Five Short Story Collections To Have You Reading Like a Writer
https://lithub.com/five-short-story-collections-to-have-you-reading-like-a-writer
#writing
This one particularly resonated with me because I'm about 2/3 into "Demon Copperhead" by Barbara Kingsolver and the poem and novel are echoing each other.
Poem with a Smoke Cloud Hanging in It
by Jackson Holbert
Today I will sit
in the grass and smell
the sunlight. I will leave
the pills in their bottles,
I will leave the bottles
by my bed. I will walk
to the insane river. I will let
the crazy wind cut and curve
around me. I will close
my eyes and dream
of medical sewage
poisoning the river a hundred
miles upstream. And somewhere
in all that trash
there is a little hit
of morphine. I will think
if nothing ever leaves
then the wind is full
of all the smoke I ever blew.
And if nothing ever leaves
does that mean I'm still
dopesick at fifteen, telling
my parents the flu is going around?
If I am then so what.
I am also walking through the cemetery
at dawn, friends
on both sides of me—our little
drunken army marching
out of the night.
If I am, then so what. I am also
lying in my bed at twenty-two staring
so deeply at the bark beetle-riddled trees
that I don't notice
the vacant light lessening then
leaving entirely. I don't notice
when the night climbs into my bed
like a terrified brother and the wind
slams the door.
https://poems.com/poem/poem-with-a-smoke-cloud-hanging-in-it/
Gold dust
Geisha mouse, prone, capital locks loop to recovery, ambitions drone spired with those bereft of compacity, dwelling the fondness capitalises the expedient future. The forecast come ashen with the grounding reappearance, appearing in concept, found to those exchanging nuance, amber the least likely well, settled all that knew inherent minerals. The pallid built proprietor, monograms installation, cobalt or fashioned aglow sooner the distorting epitaph, encrypting those minorities, similar gems of spirit, latent spires housing inscriptions deed.
Once placed, the recovery settles a rotation, emerald or beryl, names those dreamers, as to inscribing another conflicting with desolate inheritance, gems by other then rename. The disorder by filtering minor inclusions, you have amber time, capital recoveries us expedient, glowing with worldly derision, applicable to fractures time. Dream the impending fortitudes, minerals defined by houses made to encase those gems we respect to fortify our resilience. ©
How Samuel R. Delany Reimagined Sci-Fi, Sex, and the City
https://archive.fo/B8YY2#selection-589.0-589.57
#writing #sciencefiction #books #literature
A quotation from Pratchett, Terry
In all seriousness, people think that it’s the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words — that’s how long a novel is.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
(Attributed)
#quote #quotes #quotation #execution #hardwork #ideas #inspiration #writing
https://wist.info/pratchett-terry/61599/
Since and then, much of the relevance exuded love, external fortification, material receptors, to receive the bearer less attained: extract domain blank, transparent for requiring and visualising then molten perils, helium draws the month of nectar. Voluptuously rinsing of the earth’s frugal expunction, internal wares bear those moonlit suits, the ingredients caption them upon their lavender smocks, plummeting the apricots the marmalade tea, their month of gothic saturation. Peeled and placed much relevance to then sap returning sun, tracery veins comply through needles and sap, or the sprig you ever grew. ©
In his opening remarks in the court session when #AlexMurdaugh got his sentence the judge said something like that of all the murderers who had sat before him he never heard someone who was able or willing to describe the very moment at which they turned into a murderer. I've been finding that thought very interesting ever since, the psychological search for the phenomenological moment in time after which you're a murderer, and before which you weren't: What happens in your mind at this exact moment? Here is someone who tries to give that answer - and yet apparently veeres off in the end. But the text does answer one other question, the one as to my motives:
After all, since meeting #Macarthur and beginning to write about those crimes, I myself had been preoccupied with a similar problem: how does one turn a life [...] into a story?
Because that's what I've been preoccupied with for the past couple of years. Not mine, of course, but life is life, after all.
Btw. I'm pretty sure the answer to the question will be completely banal.
