20 Rules for Writers.

The Writing Salon is a writers community and group blog, where folks post their latest poems, stories or whatever. Found Erika's 20 Rules for Writers over there, and though I'd keep it around for future reference.


These really would apply to any of the arts, or pretty much any endeavor. Business too.






Short stories on the web.

Via Moorish Girl, a very excellent literary-oriented weblog, are links to a couple of great short storie sites: Short Stories at East of the Web, a British site which covers many genres, and Short Story Classics, which she says has a great collection in a variety of languages. The first is reviewed by the Christian Science Monitor here, which gives a good overview to what's there. (Although they repeat the old canard about people not wanting to read online.)


Add: In another post she refers to this recent Guardian Original Fiction page which contains many shorter stories for your summer reading. She certainly knows a lot about the world of literature.






JK Rowling approves of fans' fiction.

BBC News report. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling said it was fine with her if people want to write their own stories based on her characters. Apparently there are a lot of Harry Potter stories written by fans on the net, as long as they remain non-commercial.


That's great. That may not sound surprising, but it's quite a switch. It's rather unusual for creative people these days, given the amount of money in the arts now and the desire to control and profit from all of the spin-offs. If you tried to create your own Mickey Mouse cartoon for example, Disney would be all over you. Even if you didn't try to charge for it. But I think she sees that rather than threatening her own work, it actually amplifies, enhances and popularizes it.






Hugo-nominated fiction online.

The nominations for the 2004 Hugo awards (for best science fiction and fantasy) have been announced, and many of the nominees are available for online reading here. Not the novels, which they define as being over 40,000 words, and just the fiction-related works, but still quite a bit of interesting reading. Plus some other sf-related links and such.






First chapters from Canada.

The Toronto-based Globe and Mail has a nice page of first chapters from various recently published Canadian books, both fiction and nonfiction.

"First chapters", an idea that has gradually been spreading around the publishing world, allows online readers to sample a bit of a book, but not too much, in the hope they might go on to get the full paper version.

The NY Times has been doing this for years, and have quite a substantial sampling of recent books, here, part of their book section. There are hundreds of authors to sample.

Addendum: I don't think I should have posted these particular links. At least not on a Sunday afternoon. I ended up wasting several potentially very useful hours reading several potentially very useful books on several potentially very useful topics, ending up with a clearly totally useless selection from a book written by one Steve Martin, entitled, fittingly enough, Pure Drivel, which you shouldn't link to if you have anything useful to do, or even the possibility of doing anything potentially useful at all. I'm not sure where the title comes from, or what it means, it undoubtedly being explained in later chapters, since a competent writer would certainly not want to give it all away in the first chapter, and even more certainly not for free. I suspect though that it was probably the only title under which a writer from LA could get something published in the NY Times, "pure drivel" being all most New Yorkers can imagine coming out of California. Pretty funny though.






Languages on the web.

Via Wood s Lot is a site devoted to languages on the web, entitled very simply languages on the web. They offer over 30,000 language links and "everything you need to learn language on the web." Rather impressive. Lots of translations in virtually every language, and lots of links to other sites as well. I especially like that they have parallel translations available, where you can read the same text in two different languages. This makes it much easier to learn.






Writers and depression.

And via The New Pages Guide to Weblogs I found this great literary blog by Maud Newton. Lots of interesting and well-written reflections. I was particularly struck by her thoughts on depression in writers and artists.


She goes on to discuss the reasons for this, along with the argument of a well-adjusted friend of hers who objects to the stereotype. She links to an article in the Globe and Mail by Rebecca Caldwell, To be or not to be? That is the clich´ on the recent suicide of writer Spaulding Gray that also discusses the topic.

I don't know myself. I'm an artist and writer. Maybe I'm depressed a bit. But I'm also infinitely more optimistic than most people I know. I think one reason for this may be that people who are more satisfied with life as it is don't feel compelled to add anything to it.

But my own work stems out of a desire to create beauty, not to hide ugliness. I create for the same reason that a bird sings, or that a fruit tree bears fruit. Because that is my nature. And it is my belief that this is not "abnormal", but "normal". That if you are healthy and well-adjusted you will create. And if you don't, _then_ there is something wrong with you. Not the other way around.

And I believe that this notion that artists must "suffer" for their art is absolute nonsense. A stereotype created by people who spend their lives doing something they hate, and need to convince themselves that they have no choice, who need to believe that it is just too difficult to be an artist, or to follow their dreams, or to do something great with their life. People love to see other people suffer. It makes them feel better, and it makes it is easier for them to justify their own failures and lack of persistence and courage.

And the saddest part is that so many artists buy into this stereotype themselves, particularly the notion that there is no money in the arts. Which is self-defeating. I've seen this a thousand times. They start off with the assumption that they can't make money, so they don't try. They don't invest the money in it that any business requires. They label themselves "non-profit" and then wonder why they don't make any "profit." Duh!

