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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Potpourri

State of the Blog- Not much to report this week other than "All Proceeds Apace."  It's been a lackluster week in terms of page views, but you get out what you put in, and I haven't been putting that much in this week.  The fact that I'm starting to actually have something in the archives is generating about as much traffic as daily posting, so I've eased off the throttle of my post-a-thon one more time.  I know I'll take a hit on monthly page views not to be putting something up seven days a week, but it'll make me saner in the long run.

Potpourri-



You are what you eat?  Well, you also might be what you read.  I've linked an article previously about how our brains can't fully distinguish between our real memories and memories of written fiction (but apparently we can differentiate between real life and movies) when it comes to absorbing them as life experiences, but this article takes that even a little further.  So now you have all the justification you need to cry over fictional characters.



One of these days I hope to get back to writing prompts out regularly.  (Maybe when I have finished the glossary and have a few more entries in each of the Reliquary tabs.)  But these guys do a daily prompt that is really quite awesome if you're dying for one in the meantime.  Prompts are wonderful ways to GET STARTED.  

Here's a little piece someone worked VERY hard on that matches up archetypes with corresponding disorders.  While I would caution people against archetypes for most kinds of fiction, though they sometimes have their place, and while I would equally caution them against having each character be so formulaic, this is a GREAT page to read and consider how our greatest flaws and our greatest strengths are often manifestations of the same thing.  No attribute doesn't have a dark side.  And when you consider how deeply art goes into teasing out the contrasts in life to examine them, deepening your characters with these kinds of duality is exactly the sort of thing a writer serious about characterization would want to do.

Seven Habits of Highly Incompetent People.  I'm not really into this website much, but this particular article seems to have some good advice on what not to do.  Not only that but possibly who to avoid.  Honestly, I think it's a badly named article--intended to cash in on the name recognition of its opposite--because it really should be "negative" people.  I've known people who could use this as a checklist who I would never label as incompetent.

I'm very excited about the changes to the publishing industry (even though Amazon is doing its best to make sure that not all of them are positive), but I'm also not unrealistic about self-publishing.  Fifty Shades is a phenomenon, and there are more stories like it in non-traditional publication approaches every day, but you shouldn't kid yourself either.  This is a decent article, but I think it's a little skewed towards the anti-self-publishing side.  Some of the scare quotes definitely imply that the author is an MFA going the traditional route and thinks self-publishing is only catching on because of our cultural "underdog" narrative.

Ten Classic SF books that were originally considered failures  A couple of these will probably surprise you.  


Salman Rushdie talks about the differences between fiction and non-fiction.  Interesting thoughts.  I sometimes run into people who really think their skill at one type of writing will translate to others, and I am constantly telling them that there are some parts that will translate seamlessly, some that will have correlations in the new genre, and some that just won't translate at all and will require a new skill set.


[Do you want to be featured in potpourri along with a few words from me about how awesome you are?  Do you know a great writing link that I should share? Please send it to me at chris.brecheen@gmail.com, and I will post it along with a shout out singing your praises (unless, of course, you don't want one).  There are four caveats to this.  Please read them before you send me stuff.  If I've posted anything that you feel is "yours" (or "your client's" --eeep!) please just tell me what you would like me to do.  Most everything here that doesn't have an embedding code within its source is some kind of meme, so it would be quite difficult for me to do proper attribution.]

1 comment:

  1. I took a look at the Amazon Kindle "sale" list.....and there are 4, count them, 4 romance erotic novels.

    I'm telling ya.......lol*

    ReplyDelete