The final week of this year’s NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has been a mixed bag. Overall, I have to say I’m pleased with the experiment. Using NaNoWriMo as a way to simply increase my productivity has proved a much better approach (for me) than setting some unrealistic (for me) word-count goal. Continue Reading »
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Week Three of NaNoWriMo has been productive. Sort of.
At the end of last week, I was facing a scene I’ve been dreading for a long time. A sex scene.
I hate writing sex scenes. Continue Reading »
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My second week of NaNoWriMo went better than my first, and there’s a reason for that (apart from my getting back into the flow of writing, that is).
Like many writers, I’ve often used a soundtrack to set an audio foundation for my writing time. A soundtrack can do two things. First, it can set a consistent mood that underpins the prose as I write, and second, it can help block out the sounds of the real world and allow me to concentrate more fully on the world I’m trying to get out of my head. (On the downside, it can also ruin a particular album/artist, as eventually, due to repetition and earworms, I grow sick of what I’m listening to.) Continue Reading »
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It wasn’t a good first week for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but progress, albeit modest, was made.
I suspect my challenges are the same as many of yours:
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Twenty-odd years ago (when I was just starting out with speculative fiction), I wrote the short-short below. It was a light-hearted look at a theory that was, back then, just emerging into the popular culture. Several recent headlines brought it back to mind, and it ain’t so funny, anymore.
Posted in Writing | Tagged climate change, creative writing, global warming, rising seas, short fiction |
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Today is the 30th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake and, once again, I am in San Francisco. I did not plan this visit to coincide with the anniversary of that event—a shallow 6.9 temblor that brought down bridges and freeways, tumbled hundreds of homes, and turned large sections of expensive land into quivering jelly—but here I am. With the anniversary top-of-mind here, it hasn’t helped that, since my arrival on Sunday, we’ve had two minor quakes (registering 4.5 and 4.7). Put together, it’s made the locals a bit . . . jumpy. Continue Reading »
Posted in Culture, Seattle | Tagged California earthquake, earthquake, nisqually, San Andreas | 2 Comments »
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 