whatever you do, keep writing
Everyone’s talking about the Guardian’s Rules for Writing Fiction. Now we have our own Canadian version! First post is from the lovely Stacey May Fowles, and my fave piece of advice is:
“No, the main character is not based on me. It’s fiction.” Repeat as needed.
hey remember the night I wrote a story about my mom and then got off the stage and saw MY MOM standing there? From florida somehow? Yes. Thanks for coming everyone, that was maybe the best thing ever.
john:
The long line down Crosby Street in Soho for Tumblr Reads.
Tumblr writers, celebs, and the rest of us, and both David’s and Meaghan’s Mom. That was seriously fun.
I’m moving to New York only so I can attend Tumblr reads.
Graphic Design: The Forgotten Web Standard - Slides in 3 Minutes
Roger Ebert: The Essential Man (Esquire)
“…In 2008, when he was in the middle of his worst battles and wouldn’t be able to make the trip to Champaign-Urbana for Ebertfest — really, his annual spring festival of films he just plain likes — he began writing an online journal. Reading it from its beginning is like watching an Aztec pyramid being built. At first, it’s just a vessel for him to apologize to his fans for not being downstate. The original entries are short updates about his life and health and a few of his heart’s wishes. Postcards and pebbles. They’re followed by a smattering of Welcomes to Cyberspace. But slowly the journal picks up steam, as Ebert’s strength and confidence and audience grow. You are the readers I have dreamed of, he writes. He is emboldened. He begins to write about more than movies; in fact, it sometimes seems as though he’d rather write about anything other than movies. The existence of an afterlife, the beauty of a full bookshelf, his liberalism and atheism and alcoholism, the health-care debate, Darwin, memories of departed friends and fights won and lost — more than five hundred thousand words of inner monologue have poured out of him, five hundred thousand words that probably wouldn’t exist had he kept his other voice. Now some of his entries have thousands of comments, each of which he vets personally and to which he will often respond. It has become his life’s work, building and maintaining this massive monument to written debate — argument is encouraged, so long as it’s civil — and he spends several hours each night reclined in his chair, tending to his online oasis by lamplight. Out there, his voice is still his voice — not a reasonable facsimile of it, but his.
“It is saving me,” he says through his speakers.
He calls up a journal entry to elaborate, because it’s more efficient and time is precious:
When I am writing my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be.”
In the words of my esteemed colleague Michelle, “This makes me simultaneously gag and go ‘aww’.”
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Ha. I am in bed with my headphones LOL-ing and my roommate was like WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT? and i was like, “I DON’T WANT TO SHOW MY BODY TO A MAN OF MY GENDER!”
This Valentine’s Day I’m covering gold medals and Olympic tragedies and epic, annoying theme songs. I’d rather be home, watching Alfie: “I have to sing tomorrow!” You know that great part when he gets invited to the hip party and he sneezes into the cocaine?
“It’ll be great - all those New Yorker writers out there, and we’ll be in here, quietly screwing.”
It’s a day for awesome video. This project is genius.
Is it public knowledge that Steve Nash is hilarious, and I just didn’t get the memo? I read an awesome article about him in Fast Company, and then checked out some of his movie clips. But his new commercials for VitaminWater are absolutely hilarious. This is just one, I encourage you to watch them all. You can thank me later.
