Writerly goodness

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, August 9-15, 2015

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

Four methods to invigorate your prose with surprising sentences. K.M. Weiland.

Moar Katie: How not to waste your story setting’s full potential.

The love that dare not appear in print. David Corbett for Writer Unboxed.

The socially awkward writer. Sarah Callender for Writer Unboxed.

Roz Morris guest posts for Romance University on what you need to do for your NaNoWriMo preparation.

Harry Connolly shares what keeps him writing full time. Jim C. Hines.

The five things productive writers do differently. Joe Bunting guests posts on Tim Grahl’s blog.

Kristen Lamb explains what went wrong with True Detective, season 2.

To the lab! Veronica Sicoe writes about creating alien species in three steps.

Joanna Penn and Guy Windsor discuss the difficulties of writing good sword fights.

Just call her our lady of dark grace. Silvia Moreno-Garcia responds to commenters who call her a “little bitch” for daring to publish an anthology of Lovecraftian tales written by women.

Why do people say that the novel is dead? The New York Times.

Deborah Malcom was inspired by Neil Gaiman to create Meh, her wordless picture book that helps kids understand mental health issues. The Big Issue.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s first fantasy story to be published. Aaaannd, it’s from the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic poem. The Guardian.

Hear Shakespeare’s plays in Renaissance English. Open Culture.

Cannabis found in Shakespeare’s pipes (!). As a friend said, this explains The Tempest! The Telegraph.

Russell Smith offers six tips to help you write and publish your first novel. The Globe and Mail.

Five Room writers talk about their favourite writing tools.

Being a medieval librarian was hard work. Medieval books.

New images from the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Entertainment Weekly.

More Tipsday coming up next week, but in the meantime, swing back for some thoughty on Thursday 😉

Tipsday

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, August 2-8, 2015

/ Melanie Marttila / 1 Comment

Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot, animated on Brainpickings.

Josh Barro explores the difference between American and Canadian political debates. The New York Times.

Traffic stop:

On consent and victim-bashing. Hrtwarming.

Why women daren’t go grey. The Guardian.

First Nations film maker, Shirley Cheechoo, will become the next Chancellor of Brock University. The Brock News.

Seven forgotten women surrealists who deserve to be remembered. The Huffington Post.

This is for the women who don’t give a fuck.

Anna Lovind writes for The Huffington Post about the life-changing lessons chronic pain has taught her.

Whether you’re healing anxiety or a broken heart, the tools are the same. The Elephant Journal.

How vacation habits can lead to sustainable year-round happiness. The Huffington Post.

The age at which you have your first sexual experience can have far-reaching relationship effects. PsychCentral.

Psychopaths versus sociopaths: what’s the difference? IFLS.

A musician decodes whale song. NPR.

Thoughty Thursday

See you next Thursday with more thoughty 🙂

Be well until then.

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, August 2-8, 2015

/ Melanie Marttila

This was the big controversy this week: Homme de Plume (now in convenient hashtag #hommedeplume). One woman author queries using a male name and gets more requests for partials and fulls than when using her name.

Canadian author, Marie Bilodeau responds.

Kameron Hurley offers a reality check on the necessity and nature of writing with a day job.

Then Chuck Wendig posted this: Starving is a terrible condition for making art.

Most common writing mistakes, part 43: Too many exclamation points! K.M. Weiland, Helping writers become authors.

Show, don’t tell, matters in foreshadowing, too. Katie’s Wednesday vlog.

Christine Frazier looks at five kinds of societies for your novel on The Better Novel Project.

Donald Maass discusses how to write about unnameable emotions on Writer Unboxed.

Elizabeth Stephens introduces us to the #weneeddiversebooks hashtag on Writer Unboxed.

Veronica Sicoe writes about how perfectionism is murdering your muse.

Stephen King shares 22 lessons on how to be a great writer on The Business Insider.

John Scalzi shares his creative process on lifehacker.

Catherine Ryan Howard answers the question, how many drafts did you do?

Chris Winkle discusses the process of troubleshooting when you’re stuck. Mythcreants.

