TMIC: a grab-bag of goodies as an excuse for not posting recently

I like the spiders and so much more at Ketrina Draws a Lot.

This of course is a snipped image. To see the whole thing, follow the link.
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I took an online course on creativity and we had to be in groups. I tried so hard to join the 'Creationists' team. That was the only time I tried to be a creationist. How many creationists are there in the US?
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Curiosity should be boundless.
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Writing is an expensive job.
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Very slightly related: why a writer moved away from the big cities.
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Pinker's 13 tips for writing.
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The home that inspired Wuthering Heights.
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I have been procrastinating a lot. I presume all wannabe writers say this. Here is a look at procrastination. I'll read it later.

Today's creativiti on the ice

I thought the family and I were just going to walk on the ice and look around, get some exercise. We did that and found some rough and smooth patches so we could get some speed and then slide. My son also suggested an artwork challenge. We had three duels; son and I, wife and I, son and wife. None of us managed anything fantastic and I will not tell you whose art you are looking at, but we had fun.  The challenges were boat, helicopter and tree.

 To me, the way the snow drifted and hardened resembled topographic maps. There were low, dark spots with only a dusting of snow over the ice. There were also thicker, brighter areas of thicker snow. The thick areas were larger so they appeared to me to be mainland around lakes with islands. You are welcome to invert the concept so there is dark land surrounded by bright seas.

TWIC: the elephant in the room,

Drawing an elephant without ever having seen one. Image is shrunk slightly. To see more fantastical images, follow the link.

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TWIC: Rapture, periods, Bulwer-Lytton, cities, sketching

Fred Clarke at Slacktivist has been very slowly going through the books and movies of the Left Behind series, explaining why they are terrible. I am certain this post went up a decade or more ago, but he reposts older entries now and then. Clarke's dislike of the evangelical Christian story is not based on a dislike of the religion; he is a devout Baptist of the sort that give Christians a good name. Instead, he dislikes the terrible writing and in dissecting it, he shows writers what we should do and what we should avoid.

I would have thought that the medium of film would require detail in place of the book’s vague generality. Film, by it’s very nature, avoids the pitfall of Jerry Jenkins’ apparent motto as a novelist — “Tell, don’t show.” Yet for all that we’re shown here of the panicked passengers and the remnants of the naked and the dead, it all somehow still seems abstract and devoid of the specifics of human detail.
We see Harold’s clothes, but the camera doesn’t linger or focus our attention on particular detail any more than Jenkins’ words did. They still seem as generic as the “Harold’s clothes” of the book. Here they aren’t even Harold’s clothes, since the movie doesn’t bother to give the poor man a name.
Actually, no one on the plane seems to have a name. As Buck heads to look for the missing husband, a woman realizes her children are missing and begins shouting about “my kids.” She doesn’t call them by name. She doesn’t call them at all. She just starts shouting to other people, “I can’t find my kids!” As the other passengers realize their loved ones have also disappeared, they join in this shouting, all similarly using generic terms for their missing family members. It makes it seem weirdly like we’re watching people acting out the description of the scene rather than the scene itself.

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Hooray! There is some support for putting two spaces after a period!  The evil 'one space' team had worn me down to the point where I sometimes use one space and others two and if I mix it up, I let it go.  I've fallen so far.
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In research for a story I am writing, I learned of the Athenaeum, a high-brow private club in London that shared membership with the Royal Society and such. Most importantly for me, Bulwer-lytton was a member. This allows me to offer a link to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. I guess I first learned of this contest in 1984, as this entry, the winning one for that year, has remained in my imagination all this time:

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These cities have caused other forms of themselves to live on text form, separate from the original themselves.

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Sketches and gifs on how to sketch.

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The comedy writers of the Onion and their process of selecting the best ideas for this hardcopy and online journal (Video).
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TWIC:drawing, productivity, writing

How to Draw Good.
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Productivity tips.
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Habits of Indie Authors.
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How not to Write Women.
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Humble bundle has a Bob Ross painting bundle available

Humble Bundle has monthly book and game bundles; you pay what you want to get a set of ebooks on a theme or mobile games or computer games and the theme changes each month or so (it might be every two weeks).

I have bought many bundles of ebooks and one of phone games and one of computer games and been satisfied.

They currently have a pretty cool bundle of books and software to help you paint. I am not sure but I think the programs are Windows specific. In addition to Bob Ross ebooks on how to paint, there are a few programs -Corel Painter Essentials 6 and some addition stand out - and even some art-themed games. I will buy this bundle. The minimum price is $15 (US) so it seems like a good entry point if you are interested in learning or playing around.

Bob Ross is more popular now as a meme than he was as a late-night weirdo drawing his 'happy trees' that no one watched. Now he is cool.

Inktober 1: I had to start somewhere

Well, I have confirmed that I have a goal. That goal is to draw something that doesn't embarrass me. Sigh.

I often draw a version of this on my whiteboard for students to see the difference in tongue position and the importance of sticking their tongue out when they pronounce, "th".

The great artists I have seen and drawn inspiration from all show their warmup doodles on the side. I can't get more embarrassed so I might as well be pretentious.

