Knight)
isbn, yo
Friday, October 10th, 2008Another one that’s been sitting in the drafts folder for a while: Toronto graffiti artists tagging with their favorite… isbn?
Turns out to be Walden. Hey, whatever gets people reading, right?
(Thx to the immortal bn!)
3 from the toolbox
Thursday, October 9th, 2008Here are three tips from The Writer’s Toolbox that I need to keep in mind this week. Maybe you do too.
Have you written your word count today? Me neither. We better get to it then.
(Thx, Geist. Seriously, the Toolbox is wonderful.)
viwf writing contest 2008
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008First off, if you haven’t heard, forgot or it just slipped your mind, the Vancouver International Writers Festival is October 21-26th. In addition to a metric pantload of talks, readings and other interesting stuff, they’ve got a contest for fiction and poetry. The gory details:
- Any unpublished work in either category
- Two categories: poetry (500 words) or fiction (1500 words)
- Deadline: Oct 26th, 5pm
- Entry fee $10 CAD
- Prizes: 1st $350 & publication in subTERRAIN magazine, 2nd $250, both published on VIWF website
Rock!
reading less, writing more
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008Here’s another article I’ve had bookmarked for a while, about how while Americans are reading less, we’re also writing more. Writing and self-publishing, that is. Last year saw a boom in the growing self-publishing industry to the tune of 400,000 titles–up from 300,000 the year before:
“As publishing has become less expensive, the urge to write my own self has become the opportunity to publish my own self,” said Gabriel Zaid, a Mexican critic and the author of “So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance,” a meditation on literary life in an over-booked world. Today, he added, “Everyone now can afford to preach in the desert.”
What gives? University writing programs, writing conferences and wide-spread blogging has made writing more accessible than ever before, and most importantly, an explosion of inexpensive self-publishing outfits, courtesy of everyone’s favorite online time-waster, the internet.
The good news: there are more books, and a greater variety, than ever before in our history. The bad news: most of them you don’t want to read.
The article examines the relationship between self-publising companies and mainstream booksellers, including online and brick-and-mortar operations. Home-made books are finding their way to the shelves, albeit slowly. It’s worth a read.
(thx, NYT Books)
self-published memoir shortlisted for PEN
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008File this under Things I Meant to Post in April. The PEN/Ackerley, that is, but nevertheless, very promising for the growing respectability of self-publishing.
For the first time, a self-published author has made it onto the shortlist for the prestigious PEN/Ackerley prize for memoir and autobiography. Jane Haynes’s Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am? is an unflinching journal of her life a psychotherapist, revealing as much about the author as her patients.
The award is for literary autobiography (first time I’ve heard that term, but I like it) written by an author of British nationality and published in the UK in the previous year. The prize is judged by Michael Holroyd, Francis King, Colin Spencer and chair Peter Parker. I wonder if the rest of them know about Spider Man?