My own Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, and occasional commentary on all of the above.

Writers Write, Even When They Don’t Realize It

Random Numbers by darkmatter

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.

–Russell Baker

That Baker quote has been on my About Page forever, but I only just recently realized its irony as this blog has once again gone silent for another unreasonably long period as my time and attention have been pulled elsewhere. I’ve had several good ideas and intentions for posts since the last time I blogged here in mid-April,  but they’ve all either ended up over at Digital Book World, or I simply never got around to writing them because, well, writing requires “real work” and Battle for Wesnoth is a better way to unwind at 11pm than attempting to put together a coherent post.

Reading can be “real work” sometimes, too, so I’ve found myself getting back into magazines, comic books and anthologies for their short bursts of escape, unable to commit to a full-length novel. As a result, Bolano’s 2666 mocks me from the bottom of my to-read pile whenever I pick up the latest issue of Monocle, the latest volume of Fables, or the Forgotten Realms anthology Realms of the Dead, from the top of the pile.

Even work you enjoy takes time, and as much as I’d love to be one of those writers who can set aside a specific amount of time each day for writing, I have too many other things on my plate, including… writing.

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Shout-Outs: Lanier, Wendig and the Robots

"The combination of hive mind and advertising has resulted in a new kind of social contract. The basic idea of this contract is that authors, journalists, musicians, and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind. Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising." Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget I'm knee-deep in final preparations for Digital Book World next week (look for the new website to relaunch by Tuesday, built by me!), but I wanted to give…

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Six People in My (Virtual) Neighborhood

Bottled Liquor Newsstand by Bill on Capitol Hill
Bottled Liquor Newsstand by Bill on Capitol Hill

This fervid desire for the Web bespeaks a longing so intense that it can only be understood as spiritual. A longing indicates that something is missing in our lives. What is missing is the sound of the human voice.

David Weinberger, The Cluetrain Manifesto

A year ago, I used to get most of my information from a variety of traditional and new media sources primarily via Google Reader. Now, loathe as I am to admit it, Twitter has replaced it as my primary aggregator, and the mix of sources is very different, too.

This past weekend, I did a major purge of my RSS feeds in Reader, clearing out more than 2/3rds of them (now down to 61 feeds), including some that were duplicates of Twitter feeds I follow, and many others I realized weren’t terribly essential when a hectic day found me hitting “Mark all as read” on 1,000+ items. But while Twitter is good for taking the pulse of the moment and flashes of conversation (or debate), I still look to blogs for more thoughtful insight and, increasingly, a sense of community.

I’ve noted before that Twitter is a great professional networking tool, more cocktail party than office, and the people I follow there are primarily in publishing and marketing, but there’s a specific subset of which I’ve become particularly fond: writers with great blogs.

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NaNoWriMo: Just Write. (This is where I fail.)

Third, what the hell was I waiting till November for? You want to want to be real boy, Pinocchio? Er, I mean, a real writer? Then don’t set 1/12th of the year aside to do it. Do it always, and do it unconditionally. You don’t have to write a novel between November 1st and 30th. That is not your limitation. When I did it, I didn’t want to cheat, and I wanted to hit the mark, but it was all… illusory. Somebody else made up these rules. Not me. You want to write a novel? Write a novel. Start now.…

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Every Writer Should Read Fool on the Hill

As for where the individual plot-threads came from: Stephen George is, pretty obviously, a semi-autobiographical character. The story of Luther and Blackjack comes from my childhood fascination with the “Dog” and “Cat” entries in the World Book Encyclopedia—World Book had these pictorial layouts showing all the different dog and cat breeds, and for some reason this just stuck in my imagination; then when I got to Cornell and heard the legend about dogs being allowed to roam free on the campus, I thought it might be neat to have a college for dogs. The sprites likewise spring from a childhood…

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Feminista!’s List of 100 Best Works by Women Writers

I did so much better with the BBC top 100 list that included all those children’s books and titles by dead white men we were required to read in school. I’d only read 18 of the 100 best works by women. So, I’ve challenged myself to read all 100, including rereading the ones I’d read before. So I’ve marked the ones I’d read before and I’ll label the ones as I go back through, plus I’ll  review them as I go. Take the book challenge with me. Let me know what you’re reading and how you like it. via sonyafeher.com…

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