Inktober starts tomorrow

Inktober is a drawing festival that takes place during October. Drawings have to be in ink - "(you can do a pencil under-drawing if you want)." and posted online.

The website is here. There is a Facebook page.  With the hashtag on Twitter.

Here are the rules:

On Twitter, Abby offers her own prompt list:

Made a prompt list for inktober! Can't wait!!! 🎃#inktober #halloween pic.twitter.com/kWchngVHNP

— Abby (@abiirinn) September 27, 2017

svslearn.com has lessons and tips for aspiring artists - $14.99 a month. They are mentioned in the video and introduction at the Inktober link. I am not interested but those who actually do this as a hobby might find it useful. SVS has some other content for Inktober.

Seeing the great work of artists doesn't intimidate me much. I have no illusions about my own skills but I hope that my skill does improve through the month. For simplicity reasons, I may post my drawings here once a week. In addition to the prompts above, I often try to draw examples for the subjects I teach. my work here may well include a carefully drawn version of my standard 'TH' pronunciation face. I'll have to check the textbook I am using these days to see what else is needed there. Otherwise, I sometimes like to look at a map or a building schematic while writing to see what actions are possible in the story - I know that I have written four people entering an odanathropter and eight climbing out at the end of the journey - and maybe mistakes like that will be easier to avoid with a few images at hand (Obviously, an odanathropter is an airship shapes like a dragonfly). 

Here are some of Jake Parker's (the creator's) work from 2013. He offers these images in a book, so I have taken care to shrink them greatly.

The image below is from Jake Wyatt. It was posted on the inktober Facebook page on Sept 15, but I don't know how to link to a specific post on Facebook. Here is Wyatt's website and the image below has been shrunk. I don't know the first thing about ink drawing and wanted to see images with colour being used.

TWIC: Inktober, CBC, LeGuin, writing, quora,women, Voynich solved, carving tools, tree font

Inktober is coming.

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Do submit entries to CBC literary contests. Don't make these mistakes. Here are two:

3. Including your name (and address) in the file
It's impossible to anonymously evaluate a text when you have the person's name sitting in the right hand corner of the last page. Please remove your name and any identifying information from your submission (except the title, of course). We have our own ways to keep track of who you are and what you wrote.

A guide to writing prizes for Canadians4. Sending the wrong file
Are you attaching the proper document? Sometimes we receive frantic emails from people who realize they've sent in the wrong version of their story. Some keep tinkering with it after it's been submitted and want to send a tighter version. By then it's too late. We only accept one version of each entry for evaluation.
A guide to Canadian literary magazines and journals open to submissions

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The CBC has a new short story prize; submissions accepted now!

The 2018 CBC Short Story Prize is open for submissions. Canadian writers can submit original, unpublished short stories until Oct. 31, 2017.
The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, attend a 10-day writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their story published on CBC Books.

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Introduction by Ursula LeGuin to her new Hainish novels collection. An excerpt:

Methodical cosmos-makers make plans and charts and maps and timelines early in the whole process. I failed to do this. Any timeline for the books of the Hainish descent would resemble the web of a spider on LSD. Some stories connect, others contradict. Irresponsible as a tourist, I wandered around in my universe forgetting what I’d said about it last time, and then trying to conceal discrepancies with implausibilities, or with silence. If, as some think, God is no longer speaking, maybe it’s because he looked at what he’d made and found himself unable to believe it.


Usually silence is best, but sometimes I think it’s better to point out some of the gaps, to prevent readers from racking their brains in the effort to make sense out of what doesn’t. People ask, for instance: how did the League of Worlds morph into the Ekumen? or why did mindspeech suddenly vanish from the universe? I can’t answer the first question at all, but I know what happened to mindspeech. I couldn’t use it in a story any more, because when I began to think seriously about the incalculable effects mutual telepathy would have on a society, I could no longer, as it were, believe in it. I’d have to fake it. And though a fiction writer mustn’t confuse her creation with fact, encouraging “the willing suspension of disbelief” is not the same thing as faking.

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From Quora: What should male writers think about when writing female characters. This answer reminds men that women are not always thinking about their chests in the way many men are. Here is an excerpt of what not to write:

She rolled out of bed and put on a shirt, her nipples prominently showing through the thin fabric. She breasted boobily to the stairs and titted downwards.

I did not answer that question but I did answer a few. My social media writing is really taking off - but I neglect my blog. I wonder what my priorities are?
I was one of several who answered:

• I lost my creativity. How can I get it back?
• How do I get new ideas?
• I rambled a lot in explaining why creativity is difficult.

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Another question was about prepping -not for the coming zombie apocalypse, but before writing a novel. This list looked good.
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The Voynich manuscript has been solved, or deciphered. It is text describing medical treatments for various ailments. It is difficult to find a single bit ot excerpt; I guess this will do:

It is reflected, however, in the illustrated Zodiac wheels of the Voynich manuscript; the additional ingredients can be identified by the trademark patterns on the bathing tubs, a practice of ingredient identification used by many a medieval apothecary on his albarelli (storage jars). Each Zodiac wheel in the Voynich manuscript is populated by depictions of naked female figures in the classical tradition of either bathing in hip baths or in physical exertions.

