The Newsroom

Wait — Wesley Snipes as Geordi?? (via...

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:17:30 -0400

Wait — Wesley Snipes as Geordi?? (via youmightfindyourself)

"Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you..."

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:00:44 -0400

“Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.”

- DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #48. What is it about comparing writing to coal mining? (See also.)

Beautiful: the Peace Dollar

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:35:28 -0400

Beautiful: the Peace Dollar:

Did you know that the United States had Art Deco money in the Thirties?

"Stories are not merely structured dreams, but items from the land of imagination and desire, and no..."

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:35:25 -0400

“Stories are not merely structured dreams, but items from the land of imagination and desire, and no matter the horror, nihilism, or cynicism of the events and characters within them, those stories originate from the same place as hope. Could it be that the act of telling a story itself is an expression of hope, regardless of what the story contains? Could it be that the act of imagining is, no matter its darkness, no matter its despair, an act that springs from idealism, even joy? The assumption of the storyteller is that someone will hear the story, that someone will receive the tale. The assumption of imagination is that things can be otherwise.”

- Matthew Cheney is reading through the Sandman books, and here he meditates on Sandman #4, “A Hope in Hell.” I can’t wait until he makes it to Season of Mists and Brief Lives.

Photo

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:59:00 -0400

"Only way to get up in the morning and work steadily is to imagine there aren’t six million writers..."

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:32:28 -0400

“Only way to get up in the morning and work steadily is to imagine there aren’t six million writers doing the same exact thing at the same moment with more imagination.”

- Rosecrans Baldwin prepares for the release of his novel You Lost Me There by keeping a diary.

"A ton of writers I know, and I include myself in that category, if you see them at a party texting..."

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:31:33 -0400

“A ton of writers I know, and I include myself in that category, if you see them at a party texting someone, they are actually not texting. They are saving a piece of overheard conversation that they want to keep. Or they are noting down an idea.”

- Rosecrans Baldwin, Novelist - Writers on Process (via)

kmikeym: Space Helmet

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 17:40:00 -0400

kmikeym:

Space Helmet

Hear, hear! These mountains need a lot of help.

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:42:46 -0400

itwasrighton:

recoveringhipster:

“I think they should name it something better. The top ends up flatter, but we’re not talking about Mount Everest. We’re talking about these little knobby hills that are everywhere out here. And I’ve seen the reclaimed lands. One of them is 800 acres, with a sports complex on it, elk roaming, covered in grass.”

-Rand Paul Senator of Kentucky

By this same logic:

It’s okay for me to set fire to your lawn, because “we’re not talking about the Great Plains here.”

It’s okay for me to burn down your house, because “we’re not talking about Buckingham Palace here.”

It’s okay for me to kill your dog, because “we’re not talking about Lassie here.”

This doesn’t even take into account the fact that the Appalachians are the oldest mountain range in North America, filled with an astounding variety of flora and fauna. There are over 6,000 species of plants, as well as 255 documented species of birds, 78 mammals, 58 reptiles, and 76 amphibians. Of these, many are found only in the Appalachians and the adjoining lowlands.

Okay, Rand… I’ll grant you that the Appalachians may not be the most tallest mountain range, but they’re still pretty damn impressive and worth saving.

"I also like to remind myself of something my dad said to me once in re. writers’ block: “Coal miners..."

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:35:10 -0400

“I also like to remind myself of something my dad said to me once in re. writers’ block: “Coal miners don’t get coal miners’ block.””

- John Green (Paper Towns) answering ideas and inspiration questions.

A Better Son/Daughter - Rilo Kiley Via beenthinking.

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:22:00 -0400

A Better Son/Daughter - Rilo Kiley

Via beenthinking.

Off to a great weekend. (via sealust)

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:04:00 -0400

Off to a great weekend. (via sealust)

thebronzemedal: “Teachers want us to work, and I say,...

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:46:00 -0400

thebronzemedal:

“Teachers want us to work, and I say, ‘Fine, I’ll work. But you’ve gotta let me do the kind of work that I wanna do.’ And for me, it’s my drum kit, man. This is my passion. This is the essence of who I am now. But before I had this, I was lost, too. You see what I’m saying? You need to find your reason for living. You’ve gotta find your big, gigantic drum kit.”