Can a virtuous character be interesting? The New York Times.

22 authors, including K.M. Weiland and Roz Morris, share their greatest writing challenges. Become a Writer Today.

A genre takes flight: Science Fiction. The Library Journal. The good news: epic fantasy still sells. The bad news: the dark stuff, not so much . . .

Tor.com shares 20 time travel classics.

Ten Old English insults that could be band names. Anglophenia.

Geekster Ink Shares twenty images of women in practical armour.

Tipsday

The Red Band Deadpool trailer is def NSFW.

Tipsday will be beck next Tuesday with more Writerly Goodness.

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, July 26-August 1, 2015

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

Interesting stuff this week. Veeerrry interesting 😉

Controversial feminist Camille Paglia lectures on Shakespeare’s evil women. CBC’s Ideas.

Don’t know what the ‘vocal fry’ is? Faith Salie demonstrates:

Naomi Wolf advises young women to eschew the ‘vocal fry.’ The Guardian.

In response, Erin Riley calls shenanigans. The dislike of the ‘vocal fry’ is just an excuse to ignore young women’s voices. The Guardian.

Loneliness is on the rise in the age of connectivity. CBC’s The Current.

The Heart and the Bottle is a modern fable about denying difficult emotions. Brainpickings.

The Crossroads of Should and Must, an intelligent illustrated field guide to finding your bliss. Brainpickings.

What the best education systems in the world are doing right. TED.ed

I know I’m usually more about the astronomy than the astrology, but July 31st was the second full moon in the month, also called a blue moon. Apparently, it had astrological significance as well (!)

Brainpickings introduces us to Beatrix Potter, mycologist.

Carbon engineering. IFLS.

There is a two billion year old, natural, nuclear reactor in Africa. IFLS.

The Smithsonian introduces us to the bejewelled skeletons of Catholicism’s forgotten martyrs.

Water intoxication in dogs is another summer hazard to watch out for. The Huffington Post.

Why are dogs so insanely happy to see us when we get home? i09.

Discarded images presents this list of the top ten Medieval butt-licking cats. Thanks to Diana Gabaldon and her daughter for this 🙂

Kawaii! Watch a baby pygmy hippo have a swim. IFLS.

Now . . . since I’m heading out of town on the weekend (for two and a half weeks), I’m going to take me a brief break from the weekend posts. It’s just a bit much while I’m on the road. I will continue to curate Tipsday and Thoughty Thursday, though, so come on back and check it out next week.

Thanks for your understanding.

Thoughty Thursday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, July 26-August 1, 2015

/ Melanie Marttila / 4 Comments

Tipsday is back, full force. Feel the Writerly Goodness 😉

K.M. Weiland shares four ways to write a likeable protagonist at the beginning of the character arc. Helping writers become authors.

Related: Chris Winkle asks (and answers), do characters need to be likeable? Mythcreants.

Here are two ways to make the most of your climactic setting, Katie’s Wednesday vlog.

Writer Unboxed continues its Diversity series with Gabriel Valjan: Import foreign cultures into your fiction.

Jami Gold shines a light on diversity issues.

Kim Bullock gets confessional on Writer Unboxed: The elephant in my living room.

How to write a novel in the dark, by Siobhan Adcock. The Daily Beast.

This is crazy-awesome Writingeekery. MJ Bush decided to live blog her 24 hour write-a-thon to draft her next book.

More Writer Unboxed: Jo Eberhardt shares a personal story about the power of fiction. [Mel’s note: Mary Brown’s The Unlikely Ones was one of the books I latched onto in my university years. Wonderful.]

Jeff Gerke guest posts on C.S. Lakin’s Live, Write, Thrive blog about hacking your reader’s brain.

Callie Oettinger revisits a past post on Steven Pressfield’s blog: Lay a little heavy on the business side.

Your second life starts when life cracks you open. Justine Musk on stepping into the bigger story.

Virginia Woolf believed that the best mind is an androgynous mind. Brainpickings.