I briefly mentioned Voynich here, the link in that post goes to the digitized books.---
Using images in English Language Teaching, a free e-book (pdf format found at the link).
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I try to carve wood. I know what a stop-cut is. At a carving tools fair, I picked up a few chisels, gouges and blades that I thought were appropriate; at the check out the clerk asked me what I planned to do with them. She then recommended fewer and different tools. Another subject I need to educate myself in. This blog post on wood carving tools will help.
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Tolkien reads the Hobbit. This was his first time seeing and using a tape recorder.
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A tree alphabet and font. Katie Holden has created an alphabet of trees. Part of it here.

I must admit I don't know how to install new fonts but if you can and want to, you can download it here.
Via Kottke.
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Social Justice Warriors are(n't) taking over science fiction.
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TWIC: books and writing, creativity damaged, chocolate, online goodies

A review of Ken Robinson's TED talk.
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It's not just education destroying your creativity, it is society as well!
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Two from CBC Books:

• How managing a radio station in the Congo led to a memoir.
• Tips for becoming a better poet.

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Niice seems a neat way to organize images for discussion.
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Drinking chocolate with added caffeine to improve your thought processes. The link gives a recipe and its rationale but it also describes the drink as 'tasty'. I'm not sure as sugar and milk apparently block uptake of the important nutrients. Yes, I am drinking sweetened milk tea right now.
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Working on the road, some tips.
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Experimental storytelling with Tor Labs.
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An ASCII spaceship generator.
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Free online textbooks.
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My friend Monica Heilman blogged about why people who can't draw should draw anyway.
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Notes from Philip Pullman regarding fiction for children at the Astrid Lindgren Award website.

TWIC:drawing, generators, formatting, words

Just when I'd promised to keep away from TWICs and Quora, I've found something cool for TWIC and wrote a Quora answer I am proud of.  Hmm.  Well, I didn't spend much time surfing on Quora so that's something.

The cool thing is auto draw. That's the description of a new Google tool, My drawing and the suggestion.

Here is the direct link to the tool.
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I've written about various online idea generators, ones that offer a list of names or possible book titles, or fantasy maps. You can probably find them here. Here are two more: Fantasy name generators and Seventh Sanctum. From the latter, a list of names for 'dark rituals'!

Accursed Communion of the Ever-living Avatar of Winds
Conjuration of Ensnaring Spectres
Demonic Ceremony of Misery
Dreadful Demigods' Ritual of Wickedness
Ever-changing Invocation of Foul Demigods
Fiendish Ghosts' Working of Chambers
Foul Demigod's Ritual of Omens
Incantation of Flesh
Incantation of the One-Hundred Gods of Death
Invocation of the Decree of Unholiness
Legendary Sacrifice of Crystaline KnivesLurking Beasts' Evocation of Agony

And Anime Powers generator:

Cable Blaster
Crushing Enlightenment
Exploding Harpoon
Fist Inhumation
Future Knuckle
Gleaming Blast
Green Club
Heaven Persuer
Hot Kill
Keen Program
Paramour Battler
Ripping Ward

My son always wanted me to play Pokemon with him - not the card or video games, but us acting out our own fights and such.  We had to plan our special attacks and abilities. I tormented him so much by choosing "Good dancing" or 'sense of rhythm' as my ability. Eventually he stopped asking me to play. Hmm. Now I feel bad.

There are a lot more generators there and some writing ones. From Plot Twists:

A string of numbers turns out to refer to a medical formula.
Because of a solar flare, the lead suddenly reveals a hateful side - which makes things much easier
Due to torture a character has to be hospitalized.
It's revealed that everything that is happening is all a dream. That's when everything becomes stranger

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Publisher in the proper format for Amazon and Kindle is now easier. Amazon offers new software for formatting:

If you've prepared a book in Microsoft Word, Kindle Create (Beta) helps you convert it so it's ready to publish to Kindle devices and apps. Kindle Create (Beta) makes it easier to go through the file conversion process, preventing the kinds of errors that can slow down publishing.
Kindle Create (Beta) helps you

• Preview and edit your book as it will appear in Kindle format--before you publish
• Create and edit your table of contents while styling your book. Add professionally-designed themes to make your eBook better-looking and easier to read

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The lessons Wendig has learned in writing 20 books in 5 years. There are 25; here are 3.

3. THE MUSE DOESN’T HUNT YOU, YOU HUNT THE MUSE
Waiting for inspiration is a fool’s game. You hunt it. You summon it. Writing is an act of laying traps for the Muse. Writing does not follow inspiration. It goes the other direction. You become inspired through the act of writing, of telling stories. Just sitting down and doing the work lays bait. It’s an alluring trail Reese’s Pieces meant to draw the extraterrestrial Muse into your house. 