-Nick Andopolis, Freaks and Geeks

(via seventhstring)

That is Nick’s 29-piece drum kit. Yes, I counted them.

Good reads: "Claire In Africa," by Emily St. John Mandel

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 13:44:40 -0400

Good reads: "Claire In Africa," by Emily St. John Mandel:

Brothers, love, reflection. I was worried that this story, which starts out on a downer and pretty much continues down for several thousand words, would have an unhappy ending. Thankfully, that isn’t the case.

Good reads: "The City," by Ray Bradbury

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:13:17 -0400

Good reads: "The City," by Ray Bradbury:

I mean, gosh, this is just an imperfectly-OCRed version of the story, and if you really want to see the real thing by all means pick up the book. But even here, reading off this Scribd document on a glowing computer screen, I am transported back fifteen years to the dusty Hardin County library, where I pulled down a book of Bradbury stories off the shelf and sat on one of those metal wheeled library stools and just read.

Bradbury always makes me miss the musty-sweet smell of that building’s old air conditioner, the claustrophobic science fiction stacks on the second floor, and the way the thick old walls would slow summer afternoons to a crawl. It’s ironic that a forward-thinking science fiction writer could create such a sense of nostalgia, but then Bradbury’s magic always leads back to childhood somehow, to stillness, to the sense that the world is a much larger and stranger place than we give it credit for.

July reading list

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:13:13 -0400

Fiction

~~Annabel Scheme~~ (December 2009)
~~Tainaron~~ (January 2010)
~~The Things They Carried~~ (March 2010)
~~Love in the Ruins~~ (May 2010)
~~The Yiddish Policemen’s Union~~ (June 2010)
~~The Invisible Bridge~~ (July 2010)
Prodigal Summer
What is the What
And You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Nonfiction

Mockingbird

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 08:32:47 -0400

Harper Lee published one book, and never published another.

That’s genius? She had only one book inside of her, and then once she let it out she was finished for good and there was no reason to write another.

Or maybe she had writer’s block and couldn’t write another.

I remember reading once that she gave an interview claiming that she’d finished a second novel (finally!) but someone broke into her home and stole it. I thought that it was improbable that she didn’t have another copy.

Maybe that story is true, but also maybe it’s true that Harper Lee didn’t think she needed to write anything else.

Kelly Link on reading like a writer

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 08:31:22 -0400

Kelly Link on reading like a writer:

austinkleon:

Oh, this is a delicious post. My favorite part:

10. Learn to read other kinds of narrative. Think about narrative when you’re watching television, or a movie. Apply all of the rules above. Read comic books. Read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Lynda Barry’s What It Is. Read Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series. Learn how to read advertisements — what they want to accomplish, and how. Learn to read other people — your friends, your family,your coworkers. Think about how they present themselves, their patterns of speech, the stories they tell about themselves. Again, be sympathetic here. Everybody is the hero of their own story. Be observant, not a sociopath.

Dang, Kelly is awesome. I came across her work five years ago. She was reading in the basement of Mac’s Backs in Cleveland, Ohio (actually, that was a pivotal night for me as a writer — I also met my friends Maureen and Dan). That’s when I first started drawing fiction readings (not particularly well):

Check out her book Magic for Beginners and her new one, Pretty Monsters.

My favorite part of this list is Link’s advice to make a list of your obsessions — the subjects and themes that you enjoy most in reading other fiction and that you want to find in your own. Ray Bradbury must have been a particular devotee of this method, since his stories are full of carnivals and spaceships and calliopes and bright colors and sunlight.

"American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backwards from an airfield in..."

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:59:00 -0400

“

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.

”

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five. I just finished reading The Invisible Bridge, and after the horror at the end of the war I could only wish that things would happen as Billy Pilgrim sees them.

12 Wonderful Wagons We Want

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:42:59 -0400

12 Wonderful Wagons We Want :

Wired.com loves the station wagon.