This is the fifth in my reread series of Dorothea Brande’s Becoming A Writer – seminal 1934 book that helped for the bedrock of a lot of modern writing advice.
You can find the first post here.
Today we are looking at Chapter 5: Harnessing the Unconscious. Continue reading
There is a lot of advice for creatives out there. Under the cut are five of the best such videos I know of, on life, on creativity, on living a creative life… Continue reading
This was originally spotted by Orbit publicist Ellen Wright (original tweet here) and then picked up by tor.com. The US patent office has done some recent revision on who and who cannot apply for copyright. The revision was triggered by the controversy in 2011 over a monkey selfie. Continue reading
I recently read a short exegesis on the topic of US and UK fantasy fiction betraying features of the underlying character of the countries that the authors themselves probably never intended to betray. In both cases the actual setting is unimportant – fantasy is often set in a sort of pseudo-historical European, or at least classical / Asia Minor world. What’s important is the underlying themes of the fantasy. Continue reading
Neil Gaiman’s A Writer’s Prayer dates right back to 2008 but things in the world move swiftly, especially in today’s internet of constant churn. I hadn’t listened to the poem (or read it) in a long while and was reminded of it today. I was reminded that if you write and have not read the poem then you should do so. Continue reading
THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS
Poul Anderson ISBN 0-441-80822-0
Three Hearts and Three Lions was published in 1953, well after Tolkien’s The Hobbit but approximately contemporary with The Lord of the Rings. Whether Poul Anderson had read The Hobbit isn’t easy to determine, but it’s safe to say this is a sphere of fantasy sub-creation that lies outside the influence of Tolkien, well outside of The Lord of the Rings, and it could well have founded its own whole genre. In a way, it has, though I’ll come back to that. There are Elves and Goblins, Dwarves and Trolls, but none of them are quite what you expect coming from the modern Tolkien-saturated fantasy landscape. Continue reading
On August 27th I attended the Australia Council discussion about their new funding model at the State Library of Victoria. It was an interesting night and on first impressions it appears that the Australia Council has vastly simplified and improved their application process for arts funding at the Federal level. Continue reading
AUSTRALIAN FOLKLORE
Bill Beatty (2007) ISBN 9781921276057
One of the things that sometimes gathers discussion among them who like imaginative fiction is why is it that some places in the world, notably Europe and the Americas are acceptable settings for otherwordly, fantastical or magic realist stories whereas there is a relative dearth of such work with a genuinely antipodean streak to it. Continue reading
Earlier this week George RR Martin and Robin Hobb appeared in a UK event hosted by HarperVoyager UK (via tor.com). Some excerpts and highlights are available online, below the cut is one video excerpt in which an audience member asks Martin to discuss his approach to naming characters and he elaborates. Continue reading
One of my little background hobbies has been the compiling of a book on fairies for some years now. It’s a dictionary, perhaps a bit like K.M. Brigg’s dictionary but more etymological and I’m much more inclined to put in scarecrow and lubber and slovenly names like Bugahag and Slubber-de-Gullion and Trolly-Mog that are possibly lost fairy names preserved as insults or slang. At any rate, while hunting for information on Asrai I discovered an anonymous page of folklore over at mondrem.net. Continue reading
The Melbourne Review of Books will curate a short fiction and poetry markets page going into the future. The page can be found at a link below the cut. At this point we will list:
I’m going to take a short detour now to look at the development of communities of self-publishing online. In a previous post I discussed various avenues of self publishing, including print on demand and podcasting. There is an interesting phenomenon now cropping up where communities for original works are appearing, much like communities for fanfiction (FanFiction.net being the most popular example). Continue reading