Janis Joplin speaks about creativity and rejection in her final, lost interview, rediscovered and animated. Fabulous. Brainpickings.

Portland Monthly features home grown author Ursula K. le Guin. Amazing read.

Ever thought, ‘gee, I’d like to ask Ursula K. le Guin about writing’? Well, now you can! The Book View Cafe.

Neil Gaiman talks in his sleep. His wife, Amanda Palmer, found a forgotten recording of one of their nocturnal conversations and created this whimsical animated short. Brainpickings. [Mel’s note: I take a strange kind of comfort in the fact that I talk in my sleep, too. Phil doesn’t record our conversations, though.]

Fantasy writer N.K. Jemesin upends the racist and sexist status quo. The Guardian.

Haruki Murakami shares the moment he knew he’d be a writer. The Telegraph.

Jill Soloway calls for a matriarchal revolution in film. The Vulture.

How changing your reading habits can improve your health. Fast Company.

Charlie Jane Anders of i09 writes about ten books we pretend to have read and why we really should. For the record, I’ve only read one of these, Dune.

Foz Meadows writes about Sens8 for Tor.com. Just for the record, Phil and I loved the shite out of this Netflix Original.

CBC is now producing webseries: The Riftworld Chronicles. Tamoh Penikett stars 🙂

Buzzfeed presents seventeen (gif) faces that every grammar nerd will relate to.

Authors tweet #tenthingsnottosaytoawriter. Entertainment Weekly.

Interesting stuff coming up on thoughty Thursday, See you then!

Tipsday

The next chapter: July 2015 update

/ Melanie Marttila / 3 Comments

July was a weird month.

I got off to a decent start, determined to finish off Marushka. I revised and submitted a short story to an anthology call. I received a rejection for another story a few days later.

Then, Nuala’s kidneys shut down and we had to make that anguished, final visit to the vet.

While I kept up the blogging, mostly because I had my curation posts already composed, I couldn’t face the page for a few days.

I got back to Marushka slowly on the 14th, and that weekend, I set out my second round of queries for Initiate of Stone. I also revised another story and sent it off.

Since then, I’ve received a rejection on the story and two more rejections—polite though they may have been—from agents regarding Initiate of Stone.

I’ve just today revised my query, signed up for a query workshop with Kristin Nelson, and booked my hotel for Can-Con in October.

So it’s been a busy month, and a productive one, considering, but I’m just on the cusp of my pre-revision tracking best.

July's writing progress

Here’s how the numbers break down

Short fiction: 92 words

Marushka: 7,217 words (And no, I’m not quite done with the draft, yet. I’m at 87% of goal right now. I might make my 40k word goal. This is, of course, in addition to the 30k I generated during NaNoWriMo last year.)

Blog: 9,116 words

Total: 16,425 words

July's Summary

Moving forward, I will continue to revise and submit my short stories wherever I can place them, but, as I mentioned last month, I haven’t been bitten by the short fiction bug recently and will not be drafting new stories for the foreseeable.

Several of my shorts may actually be novels in disguise, so, once I exhaust the available venues, I might see about expanding one and see how that works, but I’ve a way to go before I get there with some of my lovelies.

I’m going to finish Marushka this month (damn it!). I’m only about 5k words from ‘the end’ on this one, and it’s been so long in coming that I really want to put it to bed.

Then, it’s back to Gerod and the Lions. Once that draft is finished, I’ll turn to revision again, but NaNo will probably pop up in the middle of those efforts.

I’m starting to outline this year’s NaNo project. It’s a tasty one.

The blogging will probably simmer down for a while without the convention reportage, so we may see a reduction in word count there, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Work-wise, I’m heading out of town for the day job from August 10-26 and then I’ll be taking on another acting Consultant position. This one promises to be less stressful than the last couple I’ve had, but we’ll see.

Other than that, there’s not much else to report.

I’m keeping on, keeping on.

You do the same.

Until next month!

The Next Chapter

Ad Astra 2015 wrap post

/ Melanie Marttila

There are many reasons to love Ad Astra.

