Vintage Robots

I love robots, and here's a couple from my collection. These guys are vintage, and both still work.

Have a great weekend!

What's Your Favorite Writing Quote?

Glossophilia did a post on writing quotes, and my favorite one made the list:

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
        - Mark Twain

Check out the rest here.

Etymology Expeditions: Spaced Out

In honour of the Far Orbit Apogee anthology, I thought we'd explore the final frontier today, or at least word associated with it.

Space as in "area, room" comes from Old French espace, meaning "period of time, distance, interval," from Latin spatium "room, area, distance of time." The astronomical term has existed only from the 1700s.

We all know the planets in our solar system are named after Roman gods, so I won't dig deeper into that one, but what about the word planet itself? It comes from Old English planete, from Old French planete from Late Latin planeta, from Greek asteres planetai,"wandering stars."

The word Moon comes from Old English mona, from photo-Germanic menon, meaning "moon, month." The Greek selene comes from selas "light, brightness (of heavenly bodies.)"

Star comes from Old English sterra meaning "star," from Proto-Germanic sterron. The root is from Proto-Indo-European ster- perhaps from "to stew, scatter," or maybe borrowing from Akkadian istar, meaning Venus.

What about aliens then? The word alien comes from Old French alien, "strange, foreign," from Latin alienus "of or belonging to another, foreign strange." The meaning "not of the Earth" was only recorded in 1920.

Apogee, the point when a celestial body is the farthest from the Earth, from French apogée, originally from Greek apo (far) + Gaion (Earth).  Perigee is almost the same, but peri means near.

Supernova, from Latin super (over, above) +  nova from Latin novus, new. Nova was used to describe a star previously unknown, so that's the logic behind the name.

That's all, folks. Happy star-gazing:)




Sources:
http://www.etymonline.com/

How it Feels to Have Your First Story Published

Far Orbit Apogee is out today!

Do You Need Mood Music to Write?

I usually write without music, because I find anything with lyrics a distraction, but recently a writer in my Finnish critique group pointed out that you can use music as a kind of emotional tuning fork for your prose.

I pondered this for a while. I kind of know what she means, but music has never been that important to me. In fact, a lot of my music comes from TV shows or movies, and my connection to the music is more about my connection to that particular story. When I wrote my story for the Far Orbit Apogee anthology, I watched The Guardians of the Galaxy  many times. Soon after, I bought the soundtrack and listened to it when I went pole walking. (Yeah, I know, lame, but it's the only sport I've been able to commit to, in addition to working out in front of the TV.) So I think I used the movie like others use music. Hmm.

Then I thought, why not play to my strengths? Why shouldn't I use soundtracks?

So, now I have the following options:

Aliens  (For horror/sci-fi)

Edward Scissorhands  (For magical realism and dark fairy tales)

The Labyrinth (This one has lyrics, I know, but it's one of my favorite movies and I love the soundtrack. This is turning into my current obsession. We'll see what it sparks.)

Sherlock Holmes (It's the steampunk one. For Victoriana/humor)

Mass Effect 1-3 (For sci-fi adventure, thriller type stuff, dystopia.)

The Matrix (For edgy cyberpunk coolness.)

Let the experiment begin!

How Writers Write Fiction Week 1: What I learned about Character

I'm doing this online course from the University of Iowa, and I though I'd share some of the stuff I learned this week.

Here are some the questions we had to answer about other people's work for the peer reviews, but I think they are a really useful way to think about your own characters, too, so I jotted them down for future reference:

Who is this character?We had to come up with five adjectives to describe the character and explain how we got there.
Where is character development strong?We looked for the parts where the writer shows rather than tells and the best telling details.
Where could this piece strengthen character development?Suggestions on this.
(All questions from Novoed.com)

I might add this to my Critters template for critiques. Hmm.

Christa Frasier did a teaching video about character, and introduced me to the concept of the particle self and the continuum self. The particle self means the person we are in a single moment, and the continuum self is the bigger picture, who we are as we move through our life (or our character arc:)). This encompasses the idea that everything we see and hear encompasses all our memories and associations, so an apple is never just an apple, it's every apple you've ever eaten and all the people and memories and feelings associated with it. And it's not the same at different points in our life. Our reactions will be different depending on if we're four or forty, if we're sad or happy, just had a baby or  if we are at a funeral. So the particle self is a snapshot of us at a particular moment of our timelines. This is why a character needs a past.

I find the idea fascinating, and I'll definitely be exploring it in my writing.

We also did writing exercises. The first ones had us write about an object as character, and then use it in a story. A fun exercise. I might share the results at some point, we'll see...

The Martian

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej3ioOneTy8

I just saw The Martian.

It was fucking awesome.

You need to go see it right now!

Go, go, go!

If you'll excuse me, I have to go buy the book.