Category: craft

Using the ampersand there because I’m tired of seeing the “vs.” Too? I keep thinking I’m done with this discussion, this rabbit-hole, this time-suck. But then I stumble across something like this, and it rings true in a way I’d never considered:

That’s from American Grindhouse. And, that freedom Jonathan Kaplan’s talking about there, that’s exactly what I get the sense of, every time I’m reading PKD: that he…

For the book that became The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti, I kept a kind of running diary of the writing of it, The Camopede Files. Was fun. It made me kind of look at my process in a new way, a helpful way. So, when I started Mapping the Interior, I figured I’d try the same thing. Here is that thing.

18 August 2016

starting this journalthing now, but I need to wrap up the week before, right quick:

➔ I had a story to write over the weekend. I wrote 2 or 3K words on it Saturday, decided t…

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Back when The Fast Red Road wasn’t called that—this is late 1997, early 1998—the way I intended to write it was as a series of long answering machine messages left in this one guy’s trailer while he’s off gallivanting around with a carnival or something (he’s got pet jackals—this is the kind cool stuff you think of, first novel out, that you then don’t get to use until, say, you write a novel about a bunnyheaded zombie coyote/smuggler/father). …

Superhelpful (via Joe Ferrer):

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Years back, somewhere around 1997, I’d guess, I asked Janet Burroway, my dissertation director, for her advice on embarking on this whole writing thing. Janet’s answer was pretty much exactly this, from King—don’t wall yourself off from your family in order to write. Rather, write in the middle of them all.

[ original page/image is here ]

Over the years, I’ve gotten a lot of great advice, but none’s finally been as important as what Janet Bur…

Whilst Lady Gaga did her thing at the superbowl, I was hanging out here with Lovecraft eZine:

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This may turn out to be the absolute coolest thing I see all year. Not just these four in a single conversation, these four all talking WHEN they’re talking.

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Just finished rereading my favorite book of 2016, Grady Hendrix’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and I realized I’m kind of getting a shelf together, of books I come back to again and again. Books I can’t stay away from. Books that just hold more and more magic for me, each time through. I’ve heard that’s one definition of ‘literary’: a text that will keep unfolding and unfolding, the longer you look into it. I’d also add …

And, there may even be some commentary about story:

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