4. IDEAS ARE EASY
For a long time I thought ideas were everything. I thought them precious pearls, when the reality is, they’re just driveway gravel. I got a hundred ideas whipping around my head every day, and the majority of them are sounds and noises — grunts in the dark, a gibber, a wail. I used to write them all down. I’d hoard them like a crow hiding colorful strips of ribbon in its nest. Now, I let them go. I shove them back out the door with not a moment’s interest. Then I wait. If those little bastards come back, if they sneak in through the vents like John McClane, if they creep in through the boltholes like a mouse — well, okay then. That’s an idea that wants to haunt me. That’s an idea whose grunts and gibbers might turn into a song. They’re all still driveway gravel, but maybe once in a while one of those pieces of flinty limestone has some quartz buried in there — something crystalline, with depth, with shine, something worth looking at. At the end of the day, though, no idea is worth anything but the work you give it. You still gotta polish that stone. You still gotta write it all down and make it shine. 

5. FIND YOUR DAMN PROCESS — THEN CHALLENGE IT
I often tell a story about how it took me five years to write — or rather, figure out how to write — Blackbirds, and that journey involves me learning I needed to outline my books before I write them. Some folks take that lesson as me telling them: “You have to outline.” But that’s not it. I have to outline. I don’t know what the fuck you need to do; you have to figure that out. You have a process. So go find it. Maybe that means writing 2k every day, reliably. Maybe it means writing 15,000 words every other weekend. Maybe it means you write in coffee shops, or in the crawlspace under your house. Maybe it means you eat a handful of bees before you begin. I dunno. That’s on you to figure it out, and while it’s important to figure out what you write and why you write, it’s also incredibly necessary to figure out how you write. You may think how you write is the way others have told you it must be, but that doesn’t make it true. Also important: when your process isn’t working, you need to evolve it. Your process isn’t one thing forever just as you aren’t one person forever. Challenge it. Change it. See the river and go with it.

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Sergei Prokudin Gorskii was a remarkable photographer a hundred years ago. That link goes to an image search in his name. Here he is on Wikipedia and at the Library of Congress. From the Google Search:

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The drawfee channel on Youtube.

Welcome to Drawfee, where we turn dumb ideas into even dumber drawings!

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Words with prefixes but not without.  You can be 'disgruntled' but never 'gruntled'.

It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way. I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it, since I was travelling cognito.

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TWIC: World building, animation, infographics, note-taking, Gangwon animals,

Man! I read a post at Tor on authors who were great world-builders and decided I wanted to introduce the subject by mentioning Zelazny's alien religion that allowed avatars to create worlds but actually finding the name of the religion or the aliens took a long time. Zelazny wasn't on the list of world-builders, by the way and the religion and/or the aliens were Pei'ans.
Anyway, the article would be better described as Five Classic Female Authors Who Were Great at World Building and it is a great list. I now want to go back to the stories by these authors I read in the eighties.
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Animation and Disney's Multi-plane camera. I have heard of animation cells but didn't know how they worked. This usage of them is wonderfully ingenious while also appearing totally obvious. I love the confluence of "That's amazing" and "That clearly follows".
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I was interested in trying to make an infographic or two last year and found the exercise more difficult that I had imagined. Lining up words and explanation with a coherent image is not easy. Nat Geo's infographics and Best Maps of 2016. A chunk of one from the first link:

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An interview with Al Jaffee.

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Not entirely related to creativity but definitely to curiosity. Why build a fort in a star shape?
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This subject could be a full post and may be at some time. For now, I am busy at an ESL and science camp and don't have the time.  At Quora, someone asked about the best distraction-free and minimalist writing tool. So far, a few software tools have been offered. The third, suggestion was, obviously, pen and paper. This made me think about my own actual writing (as opposed to typing) and the posts I've seen in several places for Bullet Journals. That link offers the best rundown on what they are although this one might have more in-depth information - I have a terrible internet connection here so there is a lot I can't see.  That latter link describes it as an analog system for the digital age.

From this site (the second one in the paragraph above) comes a quick intro to Bullet Journaling:

Bullet journal: a method of journaling and note-taking that uses bullet points as the core structure
Index: a table of contents that you update as you go
Daily Log: shit you did and/or need to do today (+ other observations)
Monthly Log: traditional month calendar + shit you need to do that month + shit you forgot to do last month
Rapid Logging: symbols that help you get that shit done
Future Log: year-at-a-glance calendar where you can put events, goals, and long-term shit you need to do

You can use any journal or notebook you want. You deliberately lock a few pages into 'modules' or specific uses. The common or required ones are: index and various calendars (year and month) but I might also devote a set number of pages to Running and Book Notes. 'Camp' is too big a subject and handier for me to take those notes as the need arises. The system also includes various symbols so that you to-do lists carry more information with fewer characters (this is the 'rapid logging' mentioned above).

I have always kept my journal as a sort of commonplace book. That is, I am now more aware of what a Bullet Journal is than I ever was of the specifics of a commonplace book. Indeed, that Wikipedia link, which I have just read more closely, quotes John Locke: " Commonplace books, it must be stressed, are not journals, which are chronological and introspective."  Mine is mostly chronological and the only connection I now see with a formal commonplace book is the wide variety of material I include in them.

