Trying to make a living –or just some nontrivial income– from your creative endeavors seems like a monumental task. At least it feels so for me. Luckily, for me, I enjoy some of the minutiae of process and procedures and figuring out devilish details I can repeat so all that small stuff is not stuff I sweat over. Then I constantly get reminded about how much I don’t know. Also I don’t have enough time.…
I mentioned on Tuesday that my office is geeky enough to spontaneously start talking about constructed languages. As an inveterate geek who can pass as a “muggle,” I’m well acquainted with the concept of downplaying any connections to nerd/geek culture. My reluctance to unfurl my own weird flag has waned greatly over the past 15 years or so, but I understand that reticence. Sarah Ditum, writing in the Guardian, details how authors have historically, and…
This past week at work, talk drifted to Tolkien and constructed languages, or conlangs, because that’s how we roll. Now, I’m not about to present any paper to the Language Creation Society. It takes a lot of time to create a full, working language. For Rogue Tyger, I have actual world languages stand in for the various human and alien languages, otherwise I’d be up to half a dozen conlangs by now. Nevertheless, I find…
Well, technically, it’s a 96-minute press conference moderated by film historian, author, and critic Richard Schickel. However, it really is a bit of a masterclass as Alfred Hitchcock, quite confident in what he does and doesn’t do, gives pronouncements about how he goes about things. Note that you may want to watch Family Plot, his last film, before watching this as that’s the reason for the press conference. You may also find that he’s rather…
After Monday’s post, I didn’t want to take up too much time. The weight of the week is probably dragging on you in any case. Here’s Stephen King with some brief writing tips.
I’ll probably share some other videos done by the Writer’s Guild as I watch them in the future, but here’s a treat for those of you who are fans of Your Show of Shows or The Dick Van Dyke Show and so on. Carl Reiner talks almost for almost an uninterrupted hour and it flies by as he gives you not only his history and development as a writer, but all sorts of wonderful tidbits…
I’m always interested in the state of works in the public domain, especially as works in the U.S. have started entering said domain this year. So I was surprised, bordering on elated, to learn that the majority of books published in the U.S. before 1964 may actually be in the public domain: we don’t need to wait another 1-40 years! Here’s a link to the change covered by Boing Boing as well as the actual…
The other week, I mused about giving your young’uns a steady diet of scares, inspired in part by reading an article by artist Greg Ruth. Well, as probably comes as no surprise, Ruth also has some thoughts about the eternal struggle to make a living from one’s creative work and yes, it’s naturally pertinent to illustrators, but I think his points should resonate with writers as well. By the way, if you want to check…
Let me start by giving credit where credit where credit is due. The inspiration for this post, and indeed the title above, comes from a post this past May by Russell Nohelty on his Complete Creative site. His post hit on the current issue I have with Jabberwocky Audio Theater. It’s perhaps the most difficult metaphorical needle I’ve ever had to thread — and so I’m writing it about it here in case you’re in…
I have often mentioned Scriptnotes, the screenwriting podcast hosted by John August and Craig Mazin, as a source from some really good information and inspiration for writing. On the one hand, I could arguably link to them just about every week, but if I had to pick just one this year, this week’s unprecedented solo effort by Craig Mazin is one you should listen to if you’re about to embark on writing a feature film…