Another wrong turn.
She came down to the bridge to end it all, to jump off into the cold March waters. To feel her weight and the weight of her burdens become weightless as the water lapped over her in one last shivering embrace. Then she saw that the bridge was closed. The pylons and arches were there, but the platform was gone. There was nowhere to jump from. She sighed. It was just another in all the wrong turns in her life, and like all the others, she would just have to learn to live with it.
Filed under Photo by author, Photo Finish Friday
Give me all you love. /
Leave your hate beneath the tall tree. /
The leaves will shape it.
Filed under Haiku to You Thursday, poetry by author
Lauren Oliver's Writing Secrets – 5 Secrets To Writing The Next Great American Novel – Cosmopolitan.
Sample:
Lauren Oliver, who wrote the addictive-as-crack Delirium novels, has a new, bursting-with-intense-teen-romance novel out, Panic, about desperate kids competing for coveted prize, living not in an alternative future dystopia, but in a small town in upstate New York. Oliver herself lives in New York City and is a 31 year old badass who has written 7 novels and already had four New York Times bestsellers. Hello, impressive. She shares some secrets behind all that mad productivity. (Hey, put her tips to good work and enter the Cosmo Fiction contest, here.)
1. Make it part of your routine.
When I started writing, I had to force myself to do it everyday. Now, it’s a habit like brushing my teeth. Can you imagine how gross you would feel if you didn’t brush your teeth for a whole day? That’s how I feel now when I don’t write.
2. Figure out what works for you and your life and stick to it.
I kind of write all over the place, since I’m often traveling or bouncing around between commitments and meetings. The funniest place I do writing is on my phone. I’ve stayed loyal to BlackBerry for years because of the keyboards — I can type as quickly on a BlackBerry as I can on a computer. I wrote most of my first novel, Before I Fall on my BlackBerry. I think they should give me a sponsorship, seriously.
[Editor’s note: for the other three, click on the link above. First, can you guess what they are? Hint: one is about applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.]
Filed under Writing Tip Wednesday
I agree with Hanif Kureishi – creative writing courses are a waste of time | Books | theguardian.com.
Sample:
I agree with Hanif Kureishi – creative writing courses are a waste of time
The novelist and professor Hanif Kureishi has voiced criticism of creative writing courses – and having been on one, I find it hard to disagree. Share your experiences below…
Filed under Writing Tip Wednesday
John Boy Walton’s mountain couldn’t have been much higher.
Filed under cartoon by author, CarToonsday
What did one writer say to the other when after the 14th time being nominated, he still didn’t win an Oscar?
“I guess my limitation of statues has not yet run out.”
Filed under Monday morning writing joke
8 Starship Enterprise Facts Every Trekker Should Know – Neatorama.
To boldly go where no man has gone before, you’d need a really good starship – and to launch Star Trek, the pop culture phenomenon that entertained and inspired millions, you’d need a pretty darned good one! And that is exactly what the United Space Starship Enterprise delivered. Here are 8 Starship Enterprise facts every Trekker should know:
Filed under Star Trek
Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State | Blog, Perspectives | BillMoyers.com.
There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power. [1]
During the last five years, the news media has been flooded with pundits decrying the broken politics of Washington. The conventional wisdom has it that partisan gridlock and dysfunction have become the new normal. That is certainly the case, and I have been among the harshest critics of this development. But it is also imperative to acknowledge the limits of this critique as it applies to the American governmental system. On one level, the critique is self-evident: In the domain that the public can see, Congress is hopelessly deadlocked in the worst manner since the 1850s, the violently rancorous decade preceding the Civil War.
Filed under Uncategorized
Booker's Blog 