Negative Space: writing
- 90% of life is Steven Boyett
- “Before I knew I wanted to be a writer, I was a writer.”
- Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter Writing
- Charles Dodgson—AKA Lewis Carroll—gives us advice about writing letters that may be satirical but also might not be.
- Gender Neutral Instructions
- Writing for all of your readers.
- Jerry Stratton
- Jerry Stratton is the author of “The Shopping Cart Graveyard”, “It Isn’t Murder If They’re Yankees” and other works.
- La Jolla Writers Conference wrap-up
- A quick wrap-up of stuff from my notes on the 2011 La Jolla Writers Conference.
- La Jolla Writers Conference, 2011
- Score one for Apple’s non-removable batteries. I have an awesome Olympus Pen in my bag… and the battery is sitting in the charger back in my apartment. Which means I’m using the lesser camera in my iPad. So I’m not sure you can see the rain in this photograph that’s keeping the lawn free of lounging authors.
- Lessons from the Publishing Revolution
- Working with a publishing services provider, and how to plan for the chaos that ensues.
- New Grub Street
- As the Milvains sat down to breakfast the clock of Wattleborough parish church struck eight; it was two miles away, but the strokes were borne very distinctly on the west wind this autumn morning. Jasper, listening before he cracked an egg, remarked with cheerfulness: ‘There’s a man being hanged in London at this moment.’
- Notes from the Publishing Revolution
- The self-publishing revolution is probably just more of the same for authors: yet another hurdle to overcome on the road to “being published”. I see a future where the major publishers will not even look at works that haven’t made a name for themselves in self-publishing first.
- Old, Unused Term Papers and Reports
- Excuse me? You mean even my stupid old high school term papers are ‘in your face’? That’s the case in Texas as of September 1, 1997: the law makes me a criminal if I “should reasonably have known that a person intends to use them to satisfy an academic requirement”. Come on, somebody out there is going to be stupid enough to try and pass one of my mediocre papers off as their own. I’ve been working for years to convince people to put their studies, reports, and papers on-line and share their data. Is that now a subversive act? Heads up, Texas. Maybe it ought to be illegal to prepare, pass, or encourage laws when the person knows, or should reasonably have known, that the law in question is silly as hell.
- Role-playing design notes
- Random notes on the design of Gods & Monsters, and maybe even Men & Supermen if I can remember what I was drinking when I wrote it.
- Satire isn’t comedy
- Satire isn’t comedy. It can be, and often is, but that isn’t what makes it satire.
- Simone de Beauvoir on writing
- Simone de Beauvoir’s views on the folly of female writers applies disconcertingly to male and female writers today.
- A writer’s will
- Neil Gaiman and Miss Snark encourage even unpublished writers to make known their desires with regard to their writings. Mine will be transferred to an open license within five years after I die.
