Sometimes you come across passages that remind you again of what good writing is. I just started the classic Wuthering Heights last night (yes, you need to read the classics) and was taken aback by a passage not just because of the quality of the prose but also by the tone. It was like the … Continue reading The Best Writing of the Week – Wuthering Heights
In my edition of The Hobbit, cheap mass-market paperback, there is an introduction by Peter S Beagle from 1973 that contains not one but two passages that are amazingly political and powerful. A Quote For Today, From 1973 The Sixties were no fouler a decade than the Fifties - they mere reaped the Fifties' foul … Continue reading Two Awesome Quotes From The Hobbit’s 1973 Introduction
...to begin with, that is. And Pixar isn't afraid to admit this. In the sublime business book Creativity Inc. (which is also a great book on managing creative teams), Ed Catmull explains how this works as they work on a movie. They get sold on an idea, knowing that the first version is going to … Continue reading Pixar’s Movies All Suck…
Elephants shouldn't glow. Humans shouldn't be careless with radioactive waste. But good writers should tell good stories, and that brings us to Brooke Bolander's The Only Harmless Great Thing. This tells the story of a woman and an elephant. The way the book is written may make the book slightly less appealing to readers, and … Continue reading Elephants Aglow – A Few Words About THE ONLY HARMLESS GREAT THING
Raymond Chandler is the author I'm obsessing most over these days, and here's just a few of the reasons why: 1 - His prose Here are examples just from the start of The Little Sister, which I am now reading. The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black paint: 'Philip Marlowe... Investigations'. It … Continue reading Raymond Chandler – A Growing Obsession
If you haven't read The Silence of The Lambs you are in for a treat. I am going to assume you've seen the movie, right? Well, there's a surprising element to the book, one that I had not expected when I read it. Since reading it, something I did to study how Thomas Harris pulled … Continue reading The Silence of the Lambs and the Surprise it Holds for Writers
I've been wondering recently about writers who are most productive. In my own quest to become as productive as possible (make writing a habit, set aside time each day, make myself accountable to someone...) I have overlooked one of the things that fucks up my productivity the most; the cost of constant context switching due … Continue reading Should We Delete Our Social Media Accounts?
How do you describe a book like Her Body and Other Parties to people? The book is a collection of long short stories and the collection as a whole is perhaps best summed up by the two quotes Carmen Maria Machado puts at the beginning of the book. My body is a haunted house that … Continue reading Book Review – Her Body and Other Parties
I was tagged in a thing about inspiration on Twitter but instead of replying there I decide to write a blog post. Here's the original tweet: https://twitter.com/IngaMBeck/status/995990530608828417 These have recently inspired me in my writing: Book The Long Goodbye and The Silence of the Lambs. I'd read Chandler's first book, The Big Sleep, a few … Continue reading What Inspires You?
Theodore Sturgeon is not a household name by any means. But he was a fantastic writer. Here is the first paragraph of his book, More Than Human. The idiot lived in a black and gray world, punctuated by the white lightning of hunger and the flickering of fear. His clothes were many-windowed. Here peeped a … Continue reading The Amazing First Paragraph of MORE THAN HUMAN