More on Commonplace Books:

[The author is giving an example of a historic event he found interesting] He [an Athenian general] continued to interrupt and contradict the other generals. Finally, the Spartan general threatened to strike Themistocles if he didn’t shut up and stop. “Strike!” Themistocles shouted back, “But listen!”
When I read this, I immediately began a ritual that I have practiced for many years–and that others have done for centuries before me–I marked down the passage and later transferred it to my “commonplace book.” Why? Because it’s a great line and it stood out to me. I wrote it down I’ll want to have it around for later reference, for potentially using it in my writing or work, or for possible inspiration at some point in the future.
In other posts, we’ve talked about how to read more, which books to read, how to read books above your level and how to write. Well, the commonplace book is a thread that runs through all those ideas. It what ties those efforts together and makes you better at each one of them.

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Since I mentioned I am working at a science camp, here is a little cutie we found in the forest:

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Stephen King's ten rules for success (video).

After my discussion above, he is anti-notebook.
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Harvard's digital photo photo course (free).
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Creator of Zelda games discusses how he designs games.

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TWIC: contests, writer's block, drawing

Short story contests of 2017. An excerpt:

David Nathan Meyerson Prize for Fictionis only open to writers who have not yet published a book of fiction, either a novel or collection of stories. The winner receives US$1000 and publication in Southwest Review. Stories can be up to 8000 words in length and all entries will be considered for publication. The deadline for entries is 1 May.
Conium Review Innovative Short Fiction Contestis for new writing that takes risks and shows something new with its subject, style or characters. Submission may include any combination of flash fiction or short stories up to 7500 total words.The winner receives US$500 and publication. Entries are expected to open in February and close on 1 May.
Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contestis open to writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry who have yet to publish a book. The winner in each genre will be awarded US$2000. Entries open on 1 March and close 15 May.

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A Case Study of Self Treatment of writers block.

Unsuccessful.
As humourous as the article is, it was cited in another paper.
Phylogenetic analysis of methionine synthesis genes from Thalassiosira pseudonana My bolding below.

 The Cbf1 (centromere-binding factor 1) is a basic helix-loop-helix protein, which forms homodimers to bind to sites with consensus CACGTG core present at MET gene promoters (Kuras et al. 1996). This makes it to one of main activators of methionine metabolism and glutathione synthesis genes in yeast. Very little is known about the transcriptional regulation of gene expression in diatoms (Upper 1974). In genomes of T. pseudonana and P. tricornutum as much as 46 and 40 zinc finger transcription factors were identified, respectively. These belong to three types: C2H2, CCCH and TAZ type (Rayko et al. 2010). Neither, Met4p nor Met31p/Met32p yeast orthologs were found in the genome of T. pseudonana. 

I imagine that the regulation of gene expression involves blocking the writing of its code. Hence, writer's block.
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4 online resources to practice drawing figures.

TWIC: Nano prep, art podcast, drawing

NaNoWriMo starts in less than a week.  I am really torn over this one. Last year, I completed the challenge but, again, did not finish a novel. It crossed 50,000 words but only pointed toward an ending. In December and beyond, I added around 10,000 more words but haven't touched it in more than a month. My plan was, starting November 2015, I will see if I can be a writer. And the only clear result was that I could not. I could write but I didn't follow through. And I did write a lot; I have many answers on Quora and they were well researched. But they weren't the intended forum for my writing.

This year's book has the working title, "Smash the Lion, Smash the Dragon, Smash the Bear" and should conclude my steampunk trilogy - neither of the other two books have endings. One reason I am starting a new book is that this will force me to consider what happened at the end of book two so I will have a clear image of what I need to write towards when I return to it.

This story will feature a typical British stuffed shirt, and I have latched onto Cardigan as my model.

Okay, Nano stuff online: Quora topic page.
Are there are any good writing prompts for Nano?
What else could you complete in a month?
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If women wrote men the way men wrote women.
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Productive Procrastination.

4. Jordan Tannahill asks, "What is the most ridiculous thing you found yourself doing out of distraction/procrastination instead of writing?"
Duolingo. Not that it's ridiculous to try to improve my French, but it's ridiculous how addictive those little highs are when you get through a round without a mistake...
5. Jalal Barzanji asks, "How many times do you revise your manuscript before you submit it for publishing?"

At least twice - and at least one more time before it gets published.

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More on productivity: The best habits of famous writers.
Regarding failure (Toni Morrison):

Pay very close attention to failure, rather than get depressed or unnerved or feel ashamed. As a writer, a failure is just information...I recognize failure, which is important; some people don’t – and fix it, because it is data, it is information, knowledge of what does not work. That’s why writers need rewriting and editing...What you do is you identify the procedure and what went wrong and then correct it. If you think of writing simply as information, you can get closer to success.

On big projects with distance completions dates -and Nano-relevant advice (John Steinbeck):

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

And some advice important to me (Neil Gaiman):

When people come to me and they say, “I want to be a writer, what should i do?” I say you have to write. And sometimes they say, “I’m already doing that, what else should i do?” And I say you have to finish things...You learn by finishing things.

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Arts and Culture podcasts on BBC.
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A prompt for artists, your child's drawings.
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lhlhjhl

Paul Klee's notebooks archived online

Paul Klee's notebooks available online. 3900 pages can be seen. This image from here.

