There’s not too fine a distinction between humor and tragedy; even tragedy is in a way walking a tightrope between the ridiculous, between the bizarre and the terrible. Possibly the writer uses humor as a tool; he’s still trying to write about people, to write about man, about the human heart in some moving way, [...]
Today is your last day to apply for the Clarion Workshop. If you write short stories, apply. I haven’t written about the workshop much (at least on here—in private correspondence I’ve written extensively) but since I attended last year, in the summer of 2009, I’ve grown as a reader, writer, critic, observer, tactician, &c. My [...]
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
So this post by Warren Ellis (who is a comics et al writer I enjoy very much, both for his stories and his howling pursuit of the future) about a writer’s equipment started me thinking about my own kit, and what tools I could try. This is a rambling post about minutiae, and will bore [...]
Damien G. Walter wrote this call-out post asking for suggestions of currently working writers who are bold, who experiment, and who risk themselves. Somebody help him out; I want to know too. I’ve been thinking about risk in literature lately—mostly in the context of wanting not to retread smooth ground—but I run into the same [...]
Saturday, October 17, 2009
tiger the color of light, brown deer on the outskirts of night, girl glimpsed leaning over green balconies of rain, adolescent incalculable face, I’ve forgotten your name, Melusina, Laura, Isabel, Persephone, Mary, your face is all the faces and none, you are all the hours and none… — Octavio Paz, Piedra de Sol (I found [...]
When you undertake to make a work of art—a novel or a clay pot—you’re not competing against anybody, except yourself and God. Can I do it better this time? – Ursula K Le Guin, from her essay The Stone Ax and the Muskoxen, collected in The Language of the Night.
The happy news from yesterday: I got accepted to the Clarion Workshop. I’m at work, so I’ll effuse later, but yes, it would be fair to say that I’m excited. And a bit intimidated, given the skill of the other writers going. Not to mention the instructors. Six weeks of writing and creative community in [...]
I recieved some very exciting news yesterday, but I can’t say anything about it just yet. But soon. O yes, so soon. Until then, let your joy be as full as mine:
I haven’t posted anything in a month besides Twitter digests, and I think we all know those don’t count. I’m 35 responses behind, at least, not counting music. But I can explain all this away: I’ve been writing short stories for the past month. Mostly just one short story, actually. “But how can that be?” [...]
Monday, September 8, 2008
Alan Moore’s Writing for Comics is a thin book (just under fifty pages) of essays by who you’d think, and it’s about what you’d think. Except Alan Moore doesn’t cover much of the nuts-and-bolts, as you may expect; he drives deeper, to the theory. Why comics work the way they do. He wrote it in [...]