A Dictionary of Cool Words That Hide True Feelings & Meanings from Parents Many of the strange vocabulary words, that…
Read more →An evening of The Carmen Online Theater Group’s Chronicles of Terror. The Full Transcript of the Story The package arrived…
Read more →I discovered Brandon Sanderson a few years back, introduced him to my son, and we basically read all that he…
Read more →Short Science Fiction Stories for Kids These are stories that are written for middle school and high school kids. The…
Read more →I wanted to be a scientist and go into space. I got my B.A. from Columbia University in Mathematics and…
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Those who crave fame don’t truly appreciate anonymity. And those who have it, desire to find a way to hide from it. We live in the world where everyone seems to want their 15 minutes of fame and attention. For artists and writers having a wide audience is must if they want to sign with large agencies to represent them, if they want their work to be bought and sold. Or even if they want representation by an agent or a contract with a publisher — everyone wants an established market for stories.
We mark the passage of time through personal milestones and seasonal holidays. Another major marker is bearing down on us — December! All the gift giving, family gatherings, end-of-year parties, and toasting mark another round trip around our star. We are on a continuous ride through time and space. We are never at the same place at the same time. Our lives are flux personified. Change is the thing that lives are made of. Humans hate change. We always yearn for the good old days even as we don’t remember them personally and even when we totally misunderstand history. Nostalgia is big. Change seems bad. I get it. I’d rather go the same old restaurant, order the same food, and wear the same comfortable clothing year after year. When my favorite store closes, I take it personally. When my neighborhood changes, I take it as an affront. I want things stable and familiar. I don’t want to spend my mental resources learning useless-to-me new ways of doing things. And I have a sense that most people are more like me than not, given that we all fall somewhere on the spectrum of hating novelty to needing it. So when the…
We often say someone is “creative”, but what is creativity good for? It’s not just for solving problems, although it takes a lot of creativity and expertise to figure out the thorniest issues. Creativity is a way we express ourselves and stand out; there are lots of experts but the best have both the creativity and the expertise to get a job done. While I believe most animals evolved to have some creativity, humans take this trait to the max (as we do with most things). Consider the Lion Man — a 40,000 year old statue of a humanized lion carved from ivory. Read the origin date again — it was created forty thousand years ago my cave men! It’s about a foot tall, has the head of a lion and body of human. It’s one of the earliest examples of human creativity we know about, in addition to all of the cave paintings that date to approximately the same time. But unlike cave painting which tend to depict scenes of real life, this statue is something else. It’s a fictional creature. Nothing like that ever existed in nature, it’s a figment of someone’s imagination. The statue, which was found…
We define ourselves by the stories we tell each other. Myths, fairytales, fantasy, scifi, fiction, drama, superhero movies, et., they are all different ways to look at ourselves in a mirror. Consider metal illness and cognitive developmental disorders.
Lately, I feel like I’m reading the same story over and over again — a smart woman who might be a scientist or librarian meets a tall dark stranger with supernatural strength and military expertise and with an unlimited bank account; together, they save the world and may or may not have a romantic relationship (although very likely they do). Sounds familiar? It’s a very popular storyline; perhaps I should write something like that! But let me give you a few examples of these types of stories. These are all the books I’ve read. And don’t get me wrong, they are a fun ride…but it does get a bit repetitive. Vampires are some of the more popular strong, dark, handsome, and rich types. Augmented humans are another set that fit that bill — they have been made to be stronger and more intelligent than normal men. Then there are demons and an endless variation of humanoid mythical creatures (werewolves, angels, gods, mages and witches, etc.), aliens, cyborgs, and other superhero types. Immortality (or very long life span) helps with wisdom (they can speak any language), martial arts and military strategy training, and especially wealth. It is certainly easier to write…
Every morning, my husband, cousin, and I play Wordle and share screen shots. It’s a gentle competition, and we laugh at our odd guesses — Aline? But it’s interesting how we arrive at the correct word via different paths, demonstrating that the same “prompt” leads to wide-ranging results. Below are three games from the same day recently where none of us did well. Even starting with the same first word, the path through to the solution is widely different. It’s similar to writing. Obviously, Wordle has it backwards — we all end on the same word if we solve the puzzle, it’s how we get there that’s different. For story ideas, it’s about the path forward from the original prompt. I have a story ideas folder that I regularly contribute to and shuffle as I look for ideas that might that fit a narrative I’m currently working on. I would like to give you a small example of one. The Changing Painting A woman regularly stops by a fine art museum on her way home, the Tate Gallery in London. She visits the same halls most nights on the way home; it helps her relax and switch gears from stresses…
After four years of dodging COVID, we finally succumbed. It’s a nasty virus and, after two weeks in bed, I’m just starting to be able to write again. I did read a few books while sick, and I wasn’t fond of any of them! I didn’t find the characters interesting, and the storylines were boring, and frankly I didn’t see a point in the narrative. There were too many names and characters all introduced up front and I couldn’t keep track of who was who and why I should care. Given how I felt, I can’t leave reviews — I was in the wrong frame of mind. But it was interesting in retrospect. All readers are different. It’s not only our abilities, it’s our cultural backgrounds, our language skills, our availability to read at times when we are able to process information easily, our time in general. There are readings that are just like candy — fun and delicious. And there are those that are “good for you.” And, of course, there are books and articles that we read for professional advancement. All require different support structures to make the reader’s task easier. Indexes, bibliographies, just-in-time lookups, dictionaries, note taking,…