And another from here:

via boingboing.

From Wikipedia:

Paul Klee (German: [paʊ̯l ˈkleː]; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-German painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color theory, writing about it extensively; his lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory (Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre), published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are held to be as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting for the Renaissance.[1][2][3] He and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.

TYIC: eclectic dump of links that barely relate to creativity research

This Year in Creativity: I normally do a This Week... feature but this post was so long, I felt it needed a broader title.

The fantasy I typically read is based on European mythology.  I have lived in South Korea for more than a decade so so I also read fantasy with Asian themes.  Can or does science fiction have a similar regional flavour?  Gord Sellar wrote a short story about the effects of climate change on African protagonists that showed to me it can. I think the story is Dhuluma No More. And an interview with Sellar that I now want to read.  Boingboing has a link to ten of the best African fantasy and Sci Fi stories.

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Mnemonics is a crossover subject for me: it fits here in creative expression and also as something useful for my teaching career.  Here are two links from Boingboing: memorizing a deck of playing cards and how a pissing wolf can help your memory.  As a layperson in mnemonics, I gotta say you need to put a whole lot of work into the basics of the craft before it all becomes useful.
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How have bicycles changed?  What will a future bike look like?  Kottke has an answer to the first question.
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Science fiction authors Randy Rucker and Bruce Sterling discuss their work.
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Guidelines for design of London Tube Stations.

1. Achieve balance across the network.

2. Look beyond the Bostwick gates.  

3. Consider wholeness.

4. Prioritise comfort for staff and customers.

5. Delight and surprise. Every Underground station should include at least one moment of delight and surprise, to improve customers' journeys and the working environment for staff. Such moments help put the network on the map, as a world-class leader of design. 

6. Use materials to create atmosphere.

7. Create ambience with lighting.  

8. Integrate products and services.

9. Prepare for the future.

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How should we work in the future?  Industrial jobs are vanishing.  Flex time is increasing as is tele-commuting. What should the new dogmas be?
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I mentioned Sellar earlier. He has a discussion on gamifying education.
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Giving up a technology.  What would you give up?  Almost entirely unrelated, I wonder about giving up technologically obsolete phrases.  We should find new phrases for "Roll up/down a car's window" and "Rewind" when discussing digital video, "hang up" when ending a phone call...
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A review of ways to Go gradeless in a traditionally graded school:

How does she [Starr Sackstein] and each of her students negotiate the final grade for the course?
How does she resolve any differences in opinion between her and a student when negotiating the final grade for the course?
Are individual assignments, products, projects, etc. negotiated as well? Do they receive a grade for each of these or just a final grade at the end of the course?
Is she really going gradeless if students are giving themselves a grade?

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Computer generated novels. At least one of the 'novels' is a computer generated list of pixel colours on the cover of an edition of "The Sun Also Rises". ""Brass. Brass. Brass. Brass. Brass. Brass. Brass. Brass. Brass. Drab. Drab. University of California Gold. Brass. Brass. Dark tan. Dark tan. Dark tan. Brass. Raw umber. Raw umber. Coffee. Dark brown. Olive Drab #7."

Another story consists of parts of D&D adventure templates.

The Dragon of Nuria
A generated gamebook.
By Mark Rickerby for NaNoGenMo2015.
Prologue
Throughout your journey in these lands, you’ve heard subtle tales of a spreading shadow that grow more and more threatening as you get closer to the village of Nuria.
The stories tell of Ir, a horrifying green dragon whose foul magic is spreading throughout the air and water and poisoning the countryside. The villagers beseech you to help fight this menace before the darkness takes its toll.
Somewhere near Nuria is the entrance to Ir’s dungeon. Others have found riches in treasure there, though many are never seen again.
To search for the entrance and ENTER the dungeon, turn to §1.
§1
You step into a shrine. There is a monster here: GHOUL (STRENGTH: 10, STAMINA: 12). You must FIGHT. You gain initiative. You find a bag of exquisite diamonds here. If you defeat the monster, you can take the treasure.
To go SOUTH turn to §2
To go EAST turn to §17
§2
You step into a wrecked armory. You find a bag of precious emeralds here.
To go NORTH turn to §1
To go SOUTH turn to §3
To go EAST turn to §18

The rules of the computer generated novel contest require posted the code, so others with similar skills can see how you did it. Look here for Dragon of Nuria.
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Cory Doctorow on Neil Gaiman's speech on how to maintain long-haul creativity.

It's easy to be creative in short bursts, but sustained (and sustainable) creative endeavor is hard and often tedious, and requires a bunch of habits that are damned hard to get into and easy to slip out of. In my own writing life, the transition from someone who could only write under inspiration to someone who wrote even when having "writers' block" (which just means that you don't like the words you're writing, and the answer is to write them anyway) was the most important thing that ever happened to me, professionally speaking.

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I cannot get this drum machine to work.  Help, anyone?
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I think it is a problem for a person to write on a subject they don't know well.  On the other hand, I have written a novel set in Nepal and another set in Italy.  I did spend a few weeks in Nepal but none in Italy. Anyway, I would like to set a story in historic Central America so this Sci Am article is interesting.  It is even interesting if I don't write such a story.

