Falling, the die turns
Landing, tumbles
Rolling, stops.
Numbered.
Lifted, the die rises
Tossed, soars
Unburdened
I will be at BayCon 2017 on May 26, 27, and 28, participating in a few panels and lusting after the goodies in the dealer’s room. BayCon’s theme this year is Dystopia/Utopia, into which Beneath the Skin fits rather perfectly, seeing as it’s a romantic space opera set in a dystopian future. If you are going to attend the convention, let me know, and maybe we can meet up someplace!
My three panels so far:
Writing a Dystopia While Living in One (on Friday)
Creative Hobbies for Writers (on Friday)
Love During Wartime (on Saturday)
Teresa Edgerton will be there, too. And so will Jennifer Carson. And Denise Tanaka. And Carrie Sessarego. And Gail Carriger. And more!
Posted in Cool stuff, Reading, Writing
Tagged BayCon, BayCon 2017, beneath the skin, dystopia, fantasy, paranormal romance, romantic science fiction, science fiction, utopia, writing
Squid tentacles printed on a corner of a pillow.
What ink cloud do we enter when we lay our heads down to sleep?
Posted in Life, Pebble, Questions, Writing
Tagged random thought, sleep, squid pillow, writing
Denise Tanaka’s article contains useful and fun tips for non-fighters who want to write fight scenes. It helps if you have Barbie dolls lying around the house. And a fork. (No, she’s not stabbing the dolls . . . . )
http://leasspell.net/blog/2015/01/writing-fight-scenes-dont-live-stunt-crew/
I’m proud of my students this semester in Intermediate Composition: Argument in the Disciplines. This was the first semester the course has been offered, and the students stepped up and built a website about written argument for the student community at UCB. The website (Argument at UC Berkeley) contains papers that the students wrote during the course, as well as advice from professionals and academics whom they interviewed. Students in subsequent semesters will maintain and expand the site.
Here’s a link, if you want to check out the site: http://argument.berkeley.edu/
Tagged argument, Berkeley, Cal, student, student work, teaching, UCB, university of california, writing, written argument
My colleague Mike Larkin is a triple threat: engaging writer, intriguing thinker, and encouraging teacher. He’s helping his students share their work publicly on his blog and anywhere else it might spread, and I’m hoping they end up with a bigger audience than they imagined.
You can help encourage them by reading their online writing–or even just by “liking” their posts when they appear, wherever they appear.
If you want to peek behind the curtain, see Mike’s blog post A compendium of selfie reflections (for my students).
At the end, he notes several reasons that he wrote the post, concluding that
mostly I wrote this for my current students, who will be embarking on writing some digital, multimodal essays about online identity in the coming month.
I offer this brief essay as an example to them, and I’m hoping to encourage them to let me share some of their work publicly here. Given their facility with technology, I’m sure they can do much more interesting things with digital tools than I’ve managed to do in this blog post. (Oh, look at that textual selfie he just took–so humble!)
Posted in Cool stuff, Teaching, Writing
Tagged college student, encouraging student writing, Mike Larkin, student writing, teaching, teaching writing, UC Berkeley, writing
Posted in Writing
Tagged fantasy, San Jose, science fiction, Worldcon, Worldcon 2018, writing
Part three has begun. Maggie is back home, but her troubles haven’t ended; she is sick of words and of having trouble communicating. She wants to paint!
Posted in Writing
Tagged Eyes on the Mountain, fantasy, Mt. Shasta, science fiction, Shasta, writing
I spent the last eight hours, without a break, on class prep. Socrates, sorites, software . . . progress of a sort. But I want to write my novel, not prep my courses. Strange to think that my students, too, are probably wishing they could do something else instead of head back to class.
We’re all ingrates in the moment.
Right now, I’m stoked. The first reader of parts 1 and 2 says that the novel is working. I can stop worrying about part 2!
Thank you, Stephanie.
(Wanna read some mind-blowing fiction? Visit Stephanie’s blog,http://accidentalantenna.wordpress.com/ .)
Posted in Writing
Tagged Eyes on the Mountain, fantasy, Mt. Shasta, science fiction, Shasta, writing
