Bookshelf porn (week 3)

Bookshelf porn (week 2)

This Week's Bookshelf Porn

Sigggghhh... yeah, I'm going to do this every Friday from now on...

Vocabulary Zen: LUCUBRATION

Burning the Midnight Oil

Many thanks to Obscure Word Love for this one:

N. (lew-kuh-bray-shun) 1. The act of lucubrating; laborious work, study, or writing, esp. that done late at night. 2. Something produced by such study, etc.; esp., a learned or carefully elaborated work. 3. Any literary composition: humorous usage suggesting pedantry.

I hope my recent lucubrations will be appreciated by those who read them.  And now I'm going to go back to estivating.

Take What You Need

I saw this in real life yesterday, taped to a post on a street in Portland, Maine.  Only "understanding" and "beauty" were left.  I hope everyone got what they wanted... and I'm seriously considering putting a few up in my neighborhood this week.

Did you hear that?

It was the sound of a darling, dying.

Hey look, Kill Your Darlings is now the name of an upcoming 2013 movie release...

The Book That Can't Wait

Now THERE'S a gimmick you don't see every day -- a book with disappearing ink.  Once opened, you have two months to read it, and then it's gone.

Publisher Eterna Cadencia produced this anthology in an effort to promote its new authors ("if people don't read their first books, they'll never make it to a second") and I think it's a brilliant idea... but only because the book was given away for free.  I'm an avid re-reader, and unless a book like this also came with an e-edition, I don't know if I'd be willing to buy it.

On the other hand, I'm kind of liking the idea of having a limited-edition blank book on my shelf, knowing that I read it before it got away.  Hmmm...

Insecurity

The man who jumped off cliffs, and flew.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

You've got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.

You fail only if you stop writing. 

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)

Thank you for the wild rumpus.

R.I.P. Maurice Sendak

Small thoughts from #Muse2012

"I try to write a little bit every day."

This past weekend I attended the Grub Street Muse and the Marketplace writing conference.  I was delighted to catch up with old Grubbie friends, visiting professionals (some I'd spent time with earlier this year, some I hadn't seen in two years), and of course I took in some wonderful sessions covering both the craft of writing and the strategies of publishing.  Keynote speaker Julia Alvarez shared the above cartoon with us, as well as this quote...

She said she starts each day's work with the Mayan weaver’s prayer. She explained that Mayan weavers begin the day with whatever is on hand, whatever thread, whatever dye, and they know that each material may need to be handled differently in order for it to shine best within the final fabric, so there is no set design, nothing pre-planned about the arrangement of the weave when they sit down to the loom each day.  And so, before they begin work, they pray:

“Grant me the intelligence and the patience to find the true pattern.”

I'll share more from the Muse over the next several days, and may you find the true pattern of your writing when you next sit down to work.

One of those days. Several of those days.

Invocation for Beginnings

Define yourself for yourself.

For shame.

Doonesbury, censored. Strips from this week (click to enlarge):

If your local paper won't publish it, find it here: http://www.doonesbury.com/

*Headdesk*

Dear Prestigious Literary Market,

I want to sincerely apologize for sending you the same story twice. Does it help that this version has been revised and polished? I highly doubt it. Do I need to explain the details of how my supposedly-meticulous submissions-tracking system failed me? Surely not.

All I can do to improve matters at this point is NOT email with an apology, thereby adding to your already overflowing inbox.

Thank you for understanding,

Embarrassed Author