It’s enough of a fan con to have a masquerade ball, cosplay, a lego salon, and an anime screening room, but enough of a reader/writer con to have workshops (writing, costume construction, and more), excellent panels for professional development (writing craft, business, research, and fan-based discussions), readings, and great opportunities to network with other authors and industry professionals.

The Guest of Honour Brunch: you get to eat good food and go all fangirl (or –boy) sitting with one of your favourite authors, editors, or agents.

Aside from the con suite, there’s an entire floor of the hotel devoted to special events, book launches, and special interest parties.

There is an art salon as well as the dealers’ room, so you can always find something on which to spend your non-existent disposable income 😛

Astronomy in the parking lot. Need I say more?

It’s local (a four-hour drive for me), and so I don’t have to incur the expense of air fare.

Because it’s a convention, the registration fee is extremely reasonable.

So, I have enough money to feed my book addiction 🙂

Books - swag and purchased

Mind you, this year, I got almost as many free books as I bought.

I would highly recommend that any genre author attend at least one convention. Try it out and see if you like it. I get a lot of value out of my attendance and some encouragement to try new and different conferences and conventions.

Next year, I may even try to get on a few Ad Astra panels myself.

This will be the end of reporting until Can-Con in October. This will be a new convention experience for me, so look forward to lots of Writerly Goodness in the fall.

Up next: The next chapter.

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, July 19-25, 2015

/ Melanie Marttila / 3 Comments

Thoughty Thursday is back with a thick, frosty shake of inspiration-y, research-y bits. Just watch you don’t get a brain freeze 😉

Ten words every girl should learn. Alternet.

Surprise, surprise . . . Men who harass women online are, quite literally, losers. The Washington Post.

Matt McGorry provides a Twitter lecture on why responding to #BlackLivesMatter with #AllLivesMatter is pure dip-shittery. Buzzfeed. Peeps have tried this before with #YesAllWomen/#NotAllMen etc. What’s the best way to promote social injustice? Waste energy denying you’re part of the problem/trying to distract from the real solution. #MethinksTheyProtestTooMuch

No, it’s not your opinion. You’re just wrong. The Houston Press.

Danielle Seewalker invites us to meet the generation of incredible Native American women fighting to preserve their culture. Marie Claire.

If your dream is calling to you, are you willing to answer? Anna Lovind guest posts on Carri-Anne Moss’s Annapurna Living.

Anna, on her own blog, writing about how to address fear in your creative life.

i09’s True Crime beat presents the mystery of Agatha Christie’s disappearance. In response, a friend posted this article from The Guardian (from 2006, no less), which reveals the cause. Either way, Doctor Who got it wrong (OMG!).

NASA shares their “blue marble” gallery via National Geographic.

A brief history of everything with Neil deGrasse Tyson. IFLS.

NASA’s Kepler mission discovers a bigger, older Earth-like planet. Please note: the images you may have seen in media are artists’ concepts. There’s no way Kepler could see that kind of detail 🙂

The science of stress: Our emotions affect our susceptibility to burnout and disease. BrainPickings.

This teen developed a test that can diagnose Alzheimer’s before symptoms are exhibited. IFLS.

I’m not sure why, but i09 ranks the five best and worst demons by which to be possessed.

Weird, but marvelous: a wearable hummingbird feeder. Incredible Things.

Here’s a feel-good puppy story for you. Just because. Good.

See you Saturday for the Ad Astra 2015 wrap post and the next chapter update.

Thoughty Thursday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, July 19-25, 2015

/ Melanie Marttila

As I post this, I am MELTING. Today it was 36 degrees Celsius (with humidex, it was over 40). For my American friends, that’s about 100 Fahrenheit. We have no air conditioning. This is not a complaint, just a statement of fact. We haven’t had weather like this in the Sudz for a number of years.

Now the sun has set, we have all the windows open and all the fans on.

And now, back to your regular programming.

This is just . . . read it and beware of strangers bearing option deals! Tess Gerritsen explains why she dropped her Gravity lawsuit and now advocates for authors in Hollywood. The Mary Sue.

