Monthly Archives: November 2016

Nattering Social Justice Cook: Prepare to Ride, My People

To those who have said “wait and see” about the results of the election, so far I have seen the following results and feel that I am sufficiently prepared to venture an opinion.
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Posted in daily life | Tagged , , , , , , | 15 Comments

For Writers: Re-visioning, Rewriting, and Other Forms of Fine-tuning Your Fiction

As with all writing advice, mileage will vary according to the individual. The best thing as a writer that you can do is to pay attention to your own process and make it more effective. Experiment with lots of things, identify the practices that work, and incorporate them into your process. Keep experimenting, mixing things up a little, every once in a while, writing to the sound of whale songs, or dictating while hiking, or using a pen rather than the keyboard — it doesn’t matter what as long as you keep testing things in a way that lets you grow as a writer.
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Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Nattering Social Justice Cook: Stay the Course

Like many of you, I was taken aback by the results of the recent election, to the point of depression, dismay, and concern for our future. Part of my past week, though, was spent in Chicago at a conference for nonprofit leaders, and that served as a heartening antidote in some ways.

Part of it was the reminder that our world holds people who don’t know where their next meal is coming from, or if they’ll have a dry place to sleep that night. That there are children who are abused, animals who are tortured, eco-systems being destroyed, nations being oppressed. That so much is wrong. That so much needs fixing. Is it odd to say that was heartening? Because it was so inspiring to be around hundreds of people who have given time and energy and so much more to help others.

It underscored the fact that we are not islands. We are part of humanity, a deep, rich pool in which we swim, and we will either do so or sink, collectively. The question of where to start with that is one that divides many of those who desperately want to fix things. And the truth is this: that helping wherever and whenever you can is fine, no matter what form it takes. The act of helping others enriches our souls and keeps them nourished.
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Posted in daily life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Home Stretch For Hearts of Tabat

So my promise to myself is that the sequel to Beasts of Tabat, Hearts of Tabat, will be DONE by November 14th, which is my birthday, and which I plan to spend with Skyrim and a nice sativa (legal here in the marvelous land of WA) and not one ounce of work throughout the day as a thank you to me for working my butt off the last six weeks and getting this DONE.

The book is scheduled to be released at Emerald City Comicon next year, so you may see why the time pressure has stepped up in intensity. I told myself I’d get it done this year, and I have, along with a whole bunch of stories, not one but two collections, the update of Creating an Online Presence for Writers, a bajillion trips, and opening the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, including cool new classes from Rachel Swirsky and Juliette Wade, so I feel darn good about how much I got accomplished this year despite SFWA’s demanding maw chewing up my time on a consistent basis.

I thought, however, it would be useful perhaps to people to see what the last bits of work involve.
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Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 33 Comments

Patreon Post: Aardvark Says Moo

s part of recent updates at SFWA recently revamped the Nebula Recommended Reading list to show up in alphabetical order. It’s a stopgap measure until the website gets re-designed, and to my mind has as many problems as presenting by order of number of recommendations. In musing that over, I mentioned to webmaster Jeremy Tolbert that I looked forward to the new school of aardvarkpunk we were inspiring. A half hour later this story appeared in my head.
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Posted in online fiction | Tagged , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

For Writers: Working with Twinned and Twined Storylines

When I sat down to work out the outline for my Moving from Idea to Finished Draft, I came up with almost two dozen possible starting points for writing a story, including scene, title, taking an old plot, a character, dialog, a particular device, and more. As I finished writing it, those categories shifted around a little, sometimes sliding together, other times diverging, but I did think I’d managed to exhaust the possibilities…

…only to be proven wrong, of course. A week or so ago at the Surrey International Writers Conference I was absolutely delighted when an audience member hit me with a new one that I hadn’t considered at all.
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Posted in classes & workshops | Tagged , , , , , , , | 34 Comments