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Excellence
Jun. 20th, 2021 06:25 pmExcellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
― Aristotle
― Aristotle
a painful thing
Feb. 6th, 2020 11:31 pmIt is a painful thing to say to oneself: by choosing one road I am turning my back on a thousand others. Everything is interesting; everything might be useful; everything attracts and charms a noble mind; but death is before us; mind and matter make their demands; willy-nilly we must submit and rest content as to things that time and wisdom deny us, with a glance of sympathy which is another act of our homage to the truth.
― Antonin Sertillanges
― Antonin Sertillanges
follow your star
Aug. 27th, 2017 01:22 pmIf you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.
-- Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
-- Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
circle around the boundaries of the earth
Oct. 20th, 2013 11:12 pmWith my long tail feathers floating as I fly, I circle around, circle around the boundaries of the earth. . . .
Used to sing that at camp. It makes a nice round. Also reminds me of my current Work-In-Progress situation.
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Used to sing that at camp. It makes a nice round. Also reminds me of my current Work-In-Progress situation.
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Observations on following your passion and why it is not such good advice.
Prophecies -- and if your characters are trying to fulfill one, you've got a problem, since they and the prophecy are pulling together. No conflict there!
Prophecies -- and if your characters are trying to fulfill one, you've got a problem, since they and the prophecy are pulling together. No conflict there!
Essential Worldbuilding
Aug. 31st, 2012 07:20 pmWhat are the tools and research methods writers use to craft complex, believable worlds? What are the essential elements necessary to ground a fictional world in a sense of tangible reality?
The question of what are essential elements is both straightforward and simple.
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bittercon
The question of what are essential elements is both straightforward and simple.
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part of
bitterconreflections on writing
Oct. 13th, 2011 11:05 pmSometimes story ideas that lost their liveliness surge back to life.
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front to back
Oct. 5th, 2011 10:32 pmI started writing longhand because of a book. I had always done my outlines longhand, but I was working through writing exercises (Ursula K. LeGuin's Steering the Craft) and my big problem was devising incidents to use in them.
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outlined and unhappy
Jun. 15th, 2011 11:15 pmIt's hard to judge when an outline is done. I've been bit by one-- hard -- where the story was like pulling nails. Well, yeah, they can always turn to like pulling nails, but that I had not gotten the plot detailed enough in the outline to be clear was not a help. Pulling nails on the earlier part was easier; I just felt uninspired. The later -- not at all the same. I needed inspiration for details.
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taking your own advice
Apr. 25th, 2011 05:17 pmMuch easier to give it than to use it. even in writing (she said, pondering philosophically).
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writing exercises
Apr. 23rd, 2011 08:31 pmJohn Gardner at one point says that writing exercises are good practice for writing because a lot of the time you are not writing stuff out of a deep and passionate desire to write that stuff, but because it is needed for the story.
How true.
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How true.
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Magic of 100
Apr. 8th, 2011 08:20 pmA writing technique I ran across here, and more details here. And I have fooled around with a bit.
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wrestling with possibilities
Apr. 6th, 2011 10:08 pmIt's one thing to get ideas. It's another to get fresh, original ideas. And yet a third to get fresh original ideas that do more than remind you that nothing gets to be cliched without having a lot going for it.
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bracing yourself
Dec. 17th, 2010 01:38 amSometimes you have to brace yourself before a scene, to write, or to revise. Draw back, take a deep breath, and then plunge in.
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stick a fork into it
Dec. 3rd, 2010 08:59 pmSo you outline the story, write the first draft, let it sit on the backburner, revise it, let it sit some more, revise it again, send it out to friends for opinions, revise it again. . . .
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