TWIC: fonts, distraction, mistakes to avoid, Nanowrimo plot prepping

1,000 fonts to try out. I have mild opinions on fonts. I like Times New Roman (which Blogger says this is, or maybe this is Blogger's version) and I don't know what the big deal is about Comic Sans. There is some value for educators to experiment with fonts. I recall a seminar on the subject; the takeaway was to use three fonts in handouts for students. One each for instructions on what to do, one for the questions for the students and one for examples.
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Everything Weisberger has written on his Freewrite in one year. Freewrite is a single purpose platform that is meant to reduce distraction; all you can do is type in one font, no internet. I think my sister had an electric typewriter with more features thirty years ago. He hates it and didn't write very much.  In somewhat related news, I bought a bluetooth keyboard so I could type with my phone and reduce the amount I was carrying. A week or so later, the bluetooth on my phone died. I guess I'll use that keyboard more next year when I have a new phone.
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9 mistakes to avoid in CBC writing contest submissions. It feels like I offered this link before but a quick search didn't turn it up. Maybe it is so valuable, I should post it twice!
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Chat Nano links form October 26. The official topic was 'plot' and we did discuss it but also a lot of other things.
Plot generator.
using public domain images to make cover art.
Nano's 30 covers in 30 days feature.
Aeon Timeline, an app/tool for keeping your plot organized. Some discount for Nano writers.
Scrivener has a free trial period through Nano and Nano winners get a good discount if they want to buy it.
Nanowrimo has a dedicated topic listing on Quora. I liked this discussion of Michael Moorcock's style of writing.

TWIC: secret cants, money, cbc, drums

My son told me a few months ago that he wanted to be a BJ.  I eventually learned he meant a 'Broadcast Jockey'; which I think is a Koreanization of Broadcaster  and Disk Jockey or the like.
Kids these days.
And sub-cultures.
Many groups have their own secret language or 'anti-language', one deliberately prepared to confuse those on the outside.

From London to Timbuktu, there is a teeming underworld of rebellious “anti-societies” who speak a mercurial, ever-changing code. Their words are, quite literally, gobbledygook designed to confuse authority.

...
The concept of an anti-language throws light on many of the vibrant slangs at the edges of society, from Cockney rhyming slang and Victorian “Gobbledygook” to the “Mobspeak” of the Mafia and “Boobslang” found uniquely in New Zealand prisons. The breadth and range of the terms can be astonishing; a lexicography of Boobslang reaches more than 200 pages, with 3,000 entries covering many areas of life. To be “under the thumb” is to be in love, a “double yoker” is an idiot, a “cue ball” is a skinhead and a “goodnight kiss” is a knockout punch. Outside of prison, each type of crime will have its own specialised vocabulary. A 1980s survey of American confidence tricksters, for instance, found a variety of colourful names for their intended victims – they are an “apple”, an “egg”, a “fink”, or, most innocuously sounding, “Mr Bates”.

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"I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks"

Via Frinkiac.

The Huffington Post is a for-profit news organization that is proud that it doesn't pay its bloggers.* Chuck Wendig and John Scalzi are, quite reasonably, upset.
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Paint as if you weren't getting paid for it.
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CBC Books has a 'premise generator' on their site. Ah, that link is to CBC Books, but the generator is here.

At the CBC Books site, there is a link to submit your own premise for a story.
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A style guide for telegrams.
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Need some drums in the background? This site can help.

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*I write for free, but I , uh write well for money.  Wait, I want to change that.  My blog is a gathering place for my thoughts and, for want of a better term, research.  I hope the writing is of acceptable quality but I consider my blog to be a place to learn, for me and for my reader(s).  I work for free but I am not working for someone else to make money.

TWIC: publish six books a year - no problem

What I learned when I diversified my reading.

How to stay creative while working fulltime.

Creative scientific ideas powered by rivalries.

Creativity isn't magic.

"I take it easy and only publish a book every two months or so.  Not a book or two every month." Iris Johanson in an interview with writer 2.0.  I couldn't quickly find any authors publishing that quickly but one, Craig Osso, manages a book every five weeks - 26 books in thirty months.

Stephen King on writing Carrie.

POW! Two unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty and telekinesis, came together, and I had an idea.

TWIC: How I should be titling my posts...

Wordpress and a few other sites run a 'better blogging' article every few months.  I do hope that others read this blog and get something useful from it, but it mostly seems a storehouse for things I find interesting.  SEO isn't that interesting to me and I don't make money from this blog.  Still it is number four on this list, Number five: use at least one image for each post, is one I really need to remember.
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Another recurring them is 'routines of famous creative people'.  Here is an example from Business Insider.

