I haven’t written for a week till now. Nothing came to mind worth writing: no story to tell or coerce. I spent two days hiding out in a borrowed copy of the computer game, Dragon Age (not an entirely terrible place to hide). I mowed the lawn (usually, a satisfying task–we have terrain and, in [...]
Sometimes solutions to writing problems show up unexpectedly. I was reading a chapter in Half The Sky (unless you’re a caveman, read Half The Sky–now–or especially if you’re a caveman, first world or otherwise) about sex trafficking in the slums of Nagpur, where members of the Dalit (Untouchable) class, especially women, have almost no social [...]
by Kurt on February 16, 2010
Dear Western Writers of My Generation,
I’ve been reading Anil Menon’s The Beast with Nine Billion Feet (see here and here). It’s the intellectual SF adventure novel I would write if I had an encyclopedic brain and no day job, and an IQ that was at least 20 points higher. It’s both deliriously engaging and an [...]
by Kurt on February 3, 2010
In the mornings, as I walk from the train to the office, I watch other people in transition: stepping into or out of buildings or the streetcar, squatting with their possessions in doorways, warming their hands with coffee or asking for change or public solitude. I wonder what they looked like when they were younger, [...]
by Kurt on November 19, 2009
Lately, when I want writing inspiration, I find Sherman Alexie.
When I need grounding, I read anything Molly Gloss.
When I want to know whether I’ll be writing when I’m in my 70’s, I read my friend Tony Wolk. I also read his friend, Ursula, who is now 80, but daunting with her bold silver litcrit yin [...]
by Kurt on November 18, 2009
I often see tweets from an outstanding local writer on how slow she is–her average daily output being about 300 words. I suspect that those are 300 carefully chosen words resulting in fairly polished text, not 300 words blurted onto a page (or e-mail or blog, etc.). But even 300 words ill chosen are better [...]
by Kurt on November 13, 2009
Reprinted from an early episode of Nuclear Frisson with Bob Price. Written for an Editor friend on her 40th. I ran across it recently and it made me laugh, so I’m sharing again. But not oversharing. Really.
QUEEN OF THE EDITORIAL JUNGLE
FADE IN:
SHE is sitting at her computer, with marked up papers scattered in loose piles [...]
by Kurt on October 20, 2009
As pretty as the GUI is for the latest version of Word, and as nice as it is that they’ve fixed so many bugs from previous version–it’s still not a great tool for writing a novel. Not without having minion tools (paper or electronic) to keep track of all the disparate pieces that go into [...]
by Kurt on October 5, 2009
Man On The Street Moments
Statistics would show that, like a long string of heads or tails-only coin flips, there’s nothing special about encountering a series of off kilter or even seemingly sinister moments after a dry spell of mundane normality. Closer observation would probably show that we swim in all manner of circumstances constantly and [...]
and if that’s poor grammar, well, I’m on a short leash today. But the posts referenced below are worth reading by anyone who writes (fiction, at least):
Earlier this summer a science/speculative fiction writing workshop was held in India that sounds exciting and a wonderful model for something similar in the US (though as an even [...]