Today was a perfect example of how a #morningshift should NOT go.
Tag: blog like a mofo Page 1 of 3
Here is the freshly written foreword to my forthcoming novella, There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, due for release on October 1. Enjoy.
In which a white, male, heterosexual author continues to indulgently agonise over how best to represent diversity in his (largely unread) work.
I noticed recently that my writing (at least in my first drafts) is getting a bit limited in terms of expressiveness, vocabulary, and so on. A quick google search for ‘writing exercises’ uncovered plenty of ideas for kickstarting the flow of creative juices and building good habits; but not so many that focused on improving the quality of your prose. So, I decided to come up with some of my own.
I usually save any political posts for my other blog. However, this one’s more of a statement about myself than about anything to do with politics. It’s not about who I vote for, or even why I would vote for them: it’s about what guides me when I’m deciding who will earn my vote.
Some carefully honed thoughts about diversity inspired by the recent Tor books kerfuffle.
While May wasn’t quite my worst writing month to date (at least since Morning Shift records began) it was still pretty bad. And, yet, in some other ways, it was also one of my most successful months so far.
I was going to write a short post on where I get my ideas from – despite the fact that no one has ever asked me that (or, perhaps, to spite the fact that no one has ever asked me that). But then I realised that ideas on their own aren’t particularly interesting or useful: it’s what we do with them that matters.
Applying your own interpretation to a piece of art is perfectly valid
but
it’s entirely solipsistic
and will only ever tell you what you already think about the world.
The real value of art comes when you look at the range of interpretations.
That’s when you start to understand
how everyone else sees the world.