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Non-sentential Links

Just to shake things up, some links which are not sentential in nature. Wow!

::  Writer-acquaintance Ashley Carlson (whose new book, The Charismatics, is both available and good!) has some thoughts on strategy for men who are trying to appeal to women on e-dating sites.

::  A good question, asked by Anne Leigh Parrish: “What if we all wrote with the idea that no one might ever read us? Would this silence us, or set us free?” I’m not sure. I don’t like the idea of not being read…but I can’t write with the assumption that a specific group of readers will read me. Good question…thoughts?

::  Wow! SamuraiFrog, one of my favorite bloggers, has been blogging for ten years! Congrats to him!

::  Who cares if the movie came out last summer? I love it to pieces, so here’s Lance Mannion’s review of Guardians of the Galaxy. (My review here.)

::  Ach, I wasn’t paying attention and missed the birthday of Robert Burns! Sheila O’Malley, as always, had things well in hand, though. (We did watch an episode of Outlander, which…well, it doesn’t count at all, I guess. But a time-travel romance drama set in Scotland is nice.)

::  Finally, I have to end on a sad note. I started reading John Scalzi’s blog right around the time they acquired a fuzzy little kitten. That kitten became a beautiful long-haired cat, who has just passed away after twelve years. Don’t read this right before driving or handling cutlery.

Keep on truckin’, folks, and if you live in NYC or Boston or points in between, stay warm and safe!

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A few odd items

Because oddness abides, man.

:: Since he’s playing in the Super Bowl next week, it stands to reason that someone out there is writing erotica featuring Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski. Because…um…I got nothin’.

:: “Let It Go”, in Welsh. Because the old tongues of Northern Europe make everything better.

:: A photo gallery of shopping malls, taken in 1989. I do kinda miss malls, sometimes. I mean, we still have ’em and all, but I rarely go there anymore, because the stores are…well, they’re the same everywhere, and my needs in terms of “stuff” have changed and diminished over time.

More next week!

(Sorry about the relative lack of new content recently, but the usual reason applies. I’ve got some decent momentum going on Princesses III: Even Princessier (not the actual title), and I have to keep the pedal to the floor!)

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From the Books: “I Never Met a Story I Didn’t Like”

I borrowed this book from the library a few weeks ago, and after plowing through it (and finding it quite hilarious), I reviewed in on Goodreads. But for this space I wanted to excerpt a particular chapter that I found interesting. Author Todd Snider is a folk singer by trade, so his advice here is directed specifically at singers, but I think it can be applied to anyone in a creative endeavor.

Young singers sometimes think it’s about making people like you, but it’s not. It’s about how many people you can get to decide whether or not they like you. That’s what you have to do to fill your refrigerator. Do it every day, nine to five.

You are not trying to be liked. You are trying to be judged, as often as you possibly can, so you can keep your refrigerator full.

If I was better at what i did, people would say nastier things about me.

…

The truth of this is that you asked someone — everyone — to feel something. And if they do feel something, you do not get to control what that feeling is. Whether it’s a fan, your mom, a journalist, or the paper boy, you sing them your song and ask them to feel. Don’t be a dick and try to control what and how they feel after that. Do the world a favor and leave those people alone. They already did you the favor of listening to your whole f***ing song. Now you want to tell them to do something else? Or you want to be angry because they did what you asked them to do? Jesus Christ.

When my first record came out, I saw a review of myself. The writer began, “I hate Todd Snider.” That was the first line of the review. It got me past my waist into the water. Come on in, kid, the water is freezing. “I hate Todd Snider, and I’m about to tell you why,” was the full first line, in a San Diego newspaper article that was supposed to be previewing my show. When’s the last time someone told you they hated you, un-ironically? Teenage girls don’t count.

I wrote a letter back to the person who wrote that review. I still have the letter. I pull it out and read it when I need to feel embarrassed for myself.

…

Making up songs, critics will tell people that you’ve done well or poorly. Again, those are the critics that you have asked — begged, really — to have an opinion. And then they give you one, if you’re lucky. A bad review is a good review. The worst review they can give you is no review at all, and that’s the one they give almost everybody.

