Two views of writerly development. First Myke Cole on the "short story first" myth. Yea, I also saw that path as the accepted form when I started writing. And I did get okay at writing short stories. Myke is also correct that many of the skills of short stories don't translate well to novels. I went that route to learn how to tell a story, hammer out my "voice", and just get better at the granular sentence and paragraph level which do translate. Next up is Kristen Lamb on the progression of writers. What she says goes for almost anything, but especially for the "arts."
Tangental to those, Sean Craven on learning story telling.
Then there's Chuck Wendig on the story line. As in an actual line. If you don't see what he's doing, he's defining plot. The shape of the story.
Donald Maass discusses the costs for wanting what we want. And then reminds us that as much as we've paid for our desires, our protagonists should pay at least as much.
And I've been long remiss in telling you Ken McConnell is blogging his Starforgers book on his site.
Tobias Buckell gives a nice roundup of post about the Night Shade Books thing (I'll have to read more of them later) including Joshua Bilmes' take on the history and the offered deal as a publishing insider and agent. And then there's Kameon Hurley's take on it as a Night Shade published author.
The Creative Process infographic.
io9 has a round up of evil AIs. I can't believe they missed Durandal from Marathon. I still hate that fargin' bastard.
Using old shark-toothed weapons from Pacific cultures to discover that some species were in places we didn't know they were (and are not now). Cool if only for the picture of shark-toothed swords. I love how the various cultures around the world who never developed much metal working finesse would use other materials to create slashing weapons. So what's to do when you can't find enough iron and obsidian is in short supply? "Hey, that fish has really, really sharp teeth. I think I'll have them out of its mouth." (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Well, the conservatives passed a spending bill that lessened the harm of the sequester on the military and meat packers, but conveniently forgot about Medicare cancer patients. "Thousands of Medicare patients are being turned away from cancer clinics, that were previously conducting their chemotherapy, because of the sequester’s cuts to Medicare." That and the cuts to Head Start, public defenders, health and science research, national parks and the IRS (which ironically could cause revenues to drop farther). Tell me again how they're the "responsible" and "fiscally adept" people, cause I keep forgetting. And don't worry, I have enough bile for progressives as well regarding the sequester, but their problems are based around thinking conservatives were rational actors. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
The Target Manatee Gray brouhaha. To be fair, if you search Target.com for the color name it does pull up a few hits. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)
The ocean is a huge CO2 and heat sink. So, guess where a lot of heat has been going. Again, it's a very bad thing when buffers hit their limits. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
"However, (History) has consistently held its tongue, waiting until the right time to conclusively weigh the positive and negative aspects of the Bush administration before delivering its ultimate verdict." Hahahahaha. the Onion on the oft repeated phrase (of 12 to 5 years ago) of "history judging" the Bush Administration as a success.
"Still, Tinetti said the findings do echo recent research suggesting talking to patients on a regular basis about their end-of-life wishes should be considered part of routine care." Unless you're in the US where such conversations are labeled "death panels." Also, these kinds of discussions shouldn't be delayed until great age. It's not like young people can't find themselves facing these issues either. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Since it's looking likely that white supremacists are behind the recent assassinations of judges and prosecutors out west, I was going to do a post reminding people of the blinding ignorance of conservatives who deep-sixed a report from the new (the) Obama DoHS about the rise in the threat of terrorism from homegrown white supremacy groups. But Jay Lake did it for me.
Why universal background checks would reduce gun crime. Yep. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
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