If this was true before, it's not true anymore. Now the arts are the fastest growing and most profitable industries in the world, and artists are well on their way to being the highest paid profession of them all. Modern technology has vastly expanded the ways in which they can reproduce and market their work, and the explosion of higher education, greater leisure time and income, and many other developments, have entirely changed that.

And nothing has changed things more computers and the internet. In so many ways. In making it so much easier to word-process, print and even self-publish works for one thing. But mostly in making it possible to connect to a world of other people doing the same things, to find encouragement, to see examples of other peoples' works, to find places where you can send your work. To be able to go to someone's weblog and find someone dealing with the same problems that you're dealing with. It empowers individuals more than can ever be imagined. Such a joy and wonder.



New Pages site and weblog.

If you're looking for a good source of information and links to the world of independent and alternative publishing, you can't do better than Denise and Casey Hill's New Pages. Lots of links to small presses, independent zines, reviews, and everything to do with books and reading. Their New Pages Weblog tracks all of the latest developments. He took off for a while over the holidays, but seems to have entered the new year with a vengeance. Among the latest offerings is this excellent Guide to Weblogs and Daily News Sites. Librarians especially should take note. Everything you need is here.






Canterbury Tales the most popular reading.

I don't know why, but the page containing the prologue to the Canterbury Tales is the most visited page in my world history. Curious. But maybe it was just a single class somewhere or something. Web statistics can be seriously skewed by a single link or such.

But if people do enjoy Chaucer, I have the entire text of the Canterbury Tales online, in the original Middle English too. Part of the ebooks library I've been building up. It's also available in a Classic Mac/Hypercard ebook, available for downloading here.

If you've never heard a computer read Middle English try to view it in a browser that has speech. Classic Mac fans can hear it in any of the old Speech Manager voices.






My ebooks are finally online.

It only took ten years or so, but I finally managed to get my collection of ebooks up on the web. They've been up there for downloading as Mac files, but now they're all available for online reading.

Check it out, the complete list is on the ebooks home page, which is also frequently linked to within this site.

You can go directly to each book by the links on the right side of the home page, or those in the panel inside the frame sets. The panel is particularly neat, since it allows you to sort of browse around the library without leaving where you are. For some reason the so-called web experts don't like frames, but I think this approach is quite useful.

Oh, the old Mac books are also listed on the ebooks page, all now available for freeware downloading. If you're an oldtime Mac fan, especially a Hypercard one, you might want to check these out. They run great under OSX, and of course under earlier systems as well.






Emerson: Self-reliance.

Halley has included Ralph Waldo Emerson's entire essay on Self-Reliance on her blog. It's a classic, tho pretty long for a blog entry. I'm glad to see her do this though, since I'm quite tempted to start including entire essays and such. God bless the public domain.






The legacy of Harry Potter.

The third installment in the Scotsman's three part series on the amazing J.K. Rowling. I will have to read these one of these days. Just want to wait until I have some quiet time by a fire somewhere, and can appreciate them.






The story of J.K. Rowling.

As part of the hoopla surrounding the release of the new Harry Potter book, the Scotsman is running a three-part special series on her life.


All in all a fascinating story.






The dark and the light.

I read this book "The Potato Factory" by an Australian writer Bryce Courtenay. It's set in early 19th century London and Australia, involving a group of people around a Fagin-type character. A very Dickensian tale, rather interesting. It shows someone like Fagin may have developed, and what would have happened to him at that time.

I was struck by this one quote, where he says why he likes the night, and why he doesn't trust the day. The seven years of sunlight he refers to was time on an Australian chain gang, the worst part of which for him was having to be in the light all day.


He's perfectly correct; the worst crimes are committed during the day, right in the open. He and most of the other characters are Jewish, by the way. Courtenay does a good job of describing the extent of anti-Semitism in British society at that time, the degree of which is a bit shocking.






Looking for something to read?

Guardian article. Readers in the UK have selected their all-time favorite 100 books. It's an interesting list. I've read most of them, but there are still quite a few to go. One of these days I'm going to have to read the Harry Potter books, all of which made the list. A sci-fi author named Terry Pratchett I've never heard of matched Dickens with five books. Guess I'll have to check him out as well.

For more on books, see the Guardian Unlimited Book section.






All about books.

Craig Jensen of Craig's Booknotes fame, has a new site BookLab II, all about the crafts of printing and bookbinding and associated arts. "Visions and innovations for the traditional book." Some beautiful illustrations of early books and manuscripts there. Tons of book links.

New Pages is another great book related site I like a lot, especially the weblog of book related news.

But both of these guys complain a lot about the state of the book publishing industry, about the perils facing small book stores and printers and poets. But I think the book industry is doing just great, and point to sites like these as examples of all the great stuff that's happening. I hope they don't mind. :)






Library of Alexandria reopens after 1500 years.

The Library of Alexandria reopens an amazing 1500 years after it was burned down. I know reconstruction after an accident can take a little time, but this is ridiculous. I guess it shows that you just gotta stick at things, and eventually you (or your distant descendants) may actually get there.

---

End of entries.