That’s an interesting notion: by reacting to your work at all, someone is doing you a favor, even if they think your work is the worst thing ever and they are willing to tell people that. I’m not entirely sure I agree here, but the general notion seems to be that if you’re going to be an artist, you do not want to inspire indifference, and that’s something I completely agree with.

(Good book, by the way, if you’re interested in stories from the world of country-folk music.)

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Screws fall out all the time, the world’s an imperfect place.

xkcd nails it on screws!

In my day job I see a lot of different screws. There are way more screws out there in the wonderful world of mechanical fasteners than Randall Munroe even bothered to depict here, but the reactions to the existence of those other non-Philips or non-flathead (or “straight blade”) screws tend to run like this. I don’t know how many times in my years at this job it’s happened, but if I had a dollar for every time I’d had this conversation:

“Uh, Kelly? I was gonna do this job myself but then I saw the screws and they look like normal screws but they’re got this square thing in the head instead of Philips and is that a real thing and do they even make a driver for those?!”

This is when I say “Why yes,” and I pull my from pocket my trusty Klein 11-in-1 driver, and for one brief moment, I achieve a status in their eyes that is absolutely Gandalfian or Dumbledoresque.

Now, when I encounter a screw that I do not have a driver for, that’s when my command of expletives comes in handy, because really, there’s just no need to use a screw that obscure!

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A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

My least-favorite word. What's yours? #words

Copacetic is my least favorite word. I remember at the end the 1990s, suddenly everybody and their brother was using this word, and for some reason the word annoys me. I got to thinking about this when I read something on Facebook yesterday about how awful the word moist is, which got me to wondering: What is your least favorite word? (Excluding naughty language.)

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Bibles: Not just for God anymore!

I read this post by today, on the subject of story bibles:

What is a story bible?

A story bible is where you keep all of those essential details about your book/s. It how you stop those pesky inconsistency errors from sneaking in and make sure that things make sense. For example, if say Ryan had have received an injury in Wyrd Calling that left him with a scar, then that would go into the story bible so that the scar didn’t magically vanish in later books. It’s also where I keep a track of names, which bits of backstory were mentioned where, which species have been mentioned and how, physical descriptions of things, geographical notes, everything.

I, too, maintain a story bible for The Song of Forgotten Stars. It began as a bunch of separate files, but eventually I got tired of having to open three or four files every time I sat down to write — or opening them but not opening the right one, and having to stop and go into Windows Explorer because I opened “Locations in the Galaxy” and “Dramatis Personae” but I didn’t open “The Bestiary”, in which I’ve been collecting details on various creatures on my main planet (or referred to as living on others). Before I started work on Princesses In SPACE III: Yukon Ho! (not the actual title), I collected the various files together into one large file called “Forgotten Stars Reference Guide”.

So, what do I put in there? Well, I try to remember to put something of everything in there. Every little detail I make up along the way needs to be in there, from Princess Tariana’s hair color to what interests young Otona Cheyendi. This minor character’s full name, because I might only refer to him by his last name before I need to remember his first again. The names of various stars and planets. How many moons this planet has, how many planets that sun has. Names of historical figures I mention in passing, and what they did to merit being mentioned in passing here and there.

In short, every single little detail belongs in the Bible. Does every single little detail actually make it into the Bible? Well, no. I don’t have that much time, and I can’t stop writing a passage in which I’m making things up just to go and make new entries in the Bible. So when do I put things into the Bible? When I think to do so. Lots of times this involves my sudden need for a piece of information and my discovery that it isn’t in my Bible. So off I go to look it up in the manuscript, at which time I also make a Bible entry, and then I resolve to do better. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I think what I may do from now on is set aside a bit of my writing time on Saturday or Sunday to Bible Maintenance: making sure that new stuff is in there, or that I’ve updated old stuff (like names that I have changed along the way). I do need to get more organized about this, since the world of these books keeps getting bigger and bigger. I’m also starting to feel the need for maps, which is difficult because I’m working on the planetary scale. Do I do Mercator projection? Grab a white ball and draw on it with marker? How should I map a planet? To say nothing of — gasp! — an entire galaxy? Stay tuned!

Oh, and I’m going to stop calling it my Bible. Since my main planet in these novels is called Xonareth, I shall retitle it the Encyclopaedia Xonarethica!

Zap! Pow!!

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ForgottenStars.net

The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer

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