Captain Awkward is a an advice blog helping people find the words to have difficult conversations. It has a zero-tolerance policy towards accepting or excusing abuse, micro-aggressions, and generally creepy behaviour. It is brilliant and I love it. Go have a read.
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Things I have liked this week
Politics stuff
From Men’s Rights Activist Marmoset comes the equally clever and funny Internalized Misogyny Aardvark. Brilliant.
From Men’s Rights Activist Marmoset comes the equally clever and funny Internalized Misogyny Aardvark. Brilliant.
Writing stuff
Five reasons why blogging makes you a better writer. I’ve read a few articles lately about how blogging is a distraction activity and is basically giving your work away for free, so it’s nice to read something that affirms that blogging is a useful activity for a writer. It has certainly improved my writing.
Astronomy Picture of the Day
The Sun. So very awesome.
Things I have liked this week
Politics stuff
The entirely hilarious Men’s Rights Activist Marmoset. These are a couple of my favourites:
The entirely hilarious Men’s Rights Activist Marmoset. These are a couple of my favourites:
Writing stuff
The Bookshelf Muse is full of helpful and informative stuff. This week I particularly enjoyed this post about using frustration to ramp up your writing.
Shopping stuff
I bought some clothes from an online store, Holy Clothing, and they are great. I love them. Go look at the lovely things now while the UK£ and US$ exchange rate is still good.
Things I have liked this week
Dancing stuff
Strictly Come Dancing is back. Whoop whoop! I love Strictly. And while I don’t really know who half the celebrities are, I’ll be supporting whoever is partnered with Artem or James :-).
Strictly Come Dancing is back. Whoop whoop! I love Strictly. And while I don’t really know who half the celebrities are, I’ll be supporting whoever is partnered with Artem or James :-).
Space picture
From Cassini in the shadow of Saturn. An amazing picture that looks like it’s not real, but it is.
Writing stuff
This week I read an article about avoiding certain cliched and overused words on your CV. I thought a lot of the advice applied to writing about characters. Basically it boils down to ‘give examples and let the reader work out the qualities’. Good stuff.
Things I have liked this week
Writing and procrastination
The whole You are not so Smart blog is fascinating, but what really resonated with me this week were a couple of posts on procrastination. I procrastinate much more than I am happy with and sometimes that’s because I forget that I can’t work all the time. Other times it’s because big projects are scary and sometimes it’s because I want the emotional reward now, damnit!
More writing stuff
I’m worldbuilding at the moment and this week I came across On Thud and Blunder by Poul Anderson. It’s about internal consistency and realism in fantasy worlds. Highly entertaining and very instructive. It’s published on the SFWA website and is quite long, but a worthwhile read.
Pretty pictures of space
The loveliness of cosmic clouds from Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Things I have liked this week
The origin of words
The Inky Fool, a blog about words, phrases, grammar and other good stuff. Totally charming.
The obligatory space-y picture
Lots of beautiful pictures on APOD this week and I’m picking this artist’s impression of a wierdly dark planet as my favourite as it reminds me there’s so much we don’t know yet.
Writing stuff
From the SFWA, a list of the common writing ‘problems’ seen in SF&F. Amusing, and you might spot one or two you recognise.
Things I have liked this week
Astronomy picture of the day
Lots to choose from this week, so I’ve picked two: this summer triangle over Catalonia and this castle and meteor by moonlight.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Went to see this on Friday and I enjoyed it much more than I expected. The CGI was very well done. I was expecting a fun romp but the film was much more than that. Having seen it, I really want to see a remake of the original.
Starting a new writing project
After nearly three years of working on Immortal/Sacrifice I’ve decided it is time to move on. I’ve learnt so much about writing a novel with this project but I’ve reached the point where I need to take that and start something new. I said I would do the next one differently and am going to start with planning it out and building up my world. I’m very excited about the new WIP, working title Wormfeeder.
Things I have liked this week
Social media explained
Writing stuff
There is a tension between being persistent with a project and knowing when is the right time to give up. Novels take a long time to write, but how long is too long? This article on deciding when to start a new story has some interesting ideas.
Space stuff
While I was on holiday this year, I picked up some postcards with amazing images of earth taken from the International Space Station. The one of Britain and Ireland seems to have made it into a couple of papers in the summer. They were taken by Italian astronaut, Paulo Nespoli, and the whole set can be seen at the European Space Agency’s photostream.
Things I have liked this week
Writing stuff
This article is about judging the quality of your writing. It makes an interesting point about how agents and publishers are not in the business of judging writing quality, but instead, the marketability of the product. When I’m thinking about self-publishing, the little voice in my head says ‘but who will tell me it’s good enough?’. This article provides an answer. Sort of.
The graffiti at the station where I work
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Pretty clouds of hydrogen gas. The universe is awesome.
Things I have liked this week
Clips from HBO’s Game of Thrones set to Johnny Cash ‘God’s gonna cut you down’. It’s brilliant. I haven’t seen the TV series yet and I’m really looking forward to the DVD coming out.
Blogging, writing and selling books
This is a thoughtful post from Livia Blackburne on blog writing and selling books and John Locke’s approach. At some point I’ll get around to reading what John Locke wrote.
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Not only is it a gorgeous picture, but I also learnt about noctilucent clouds.
Boudica Marginalia 