Who should you be writing for, your readers, or yourself? Helping writers become authors. K.M. Weiland.

Katie shares the key to writing good action scenes in her Wednesday vlog.

Writer Unboxed begins a new series on diverse voices in writing and publishing. Their first guest was Grace Wynters: Why diversity in publishing matters.

Steven Pressfield makes the distinction between the craft of writing, and your craft of writing.

How to write with confidence. MythicScribes.

The anatomy of a page turner with Barbara Kyle.

This is incredible fun: Atlas Obscura presents their obsessively detailed map of American literature’s most epic road trips.

Here’s a lovely Tumblr: Where do you write, my lovely? They just featured my friend Kim Fahner and her wonderful writing space 🙂

Buzzfeed offers their list of 51 books for animal lovers.

Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land is one of my favourite classic SF novels. So, of course I was attracted to this post on MentalFloss on 15 things you might not know about the Heinlein classic.

Buzzfeed shares 29 pictures that only booklovers will relate to. Regarding #20: I can do this just fine, thankyouverymuch.

If you’re of the techie persuasion, Bustle presents seven gadgets for booklovers.

Isaac Asimov predicted social media and knowledge bases. Fusion.

Here’s a fun interview with Sam Heughan: My acting teacher once told me I couldn’t act. My Fox LA.

TV After Dark shares their chat with the Outlander cast and crew about season two from San Diego Comic Con.

Just for fun, here’s Kirby Krackle’s “Villain Song.”

See you Thursday!

Tipsday

Ad Astra 2015, day 3: The hero’s journey and the story promise

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

I lied. Last week I’d said that I’d be reporting on fairy tales this week. Turns out that my notes from that panel were less than a page (!) I was enjoying rather than making notes, again (bad Mellie). So I’m fast-forwarding to the last session I attended at Ad Astra this year.

Panellists: Catherine Fitzsimmons, Cathy Hird, Kelley Armstrong, Nina Munteanu

the hero's journey panel

KA: The first stop on the hero’s journey is the ordinary world. Science fiction and fantasy authors can struggle with this because of the urge to info-dump. We want to share all the details of our intricate world building. You can’t jump straight to the call to adventure, though. You have to set the stage.

NM: The call to adventure is often refused and may require the appearance of a mentor figure.

CH: Refusal is an interesting moment, though. It’s great conflict.

NM: Threshold guardians are another great source of conflict. In most cases, your hero will need help to defeat or circumvent them. Mentors or allies. The descent and return must be accomplished by your hero alone, however. Your hero must transform.

KA: That’s the return with the elixir. Sometimes, though, the hero does not refuse. Sometimes, it’s awesome. I’m in! Hella yeah! And sometimes the threshold guardian just doesn’t want the hero to get hurt. It’s still conflict. It’s just not so overt.

NM: It’s the belief in the quest that carries the hero over the threshold. The mentor believes in the hero. The threshold guardians do not.

CH: In Tanya Huff’s The Enchantment Emporium, the quest is hidden.

NM: The story promise requires the hero to progress on the journey to its ultimate fulfillment.

CF: There has to be a hint, even when the quest is hidden.

KA: Even romance novels follow the hero’s journey.

CF: Literary fiction can be more metaphorical.

CH: Two people may want to achieve the same goal, but in different ways or for different reasons. In some of the epic stories, things fall apart. Every King Arthur has his Mordred.

Q: Is the hero’s journey a western convention?

NM: The template aspect is western, but Campbell studied cultures all over the world to identify the pattern. The basis of the hero’s journey is universal.

CH: The hero’s journey doesn’t fit with some of the eastern stories, though. They can be more cyclic in nature. The Shiva trilogy by Amish Tripathi is an example.

CF: It’s a matter of interpretation.

KA: If you want a simplified version of the three act structure: chase your character up a tree; throw rocks at them; have them climb back down.

NM: In the third act resolution, the hero’s resolve must be tested.

And that was time.

Next week: The Ad Astra 2015 wrap post with my usual picture of my bookish purchases.

Have a great weekend, everyone.