Archaeologists believe the elite sent their fine merchandise with a “middle-man”, in order to do business with the people. “If Cerén’s citizens believed the objects were too expensive, [the merchants] were not compelled to stay, and were free to take their merchandise to the next market, to try and get a better deal,” Gallardo says.

The information found at Cerén contradicts the hypothesis that the Mayan elites controlled every single aspect of society, including the economy, politics, religion, arts and sciences, during the Classic Period, which is considered one of the most productive stages of the Pre-Hispanic Era, between 250 and 900 AD.

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The shed where Andy Rooney wrote.

I spent some time in Rensselaerville, New York, this fall, where Andy Rooney used to pass his summers. Not far from his home, he had a five-sided shed in which he did his writing. It had an AC unit stuck to the side of it and triangle-shaped windows on its roof. He called it the Pentagon.

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Conductive ink spread with a standard ballpoint pen.

The ink, made of silver salt and adhesive rubber, sticks to various surfaces, and the resulting circuits stay conductive despite repeated bending. If the wiring breaks, retracing the lines would fix it. “It’s a very simple method to make hand-drawn stretchable circuits,” says Jun Yang, a professor of mechanical and materials engineering at the University of Western Ontario. “You can easily make wearable electronics,” he says. “Just hand draw a circuit to make a personalized T-shirt.”

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Help learn about Shakespeare's time by transcribing period writings.

Citizen scientists can learn about the period by transcribing letters and ‘receipt’ (recipe) books in the first phase of the project. Later project organizers will add miscellanies, family papers, legal and literary documents. Along the way volunteers will find words that have yet to be recorded in—and will eventually be added to—the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary.

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npr: Jane Golden: Making Art with each other, for each other. Autoplay audio.

public art: statues, murals, even graffiti
public art is not a thrill nor an extravagance

How to draw a map

Jonathan Roberts, who made the Game of Thrones maps - for the book, I believe not the TV series - has a tutorial up on how he does it.  Here is the finished project - shrank a little - if you want the full size, follow the link.

Via Boingboing.

TWIC: Sci Am, writing, libraries, surveillance and more

I have read Scientific American on and off since 1986 and love the history of the magazine.  I buy individual issues now and then but mostly depend on the free content my newsreader picks up.  I notice that sometimes Sci Am will repost content from a few years previous once in a while and I have started making a blog post on content that seems really familiar, only to look back and see I wrote about already.  I don't know if this article is new or not but anytime you hear about Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi  you should expect the report is a few years old.  I see he is still active but also eighty years old. With that caveat, here is an excerpt:

Here are eight ways of describing creative people that take into account their paradoxical nature and process.

Creative People Are...

Mindful Daydreamers
They are master observers of human nature-- and they use much of that material for their creative work-- but they are also able to turn inward and let their minds wander and imagine new worlds.
Imaginatively Gritty
They are intensely gritty, determined, and good at persevering against obstacles, particularly for imaginative worlds they are motivated and inspired to make a reality.
Passionately Introverted
For things they care deeply about, they have a lot of passion but they can sometimes come across as introverted when engaged in their activity because they are in flow focusing intensely and ignoring outside stimulation. Similarly, creative people can seem very extraverted during a performance because they are fully engaged with their passion, while offstage they came seem quite introverted.

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Sci-Am also has examples of 'almost brilliant inventions' reported on during their 165 year history.  From that link, I clicked on two other links to find the actual slideshow. One image from 1865:

I have become a fan of the steampunk genre of fantasy these days and these attempts at patents are therefore doubly enjoyable.
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What should you leave out, or allow to remain implicit in your writing?  Scientific research writing requires that every step, every idea by clearly stated and connected to recognized work.  In other situations, it may be beneficial to leave appropriate sized gaps that the reader must fill in.  These could be descriptive detail allowing the reader to add familiar images or imagine him/her-self in the story.  Or a gap in a chain of logic that the reader needs to think through to reach the same conclusion.  The challenge becomes making that gap the proper size.  Medium.com looks at the process:

This week, I came across an insightful piece about writing in The New Yorkerby writer John McPhee, who shares stories about his life as a staff writer and teacher of non-fiction writing but he also helpfully narrows his piece to the art of “omission.” What to leave out. The dictate of the Green # (see articlefor reference). Not just for publishing reasons (we need more space so get cutting) but also, for the sake of the reader engagement and involvement. Parse your story down and let the reader build it up.

The link to McPhee includes this excerpt:

Writing is selection. Just to start a piece of writing you have to choose one word and only one from more than a million in the language. Now keep going. What is your next word? Your next sentence, paragraph, section, chapter? Your next ball of fact. You select what goes in and you decide what stays out. At base you have only one criterion: If something interests you, it goes in—if not, it stays out. That’s a crude way to assess things, but it’s all you’ve got. Forget market research. Never market-research your writing. Write on subjects in which you have enough interest on your own to see you through all the stops, starts, hesitations, and other impediments along the way.

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Nanowrimo is coming!

