My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature.
— H.P. Lovecraft, “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction”
Tag: craft
The “writing” part of Writing.
Humoronomics (Pithyism #3=1)
A JOKE, ANECDOTE, OR SHAGGY-DOG story should be no longer than necessitated by the redemptive power of its punch line.
Metaphoraging Roundup 2020
AS THE EARTH RETURNS IN its orbit to where it was last year, here is a look at the top ten posts The Metaphorager’s readers enjoyed (I hope) during the past twelve months: My Favorite Jewish Joke – 80 Views…
5 Thoughts: The Grand Old Process
1. THERE IS A CERTAIN COMPULSION to the act of writing: an unscratchable itch that won’t let the fingers refrain from their fruitless but busy task, whether on paper or keyboard. 2. To ask writers “Why do you write?” is…
I AM A FANTASY WRITER; that is to say, I fantasize about people reading my writings.”
–Your author, in a truth-pensive mood
5 Thoughts: Seminal v. Derivative
1. ONE OF THE CHICKEN-OR-egg challenges of modern media (social and traditional) is their pervasive sense of nonlinear immediacy, by which I mean the everything-at-once flattening of the artistic landscape.
Elevator Pitch: Across the Rimless Sea (The Prosatio Silban Tales)
“A SELF-DEFROCKED HOLYMAN ekes out a meager but honest living as a mercenary cook.” (Intrigued?)
Don’t let the plot get in the way of the story.”
— Anon.
20 Observations on Newspaper Reporting
ALTHOUGH THEY RELY ON THEM, few people say they actually trust the news media. (I call it “Ross’ Paradox.”) Everybody has a story. And many want to share it. Newswriting is a form of reality-creation, wherein readers trust you to…
“…And Just Exactly What Is A ‘Buopoth?'”
“MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT the quaint and lumbering buopoths native to the Exilic Lands and other curious places – but to this day, little remains understood about the shy beasts beyond the proverb that ‘they will haul all day…
Welcome to My World…Literally and Literarily
O Fellow Connoisseurs of Mythic Fiction (and Gastronomy), please: Lend me your eyes. For many years now, I have been writing occasional fantasy tales about Prosatio Silban: a self-defrocked holyman and mercenary cook in a far-off land containing a vast…
5 Thoughts: The Third Thing
1. ONE OF THE THINGS THAT frustrates me as a writer is my own self-limitation. Specifically, I am speaking of the notoriously difficult and bothersome Third Thing. 2. The Third Thing works like this. I will write a sentence that…