I stumbled across this image on one of my favorite art-related web sites, But Does it Float. It’s an illustration by Virgil Finlay – great stuff. I remembered this particular drawing as an illustration for The Tell-Tale Heart, but don’t remember where. Some book sometime long, long ago.
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
All writers shares a common epiphany on the writing path. I call it Staring Into The Abyss. This experience happens when our writing has strengthened to the point where blissful ignorance rubs away and we begin to realize just how much we don’t know.
It’s a dark moment, a bleak moment. We feel shock. Frustration. Despair. Some stop right there on the path, their writing spirits broken. Others take a micro-step forward, progressing toward the most important stages leading to growth: acceptance and determination.
Once we come to terms with what we don’t know, we can set out to learn. Taking on the attitude of a Learner is what separates an amateur from a PRO.
I have always tried to avoid using the generic “They” in my speech and writing. As in, “They say that mauve is the new black” or “They want us all to pay more taxes this year.”
What started out as a simple google image search resulted in this giant collection of Valentines from the past. Send them to your friends!
These are a hoot! Most of them are product-oriented, and I’m a bit too old for most of those. My memories of Valentines’ Day Cards are from the Mid-60’s, from Elementary School. Everybody would buy Valentines for everybody else in the class. You would stuff them in a big box and then they would get passed out. Everybody ended up with a big pile of cheap paper. This really confused me – if everybody gave and received them, what was the value?
I’m trying to remember what these looked like… I think it was something like this.
“Nothing in life has any real meaning except the meaning you give it.” — Tony Robbins
“There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.” — Young Guns
“There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” — Thomas Sowell
“Find something you love to do so much that you’d do it for free and find a way to make it into a career.” — Anonymous
“The last of human freedoms – the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” — Viktor E. Frankl
“It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short time and time again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself a worthy cause; who if he wins knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.” — Teddy Roosevelt
“Your emotions are nothing but biochemical storms in your brain and you are in control of them at any point in time.” — Tony Robbins
A great method from “Developing Story Ideas” by Michael Rabiger. I don’t play CLOSAT as a game, but filling in all the items is a crackerjack method for building a story.
Journal observations, your bank of ideas from which to write, will become playing cards for an instant story-making game called “CLOSAT.” To speed retrieval, tag each item in the margin with one or more of these CLOSAT categories:
C = description of Characters who could be used in a story.
L = interesting and visual Location.
O= curious or evocative Object.
S = loaded or revealing Situation.
A = unusual or revealing Act.
T = any Theme that intrigues you or that you see embodied in life.
CLOSAT Definitions and Examples
C (character) is anyone whose appearance, mannerisms, occupation, or activities suggest potential for a character in a story.
L (location) is any place that suggests a setting for something to happen.
O (object) is any that is worth recording because it is eloquent of place,time, situation, or owners. Examples:
S (situation) is a conjunction of circumstances or a predicament that puts its characters under some special pressure.
A (act) is any human deed or action that seems freighted with meaning or potential.
T (theme) is the central or dominating idea, seldom stated directly, that underlies the subject of a story and that comments on it.
There was a time when we all dreamed of flying. Now we are reduced to an addiction to watching other people flying on YouTube.
1: The most simple tip to lose weight EVER is “Eat less and move more” – Common sense I know but it’s what every single weight loss plan is based on, TRUST ME !
2: Control the AMOUNT you eat at each meal time – make sure your meals are low in fat. This is not set in stone for instance you might want to also think about calories or portion control.
3: Get weighed – Measure your body, hips, thighes, chest, arms, neck……what can be measured can be managed. Always weigh-in on the same day in the same clothes on the same scales at the same time of day.
There is no point starting on a weight loss plan unless you get weighed first. This is very important. You need to be able to monitor your progress to know how well you are doing and that any changes in your lifestyle and eating are reaping the rewards or where you are making mistakes.
4 Keep a food diary – write down what you eat and what exercise you have done. Make sure you look at Calories n vs Calories out and try to ensure that Calories out is MORE than Calories in – If it helps you write down your feelings.
5.Smarter Shopping The golden rule here is to NEVER EVER go food shopping hungry. You make the decision to eat biscuits and crap food’s when you buy them in the shops, not when you take them from the cupboard. Don’t buy them in the first place.
6, Make a Goal list – write down achievable goals.
As a student, writer, author, journalist, poet, or screenwriter, you know that you probably spend more time on research, editing, and proofreading than you do on the actual writing. Therefore, you might not have time to find resources to help you write better, faster, or more persuasively. This is where our list comes to your rescue, as the following links focus on places where you can conduct research, software that is free and easy to use, and services that will remove that “extra work” monkey from your back.
One of my own favourite quotes is attributed to Mark Twain. The great author and prolific short story writer, in a letter to a friend, wrote that he “would like to have written a shorter letter but didn’t have the time.” For me, that sums up short story writing nicely. – Clem Cairns.
Please understand that book publishing is an organized hobby, not a business.
The timeframe for the launch of books has gone from silly to unrealistic.
There is no such thing as effective book promotion by a book publisher.
Books cost money and require the user to read them for the idea to spread.
Publishing is like venture capital, not like printing.
So, what’s my best advice?
Build an asset. Large numbers of influential people who read your blog or read your emails or watch your TV show or love your restaurant or or or…
Then, put your idea into a format where it will spread fast. That could be an ebook (a free one) or a pamphlet (a cheap one–the Joy of Jello sold millions and millions of copies at a dollar or less).
Then, if your idea catches on, you can sell the souvenir edition. The book. The thing people keep on their shelf or lend out or get from the library. Books are wonderful (I own too many!) but they’re not necessarily the best vessel for spreading your idea.
And the punchline, of course, is that if you do all these things, you won’t need a publisher. And that’s exactly when a publisher will want you! That’s the sort of author publishers do the best with.
Don’t worry about full screen mode. It doesn’t help this one.
I have always been a map fanatic. With the advent of the web and GPS and all the cool digital mapping applications available now, paper maps have sort of fallen to the wayside. But still…. man, I want one of these, real bad.
This website, suncalc.net is great for figuring out places and times for sunset/sunrise photography. Want to catch the sun rising behind a certain building tomorrow? The site will tell you. More importantly, what date will the sun set behind a certain scene from a certain vantage point? suncalc.net will tell you.
I’ve been a fan of Lana Del Rey for a long time (well, since June. In the world of modern pop culture, seven months is an eternity). It looks like she is going to break out – she has signed to Interscope Records and her album, Born to Die, will be out on January 31.
Another single is out in the UK – Off to the Races. I’m not sure about it yet…
What I really am enjoying is that Lana Del Rey is rapidly becoming a polarizing artist – even though she doesn’t even have a real record or a real career yet – she is piling up the haters.
I love it…. You see, I know what I like, and I like Lana Del Rey.
Whenever you are feeling good, maybe full of holiday cheer. When you feel hope welling up within your breast and you know that mankind has a bright future ahead of him in this best of all possible worlds.
When you feel like that, read this next article and be reminded that we are all, all completely doomed.
Bill Chance 