By 'creative community' I mean something like what we used to have here on LJ - a group of friends all writing about the same thing (Fire Emblem, Suikoden, whatever) and talking about the source material, inspiration, blah blah. Fandom was my writing community for twelve years. Without it, I find I write less often, with less devotion, and in ( Read more... )

Lately I've been trying to write a bit every day-- again. I can do this for months, but I eventually fall off the horse, and then? No more daily prose for like, a year. I still write, of course, but not every day, and the supposed holy grail of breaking through blocks and finding words when the well has run dry... that's supposed to be habitual ( Read more... )

You go to meet your friend for lunch, sit down at the table, look at the menu. You're looking forward to talking about this or that, about trying that new sandwich, hearing about your friend's life. But she doesn't show up. It turns out she's just really late - and she never has been punctual as far as you know, but punctuality isn't everything ( Read more... )

I feel like I did this wrong. My selections are much longer than everyone else's. But if you're going to show a progression of any kind then shouldn't you try to pick excerpts that show more than one thing - like dialogue AND description, rather than just one of them? That's why this is long and probably tedious ( Read more... )

It's funny how, once I started to write by hand in spiral-bound notebooks, I realized that typing stories directly into Notepad felt like working on a final draft. For years now I've written with the assumption that what I type will be my final product because I believed I shouldn't need more than one draft to get something right. This was helped ( Read more... )

For the record, Sansa made me think about this topic, but it's actually something a commenter said via PM that reminded me of this little problem of mine ( Read more... )

I wonder: if I keep telling myself to get to work, will it eventually happen? I'm flipping my schedule, more by accident than intent, so my odd hours are throwing everything off. It makes me curious about how we're wired to respond to cues like sunrise, sunset, and waking up to sunlight instead of darkness and streetlights. Is that social ( Read more... )

I've always skipped the appendices out of fatigue, so this would be my first time reading them. Until now I suppose I haven't been a fan of Tolkien, so much as someone who happened to like Lord of the Rings and occasional stories from Middle Earth, but The Silmarillion changed all of that. Now I'm willing to read tons and tons of basically ( Read more... )

I'm done with Lord of the Rings and well into the Appendices, but I may as well finish them before posting. The sections on the line of kings and stewards are pretty relevant.

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At about this time last year, I read Jeff VanderMeer's Booklife ( with comments here, if you care), and found it pretty helpful for thinking about the parts of being a ( Read more... )

Since I'm supposed to be sleeping so I can get to an early appointment tomorrow, it's time for an LJ post instead.

So like. I don't see that the movie did Denethor any terrible injustice, now that I've re-read him in Return of the King. ( Unpopular opinions. Maybe I missed a few things. )