Oooh yes, let’s talk about planning boards, shall we? What’s your preferred strategy for such things? https://t.co/IQogS4vodi

— NaNoWriMo (@NaNoWriMo) September 11, 2015

@NaNoWriMo pic.twitter.com/WWpOQm9smj

— Kitty Chandler (@mightybattlecat) September 11, 2015

The Kitty Chandler Tweet should include the stereotyped image of a detective looking for links on a bulletin board full of clues.
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Many people get their books online. what should libraries do now?  One thing is to promote the privacy of citizens.  One library offered TOR nodes - a means to disguise or hide where the person is online - and the Department of Homeland Security has asked them to shut down.  I don't know precisely how this relates to the subject of this blog, but I love libraries and I like this attempt for them to stay relevant.  My son has enjoyed LEGO hour at the Penetanguishene library and I hope we will always have good reason to visit.  And that people can legally maintain anonymity online.
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What would you add to a cctv surveillance sign? The images below are from the first page of a search for "cctv warning":

One man is fighting back against the suspicion-mongering these signs encourage with these additions:

SO TRY TO LOOK REALLY COOL
DON'T SUSPECT YOUR NEIGHBOR: REPORT HIM!
FEAR THE UNKNOWN - MONSTERS ARE REAL
DRONE STRIKES AUTHORIZED 7PM - 5AM
AWARD-WINNING SECURITY THEATRE
YOU'RE PROBABLY GUILTY OF SOMETHING

I would add the following:
"Apt 602 man, quit picking your nose [and scraping it off with the railing]"
"Apt 103 man, why do you take the elevator to 50_ when the husbands in those apartments living there have left for work?"
"Think of the Children!"
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Top scientists and the arts:

The image is from Price Economics. From the article:

The paper’s authors also compared these values to the rates of artistic or crafty hobbies among the U.S. general population. The “average scientist” as measured by the Sigma Xi survey wasn’t any more likely than the general population to have an artistic or crafty hobby. But they were much more likely to be a musician or a photographer than the general population, and also less likely to be writers, visual artists, or performance or theater artists.

and:

Artists get a lot of practice letting their mind “wander.” And some of the great scientists of history employed techniques very similar to those used by the world’s greatest artists. Charles Darwin had a particular favorite meditative walk, and Benjamin Franklin gained his best insights in the bath.

Via Marginal Revolution

Aspirations of becoming a classic

Not every Grant Snider drawing fits my interests, but many sure do.  He has a new drawing up, on my birthday, no less, that I love. Here is half and this half has been greatly shrunk so if you want to see it full size - and you should- follow the link!

TWIC: understanding art, painting and writing, rip el doctorow

E.L. Doctorow, author of "Ragtime," has died in New York at the age of 84: http://t.co/eEoA6aU44p pic.twitter.com/dIoi0qRWVf

— Iris Blasi (@IrisBlasi) July 22, 2015

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Confessions from the scammy underground world of Kindle e-books.

I'm a number 1 best-selling Kindle author... maybe it’s because I ripped off a free book that I found online, made up a middle-aged author from Ohio, and then played Amazon like a fuckin’ vintage banjo to become the #1 ranked book in not one, but two separate categories.

It's hard to maintain a consistent opinion on 'gaming' the rules.  One should use the rules to optimal effect.  For a competitive swimmer racing in backstroke, when the rules say you can kick underwater a maximum of fifteen metres from a wall, you aim for fourteen point nine, not seven.  That's entirely ethical.  On the other hand, in a relay where I was approaching the wall swimming butterfly for another swimmer to start, if my distance was off a little, I would slam my arms against the water to make the actual touch hard to see.  Did the final swimmer start a little early?  Hopefully the official would have trouble deciding.

The reporter in this article plagiarized a lot to this goes beyond simple gaming but there are more and less ethical examples out there.  Scott Sigler is a New York Times best-selling novelist and that is because he writes well and built up a loyal fanbase through podcasts; when his book was about to come out of Amazon, he asked all his readers/listeners to buy the book on the same day building a lot of localized buzz in the process. This seems fair.
William Demski, of the Intelligent Design think tank the Discovery Institute, also appears to have gamed the system and I don't find this so benign. His own coworkers were the main authors of 5 star reviews.
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I wonder if Monster Dress Up would be a good way to teach clothes and body parts to my ESL students.
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Understanding Art, a study of Large Bathers by Cezanne  Not my thing, exactly, but interesting none the less. It might be strange to connect an established master with the practice sheets of a beginner but I have been interested in Sam Sykes' novice drawings.  Sykes is a skilled writer and author of many books and has become interested in learning to draw. He has been putting his images on Twitter.

Drawing practice for today: More Gestures. Proportions got away from me, but I hope the intent of each pose is clear. pic.twitter.com/IvNC5mB4FB

— Sam Sykes (@SamSykesSwears) July 22, 2015

And today's art project: Noted avian authors, Woltoria Schwab and Wol Sykes. @veschwab pic.twitter.com/rsGD70B1XR

— Sam Sykes (@SamSykesSwears) July 14, 2015

I think that in some of the stories I am working on, I need to draw some maps and other pictures to better explain to myself what is happening and will happen next.