Greatest Animated Gif Of All Times
I’m not even kidding. This is what the animated gif was invented for. Just wait for it…
Writing Opportunity: writeorama.com
I’m feeling a bit under the weather today (headcold impairing my brainzes) so I don’t have much in the way of stuff from my own head. So I figured I’d share this cool thing I received in my e-mail this weekend from Aniket who manages http://writeorama.com/
I am pleased to inform you that prompts are back on write-o-rama.
New authors appreciate any help they can get to promote their books.
To do our bit in helping with the promotion, we’ll be having a featured book by a newly published author every month.The idea is to use the book title and cover as a prompt and write a story/poem in 500 words or less.
The author of the book will pick the winning entry and the winner would get a free copy of the book.The featured book this month is ‘The League for the Suppression of Celery’ by Wendy Russ.
Do write to participate in the contest, and also help spread the word about new books by these awesome folks. Looking forward to your stories.
–Aniket, write-o-rama
Sounds pretty cool to me. I’ll definitely be taking part in writeorama, once I get my head cleared. I hope you do too.
On Writing: You Don’t Need A Fancy Desk
I’ve been doing a bit of woodworking the past month, building a coffee table with a removable top for storing Lego and other toys. I’ve never done a major woodworking project in my life and certainly never built furniture. But the kids got a bunch of Lego for Christmas and I thought they needed a nice surface play on, so I figured why not. Also, Lego tables to purchase go for $100 at the cheapest. I figured I’d be able to make something for less than that.
My “workshop” isn’t much to speak of. I do my work in my basement, unorganized and chaotic. My tools have no home, really. They are on a pile in the floor. I had never used my table saw before this project.
However, if I decided I’d have to wait until I had a proper workshop I’d never built anything at all. You don’t need fancy tools to do something. YOU. JUST. NEED. TO. START. I started and this is what I accomplished:
Not perfect, but certainly not bad. Anyway, it’s the same with writing. You don’t need fancy toys. You don’t need that Macbook Air. You don’t need that beautifully large desk inside the rotunda of that gorgeous Victorian home. You don’t need absolute silence, or the kiss from a unicorn under a rainbow. To write all you really need is to begin.
It could be a napkin in the coffee shop. It could be the back of the mortgage bill while you are lying in bed, unable to sleep. It could be at your laptop on your lunch break at work. It could be any or none of these things, so long as you just write.
You don’t need a fancy desk. Heck, you don’t even need to know what you’re doing. I didn’t, and things turned out okay.
I Love Girl (Excellent Short Story by Simon Rich)
Simon Rich is an excellent writer who writes funny stuff for things. One such funny thing he wrote was for a short story published in the New Yorker titled I Love Girl. It’s written in the voice of a cave man struggling with self identity and wanting for the affections of Girl. It’s a quick and funny read and I highly recommend it. Here is an excerpt:
I love Girl. I will explain what that is. When I look at her, I feel sick like I am going to die. I have never had the Great Disease (obviously, because I am still alive). But my uncle described it to me. He said there is a tightness in your chest, you cannot breathe, and you have anger toward the Gods. I was going to ask him to explain more, but then he died. My point is: Girl makes me feel this way, like I am going to die. There are many women in the world. By last count, seven. But she is the only one I ever loved.
Tell me you don’t want to read more of that. Simon Rich also happens to have a new book coming out January 22nd (2013 for those reading this in the FUTURE) titled The Last Girlfriend on Earth: And Other Love Stories
7s Challenge (And An Excerpt Of My Novel)
The wonderful Julie K. Rose tagged me for the 7s challenge: go to either page 7 or 77 of your manuscript, count down 7 lines, then copy the next 7 lines (or paragraphs) to your status. Then name 7 other authors to come out and play. I would like to thank Julie for tagging me and giving me something to write about. I tag Patti Nielson and Shari Green and whomever else would like to participate. If you would like to participate, just leave a comment here and I’ll add you to this list.
Note: I’ve cross posted this to my old blog as well.
This is from the beginning of Chapter 2 of my WIP:
I roll out of bed, grab the hacked up hand-held gaming system Grandpa gave me for my thirteenth birthday, and hop onto the chatternet. He’d boosted the wireless signal on it just enough for me to leech a signal off the guard’s network, so long as I jump on before the staff bogs down the network checking the results of their favorite sports team’s matches from the night before.
Hem’s always telling me how he sleeps in until 5 PM on Saturdays and what a freak I am because I always wake up so early (I’m up before everybody. Always). It’s not my fault, though. Can’t turn off my brain. I’m always thinking about something, and that something is usually a thing nobody else seems to be worried about.
I’m curious as to what’s gone down in PA-16823. How had it started? Had they been successful? Were there more incidents to come?
You can find information on the chatternet that is untouched by the System if you know where to look, and if you catch it at just the right time. A favorite place of mine is the comment section of a news story, early in the morning just after it had gone live.
I’m too late. Grandpa has boosted my signal as best as he could with the materials he could get his hands on, an old coffee can here, and some wire there, but it was no match for the itchy trigger finger of a System moderator.
The propaganda, of course, remains. Real gems like this:
“For the continued safety of the protestors and the System themselves, over 300 protestors will face a full reprimand.
The article doesn’t specify what precisely “full reprimand” means, but it’s not too hard to guess either. Most likely they will be taken out of the System and placed in jail. Real jail. The kind where you don’t get to be with your family, and don’t get to see them again. The kind with the real criminals, Grandpa says. No trial required. You can get in trouble a lot of ways in here, but the worst thing you could do is not do your job. Stuff needed to be made.