It’s time for your weekly dose of informal writerly learnings.
/rant on/
I’ll start off on a negative note. Harlan Ellison died last week, but I have purposefully not posted about it or shared any posts about it on social media. Though he was influential in the science fiction universe and wrote much that is considered objectively great fiction (he was even a consultant on my favourite series ever, Babylon 5), I have never read any of his work. I wondered why that was and realized that I instinctively disliked the man in the interviews in which I saw him. Since, I have learned that he was a universal asshole and a misogynist prick. The incident with Connie Willis at the 2006 Hugos was just one, very public incident. For the record, I may read his work someday, but regardless of what I think of the man as a writer, I will always think of him as a poor example of a human being. I don’t care what his damage was, to be honest. It’s no excuse. We must do better, be better, than the pathetically low bar he set.
Susan Spann says, fear is a liar. Inspirational. Writer Unboxed
Barbara O’Neal considers light and dark, and writing with duende. “Duende is the dark magic, the force of Other, that enters the work and turns it from something interesting, maybe even really good, into something transcendent. It is born of the knowledge that death walks among us, that sorrow will mark you with her handprint, that we are all doomed to be forgotten.” Yum! Writer Unboxed
I hope all of my Canadian friends had a LOVELY Canada Day long weekend (today will have been our Tuesday-that-feels-like-a-Monday) and that all of my friends in the US will have an equally enjoyable Independence Day holiday.
Be well until Thursday rolls around and don’t forget to come back for some quality thoughty.
Happy Friday eve! Let’s get your mental corn popping so you can make it through to the weekend 🙂
Valerie Valdes turned her twitter stream into a post because we need to hear this message. And it’s not just for millennials. It applies to everyone: smart kids eventually grow up. A Candle in Sunshine
Tajja Isen hopes writers of colour can expand the way they write about their identities. “Despite the position from which I write, and the need for it to inform my work, I also want that work to bloom around a richer core than the supposed pain of racial difference. If each writer chases a singular question, then I need a refrain that does more open-ended, unexpected work than just announcing the color of my skin as the intellectual bottom line — even if, or especially if, that tortured pose is the kind of work that editors expect.” Buzzfeed
Your informal writerly learnings are short and sweet this week. Trade wars and Harvey Weinstein on trial and the Rosanne debacle really took it out of me.
Always Looking Up 