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  1. 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...
    By Xoic · Mar 5, 2024 · 2.5K · 134
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  2. My Relationship with Nature

    Discovering Mary Oliver has brought some changes. I've always liked the Transcendentalist poets, but find their poetry sometimes difficult, and I feel very removed from them, since they lived in an earlier era, and were all long-dead when I first walked the earth. But Mary Oliver is a modern Transcendentalist, and also a powerful link to the earlier ones. She helps me understand their writing, their ideas, and their lives, and better connects me to them in ways I wouldn't be otherwise. She...
    By Xoic · Aug 15, 2023 · 1.1K · 30
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  3. Man is like the grass that flourishes and is gone.

    I'm not much of a Biblical person, not because of animosity toward the Bible or the faith, but because of unfamiliarity. As a kid I only rarely attended Sunday school, and when I did I invariably got lost in any reference to a particular book of the Bible. Later I learned to understand and appreciate Christianity, but never really the Bible per se, especially the Old Testament. Anyway, the above words popped into my mind the other day, as I was rooting through long-sealed cardboard boxes...
    By GrahamLewis · May 15, 2022 · 1.1K · 4
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  4. Little Stevie's adventures in Hollywood

    Close Encounters is really the story of Little Stevie Speilberg getting swept up from his ordinary life and into the exciting world of Hollywood. You gotta look deep into the subtext to see it though. He used Richard Dreyfus as his alter ego in Close Encounters and Jaws, and both movies feature elements of his own life and the excitement he experienced getting into Hollywood. I know, that's a lot to swallow. Guess I'd better start to back it up. Note the UFOs are mainly seen as spectacular...
    By Xoic · Feb 13, 2023 · 946 · 22
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  5. The Truth

    The difficulty with fiction is that it must be written as if it were true. This means the story must be believable when put up against what we already know. We create an imagined reality that must present as real. Some parts are easier to make real than others. Plot, check. Setting, check. For me, the hardest thing to make real are the characters. People are so darn complicated! Reality lies in consistency. I can’t have an ambitious Aries suddenly become a serene Taurus suddenly become an...
    By Louanne Learning · Oct 16, 2022 · 894 · 8
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  6. Fantasy 101; Characters

    Characters are the bane of my existence. Are they too dry? Too monotonous? I can never tell. So, of course, I chose fantasy as my genre of choice. The genre that requires the most complex characters. After all, I am the dumbest person you will ever meet. Take my newest novel, for instance. The two main characters are supposed to be insanely different, with similarities that aren't really notable. And yet, I can't tell if that point is actually getting made, or if I make the similarities too...
    By ThatNerdyAuthor · Sep 26, 2022 · 813 · 1
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  7. River Rocks

    I have a secret addiction. I cannot pass by a jumble of river rocks -- those small stones gathered together and sold for landscaping purposes -- without glancing down at them and, at the risk of seeming odd to any passerby, picking up one or two that momentarily pique my interest. And I've found some intriguing ones: a small agate (not of commercial value), some fossiliferous limestone (seashells and the like that have accumulated and become incorporated into stone), a piece of...
    By GrahamLewis · May 11, 2022 · 740 · 3
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  8. Scrabble

    I love playing Scrabble. My husband and I played every day before he died. My brother comes over a few times a week and we always take out the board. I’m not really a competitive person but when it comes to Scrabble I like to win. Letters and words! Is there any better combination? My instinct for symbolism comes alive. Not even my brother’s constant harangue that I fucked the board bothers me. Getting that seven-letter word! Is there anything better? My most recent seven-letter word (a...
    By Louanne Learning · Sep 5, 2022 · 726 · 2
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  9. Homeless Lite

    Back in the ol' hometown and I decided that rather than staying in and paying for a hotel -- and rather than accepting invites to crash at friend's houses or sleeping on mom's couch -- I'd take my tent and sleeping bag and camp in a city park. It's a nice tent and a nice park, though my little tent is dwarfed by rows of RVs. But the night was quiet and calm, no rain and no noise. But it's hard to make the compromise between hotel and home. The tent's too small to do anything other than...
    By GrahamLewis · May 7, 2022 · 726 · 1
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  10. Determinism vs. Free Will

    At first glance, determinism makes a lot of scientific sense. Everything has a cause and an effect, right? All our choices are constrained by internal (biological) and external forces over which we have no control. Right? Max Plank made a strong argument when he wrote: How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature’s laws? Geesh. How can you argue with that? We are balls in the...
    By Louanne Learning · Oct 7, 2022 · 722 · 3
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  11. TikTok, Dude!

    The dark side (one of them, anyway) of social media: A car theft challenge going viral on TikTok and other social media apps has led to a 767% increase in Hyundai and Kia vehicle thefts in the Chicago area since the beginning of July compared to last year, according to authorities. In 2019 a little over 200 KIAs and 200 Hyundais were stolen statewide (Colorado). The following year, that number jumped to roughly 400 each, then doubled again in 2021, to more than 1,000. Already in 2022, we...
    By Earp · Sep 7, 2022 · 715 · 3
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  12. Consonance and Dissonance

    Consonance and dissonance are opposites. Dissonance is tension and clash. Dissonance is the person in the grocery store yelling at their kid. It’s not finding the words. It’s lying to yourself. It’s a bitter argument. It’s rudeness. It’s rage. It’s rationalizations. It’s believing impossible things. It’s not practicing what you preach. It’s road kill. It’s dying too young. Consonance is flow and rightness. Consonance is holding a newborn. It’s children having fun while playing. It’s giving...
    By Louanne Learning · Sep 11, 2022 · 692
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  13. It's All Good

    My kid sister died about a month ago. I'm still processing it. I tried to capture it below, but I'm so close to it that I can't tell if it's worth reading, or it's TMI. I didn't want to post it in the workshop, because it's not meant as a project but as an effort to understand. I recently touched death, touched it when I held the icy-cold, blackened, hand of my dying kid sister and learned from her the art of dying right. Susan (not her real name) was diagnosed with cancer about four...
    By GrahamLewis · Oct 18, 2022 · 690 · 1
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  14. Questions and Statements

    We are born asking questions. My mother likes to tell the story of newborn me being placed in her arms for the very first time. The memory is engraved in her heart and in her mind, such a strong impression it made. The little bundle I was looked her right in the eye, asking, “Well, you’ve got me now. What are you going to do with me?” And ever since, I have been asking, “What does this mean?” Where do questions come from? A need to know and understand. Curiosity, surely. Riddle me this,...
    By Louanne Learning · Jan 4, 2023 · 683 · 6
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  15. Immortal Words

    We’ve discussed immortality in the Science thread, but it occurred to me today that we never touched upon the kind of immortality we as writers hope for—to live on in our words. It’s a nice thought, that what we create from our depths, from our blood, sweat and tears, will never die. We put who we are into our writing and the writing survives. In 23 BC the Roman poet Horace began the final poem in his Odes with these lines: I have finished a monument more lasting than bronze, more lofty...
    By Louanne Learning · Sep 5, 2022 · 677 · 1
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