A.J. Jacobs: “Force yourself to generate dozens of ideas.”
In an interview for the series How I Write, Jacobs talks about his daily writing routines and dishes out some advice for young writers …
My kids wake me up. I have coffee. I make my kids breakfast, take them to school, then come home and try to write. I fail at that until I force myself to turn off my Internet access so I can get a little shelter from the information storm.
I am a big fan of outlining. I write an outline. Then a slightly more detailed outline. Then another with even more detail. Sentences form, punctuation is added, and eventually it all turns into a book.
I write while walking on a treadmill. I started this practice when I was working on Drop Dead Healthy, and read all these studies about the dangers of the sedentary life. Sitting is alarmingly bad for you. One doctor told me that “sitting is the new smoking.” So I bought a treadmill and put my computer on top of it. It took me about 1,200 miles to write my book. I kind of love it — it keeps me awake, for one thing.

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Ani Alexander interviewed Gabriela Pereira.  I think both are writers.  I've kept the tab open for a while so I guess I think it's important.  You know what? This cold that I have that is sucking all my energy away from me is kinda important right now.  If I felt better, maybe I wouldn't be snarky about this:
Quote 1: There are no accidents in writing.
Quote 2: Every word should be in your writing for a reason.
Is it the virus talking or do these kinda contradict each other? Pereira has a book out next spring called DIY MFA.
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The Washington Post discusses why America's obsession with STEM is dangerous.

If Americans are united in any conviction these days, it is that we urgently need to shift the country’s education toward the teaching of specific, technical skills. ... and about new initiatives from companies, universities or foundations to expand STEM courses (science, technology, engineering and math) and deemphasize the humanities.

I think Fareed Zakaria has started with some confusion. Engineering definitely fits the description of "specific technical skills" but Science and Math do not. The big difference is that the latter two are ways of looking at the world and fit this description (intended for liberal arts): " A broad general education helps foster critical thinking and creativity. Exposure to a variety of fields produces synergy and cross fertilization." He also describes 'design' as outside of STEM.  I don't understand why he thinks this.

What the Hell does this mean?

One final reason to value a liberal education lies in its roots. For most of human history, all education was skills-based. Hunters, farmers and warriors taught their young to hunt, farm and fight. But about 2,500 years ago, that changed in Greece, which began to experiment with a new form of government: democracy.

Science people can't understand democracy?  I would say scientific training is what allows people to test political claims and improves democracy.
As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found, science enriches art but art doesn't empower science.

I think Zakaria has a point about Engineering and over specialization in education. The majors at my university are ridiculously specific and I wonder what will happen to the students in my Bodyguard class - seriously, that's an actual major my university offers.

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The CBC short story Prize is available to be won.  Entries are due by Nov 1.  You might have to be Canadian.  I'm using my sick-card to justify not having read the information at the link.

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Misbehavior In School Pays Off For Some Students. I don't know if this relates to creativity at all but it might.  Certainly, previous research on teachers showed the most creative ones typically made trouble.

when we recognize that misbehavior in the classroom can be reflective of two very different non-cognitive skills—externalizing and internalizing behaviors—a much more nuanced story emerges. Both of these characteristics are associated with lower schooling attainment. However, whereas internalizing behaviors, like being unforthcoming, depressive or withdrawn, predict lower earnings, externalizing behaviors, such as aggression, predict higher earnings. In other words, the externalizing factor lowers schooling attainment, but appears to have value in the labor market. This finding calls into question the role of schooling in identifying and cultivating skills that are productive.

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David Malki retweeted something from Farooq Butt that I like.  I hope the embedding works.

The most important thing creators do. From "How to Fly a Horse" pic.twitter.com/gmUosjAnIT

— Farooq Butt (@fmbutt) September 23, 2015

The CBC on Munsch

The CBC looks at Robert Munsch on his 70th birthday.

Via @cbcbooks at.Twitter

and How to Tell a Story Like Robert Munsch:

Casting call woes and running elephants

And more at Casting Call Woes.

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I have carved a few elephants from wood and one in a golf ball core.  I want to make one that is more dynamic in appearance as my typical work, in all the animals I have carved, has been still - four feet on the ground, trunk curled almost to the ground.  Whatever my next project is, I want it to be in motion.

And that's completely off topic.

The CBC has an interview with David Usher, author of Let the Elephants Run, a book on creativity.  The key concept is to let your big idea grow and try to find life for them.