General

  1. Word Of The Day

    Today's word of the day is ZEN. I refound my Zen today. I didn't even know I lost it. I was mowing the lawn, giving it a scalp cut, 1st cut of the spring. This is where you cut it at the mower's lowest setting, trim off all the dead so it can grow back green for the spring. I was transfixed atop the riding mower doing a repetitive task, the drone of the engine, gentle breeze in my hair. I'm back in the groove again. A calm & peace came over me, & I was reminded of when I worked as...
  2. Temporary Blindness -True Tales

    SoberDate 8041 A couple nights ago a series of thunderstorms rolled thru our area at nighttime. Around 11pm I got up for a late night snack from the fridge (a cheese stick) when the power went out. I ate my cheese and went back to bed. Around midnight, my wife awoke to use the bathroom and the 1st thing she noticed was it was pitch black, no light from the clock, no nightlight from the bathroom, no light outside from the streetlight. Nothing, just total inky blackness. Now mind you,...
  3. Horror Story Devices via Fritz Leiber

    First some links to several online articles about how to write horror: Notes on Writing Weird Fiction by H. P. Lovecraft Supernatural Horror in Literature by H. P. Lovecraft Learning to Write Horror From Edgar Allan Poe The ‘Uncanny’ by Sigmund Freud Click "Show More Pages" at the bottom to see parts II and III. How to Write a Horror Story: 7 Tips for Writing Horror @ Reedsy What Stephen King Can Teach You About Writing Great Horror Just to once again try to consolidatre many resources...
  4. Clarity, Power, and Discovery in Writing

    This is actually stuff I've known and been doing (and promoting in here) for a long time. I usually talk about it in relation to journaling and what I call 'writing about a story before you write the story.' In each case they're ways of exploring, structuring, and developing your thoughts about a subject. You can also do that in freewriting if you keep it to a subject and don't just slap down pure gibberish (which is an extreme form of freewriting). I often start a writing session with some...
  5. Musings on Fritz Leiber

    Here's a rather massive paragraph from the beginning of the book Witches of the Mind by Bruce Byfield, a critical assessment of the overall literary achievements of Fritz Leiber: "In Fritz Leiber and Eyes, the best effort to define an approach so far, Justin Leiber (Fritz's son) takes this diversity (of his influences) for granted. "Fritz simply likes to write a lot of different kinds of things," he explains. "And if half of them are ahead of their time or behind their time or so far out in...
  6. A way to explain the Dunning Kruger effect

    Put simply, the Dunning Kruger effect says: Beginners are unable to see that their work isn't as good as the work of more skilled artists. First to dispell a very common misunderstanding—it doesn't mean they're stupid. It just means they haven't learned certain things yet. I first ran up against this in drawing, and I think using some visual aids can help get the principle across clearly. One of the ways I've heard it put best is by drawing instructor Robert Beverly Hale in one of his...
  7. Writing From Life Experience

    Often when people hear you should write from your own life experience, they think of it on a very surface level—like if you played a lot of football you should write about football. In one sense this is what it means, or rather it's one aspect of it, but there's a much deeper, broader, and more universal aspect that this understanding misses. This is the aspect I want to write about—not the external things you've done (play some sport, live in a particular region or neighborhood, work on a...
  8. Beginnings...

    I've begun to write again... Let's see what happens.
  9. Military Youth Camp Days

    When I was a teenager I attended a week long military youth camp. There I learned a lot about myself. I learned that I sucked at guiding an airplane bomb run. (I bombed the wrong city. In theory, not practice.) I got to shoot a .22 long. A cartridge got stuck in the loading mechanism, I thought something was wrong so I raised my hand and the instructor came. He just used force to guide the cartridge into where it was supposed to be. I thought the damn thing would explode in my face if I used...
  10. Been a while

    It's been a while, since I posted here. My boss has been a slave driver of late, which is an odd statement since I am my own boss. My trilogy is on the back burner for now. Book 1 has a word count that is acceptable, Book2 is still a bit shy of acceptable, and Book 3 needs a lot of work to be done. But I ran out of gas with the project, and my work schedule, so let it sit for a bit and let myself recharge for that project. I have started a new project that is coming along nicely. I tossed...
  11. 101 alternative uses for a lightsaber - #4

    Deadheading geraniums, petunias and rhododendrons. .
  12. If a flamingo gets in your yard

    If a flamingo gets in your yard If a flamingo gets in your yard, don’t shoo it away. There’s no need to fear. Cautiously approach, and take some time to really notice it. Pink is a comforting colour, after all. There’s an elegance in their long necks and long legs. Appreciate how it is formed. If there are two flamingos, even better. When the two of them get together, beak to beak, and breast and breast, they make a heart, and we all know what that means. If a flamingo gets in your yard,...
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