Dadaism Article Live @ Paperblanks Blog

Posted by on April 23, 2012 No comments

Another quick update to mention an article I wrote has gone live at Paperblanks blog. I’ve pimped Paperblanks before, but it always bears repeating: they make some of the most beautiful notebooks and are well worth checking out. Even if you’re not a writer, their products make excellent gifts.

The article can be found here:

Dadaism: Kick-Starting Creativity by Freeing Your Mind. Excerpt – Coming at Dadaism from a literary perspective, it’s a fantastic way to let go of all authorial control, something a lot of authors and other artistic types struggle with, as well as to kick-start creativity and find beauty in the random and often nonsensical.

New Micro-Fiction @onefortyfiction

Posted by on March 8, 2012 No comments

A small blog about a very small story. My latest micro-fic has gone live @onefortyfiction. You can read it and post comments (if you like) here:

“Robogrrrl” – light-hearted sci-fi, general audience.

I’m so impressed with the rapid turn-around with this one. I submitted it late last night, and got the acceptance this morning. One Forty Fiction’s editor must have super powers!

Paperblanks Author Interview

Posted by on February 18, 2012 No comments

It’s no secret I’m slightly obsessed with Paperblanks notebooks, as I’ve Tweeted and blogged about them before. I recently picked up two new notebooks, their stunning “Midnight Gold” and “Indigo Sky Mares,” and after mentioning my purchases on Twitter I got into a micro-conversation with the good people at Paperblanks, which lead to an opportunity to take part in their bi-monthly “Featured Artist” segment.

Before I link to the interview, I should point you to their various ranges of notebooks (both lined and blank), guest books, day planners, and address books of all shapes, sizes and designs. It’s so hard picking a favourite design, and I talk more in the interview about the ones I tend to favour, but there are a couple I’ve got my eye on for my next Paperblanks spree—their Japanese Lacquer Boxes collection and the Mucha collection. They’re both so elegant and beautiful!

You can read the interview, in which I ramble about notebooks, creativity, and inspiration here. (There is also a pic of me looking all thoughtful and authorish.)

And the rest of their Featured Artist interviews can be found here.

New Micro-Fic at 5×5 Fiction

Posted by on February 6, 2012 No comments

I don’t know where my mind was last month—in the clouds, maybe, or simply buried in novel and offline stuffs and things. Anyway, I forgot to mention that I had a piece of micro-fiction published in 5×5 Fiction Issue 4, which was themed ‘smoke’. My piece can be found within the issue .pdf:

“Morning Jaunt,” PG. 25 words of angsty speculative fiction.

I also want to mention how cool the idea behind 5×5 Fiction is. From their website:

Complete stories (not rantings or poems) must be exactly 25 words long, told in exactly 5 sentences, with each sentence comprised of exactly 5 words.

Much like the Twitter-based magazines, it’s a fun challenge coming up with something readable in so few words, but if the Twitter stories are just too short for you, this one might be a better option. I’d also highly recommend reading the other issues, as they’re all reasonably short and easy to gobble up, plus they’re full of imaginative stories and concepts from a variety of genres.

Time Travelling, Awkwardly

Posted by on February 6, 2012 No comments

One of those annoying little details that can distract me from a story I’m reading is the unlikely passage of time. I try not to let it bother me, but I hate it when my brain snags on something trivial and drags me out of a good book. Every now and then I’ll read a story in which a ridiculous amount of time passes in the midst of a scene—or worse, in the middle of conversation/action between two characters.

One thing I try to do when I write the passage of time in my stories is to actually time it and see just how long it really is. Let’s face it, if character A stares at character B for ‘several minutes’, there’s something seriously wrong with character A, unless they’re a known stalker, in which case staring at someone for several minutes is probably accurate (and more than a little creepy). But seriously, have you ever timed two or three minutes? It’s an age, especially for there to be a pause in which characters blink/stare incredulously/fumble for words. Even the most awkward of awkward silences rarely last that long, not when all parties are perfectly capable of leaving or going off to do something else.

I wish it didn’t drag me out of a story, as this issue crops up more often than I’d like. But I suppose if it wasn’t time passage that distracts me, it’d be something else, eh? And to be fair, I’ve never put a book aside because of the unlikely passage of time… yet.

On Countersinking – Showing & Telling

Posted by on February 6, 2012 No comments

Taken from Turkey City Lexicon, a wonderful article highlighting some of the clichés and pitfalls that can clog up a story. The article was written with sci-fi in mind, although a lot of their points relate to any genre of fiction.

This particular one makes me grin, as it’s something I used to do a lot when I started writing. Thankfully, I’m way more conscious of it nowadays. A couple of years ago, a good friend and I set about workshopping our earliest pieces to see what we could learn from them. The workshops were a riot—seeing ourselves as young, bouncy authors, full of excitement and dreadful clichés, lacking a certain finesse and attention to detail but having so much fun writing and developing our styles. It’s a bit like travelling back in time and spending an afternoon with the kid version of yourself. Eye-opening and amusing.

Anyway, one of the things we found occurring often was:

Countersinking

A form of expositional redundancy in which the action clearly implied in dialogue is made explicit. “‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said, urging her to leave.”

The funny thing is, I’m seeing this a lot recently in published novels—even as recent as today, while I was listening to an audiobook at work—and every time it pops up I smile. It’s strange how writing peeves can bring up so many nostalgic feelings. :)