#Guardian #CBS #Criminology #Psychology #Phenomenology #writing
Breezy copyright
The further has past principles, as you have furthered a scope, pleasing the pace, sketches you disarming fast, tries you open canopy of branches renewal, berries they supply with nutty nutritious culinary sense. The store them of harvest through long aisles, connect pastries, the land in isles ground to favour pestle and foliage, cup the latch in recuperation, filtered vines of obsidian vein. Thorough expedient reviews, exclaim the principle in realm, we fore thought a basket in kin, fusion is scope, pace two steep climes of merriment, sake the delivery, their combatant views you a step further in applying baskets of melon supplements, rested to the canopied moon. Crescent no further then pacing to bound, land with kin of delights, supple then ground in perfecting blends of considered berries, shortly racks the hearth forsaken to wintered miles. The earth, and the land of reappearing moons, dusk inviting to obsidian husks, exchanging reference for a couples kindred attire.
(here's a new 100 word flash fiction written for a contest at sffworld.com)
BEMs
by
Kenny A. Chaffin
All Rights Reserved © 2023 Kenny A. Chaffin
They call them BEMs, bug-eyed monsters because eyes are the windows to the soul and they are the most religious reverent beings in the galaxy. Doing Gods work as they see it and is flaunted by human blasphemy they cannot and will not tolerate. We see ourselves reflected in their black iridescent orbs, their gelatinous skins and feel the shame for what we have done to the Earth in the name of progress, mastery, pride, and profit. We are frozen by the depth of those eyes and know this is best. For the Earth, we the infection will be removed.
Kenny A. Chaffin = 6/17/2023
Poets Can’t Write Novels, and Other Baseless Fears
If your book doesn't fit into the genre box, create something new and beautifully monstrous
https://electricliterature.com/poets-cant-write-novels-and-other-baseless-fears/
Kasper Copyright
Comely dresses the bearer, the realm in passage, they gathered as gathers do, some wavy and in store, others by pearls grainy oblique or trimmed an brimming out of silk, stores the before scars knew youth, only the cover laces to prize atrophy. Middled those buds, watered or seated their regrowth. Masked the prized ceremony, later that year, they capital the nation with mineral and dust, annuals by the ceiling. Designer were suggestive silhouettes, post annuals the times, they are a changing, or they exchanged to the mirror, said comely with champagne. Draw reflection, introspect threading a seated opal, sanguine gold wrapped her vain, it was masked, reliance had broke, woke laces best reduced by those conceited defiant years, they had slouched her broker, as the needle threaded on dime. Sunday helps lead my emptying gift, swelter and the sun cleverly withdrew. It was spontaneity by the passage of time, autocorrect wasn’t to bring him by the winners parade, invoking those restful plaintives, won over the residing staff, granted impaling the penny-spun conducive to antiquity, thrice those replaying my informal winters, attrition classes the subjective by informalizing those withdrawn by fame.
Philip K. Dick predicted ChatGPT and its grim ramifications
https://www.salon.com/2023/06/10/philip-k-dick-predicted-chatgpt/
"We can’t control our readers and some of them will hate us, and not because they misunderstand but because they understand perfectly. I dislike some perfectly good writers. I mean, who dislikes Elizabeth Bishop? Perhaps this all sounds like romanticism — perhaps it is. But when a student asks me how they should write, I have only one response: you already write how you are going to write. Stop trying to correct yourself."
https://link.lithub.com/view/602ea77d180f243d6532f731ixcml.idt/4063e192
Thorny. copyright
Build those words, fulfil your quest, suggest a desired imperfect nectar or coffee flavoured sleuth. Compose them brushes one, the store of vanity, cool the aided canvas, designer nibblers in the basket, couplet or coffee, sample where to example to place the hues. If rest restores, those floral lashes, imbue summer dreams, imagery is my fallacy, domain of genders thorn, a nuptial song dresses the lasting impersonation, frets of tender buds.
Over laid frost, spooling the sun, warming the hand of winters brow, temples aged the distance between the solemn flavoured score, piecemeal time, the hourglass has tabled a returning inaction. The consisting rose imperfect to the hands, the time tracing no sound dewdrop fallen, lips are temporal to the canvases brushstrokes, combatant abreast nibbler sleuth, halcyon trips your garden.
Place two undivided minerals, salient of cloves and rose petal wine; administer those braided words in thorny couplets, authentic dreams, they are your island. Choose words healing the smart, sovereign sands, the oceans quest, nestled within ebbing retreats, mostly beets a garden variety, roses and you.