Other Worlds

Category: Craft of writing

  • Clarion

    I’m taking part in Clarion West’s Write-a-thon starting today, and it goes for 6 weeks. My goal: I’ll be working on a YA novel, and trying to improve my skills in story development. You can see my profile here. I also want to increase my daily word count, but I can only do that by…

  • Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book (M. R. James, 1895)

    A Cambridge academic, Dennistoun, comes to a little French town to study and photograph the old cathedral — its stalls, organ, choir screen, and other treasures. The sacristan, who opens the church and stays with him during the hours that it takes to record and observe everything, is a nervous — very nervous — man:…

  • The Judge’s House (Bram Stoker, 1890)

    University student Malcolm Malcolmson’s examinations are coming up and he needs a quiet place to study. No distractions. A place, he decides, where he knows nobody, so he won’t be tempted to spend any time with friends. He doesn’t even want his friends to know where he is. A little extreme? Just wait. He buys…

  • Star Trek added a term to literary lexicon

    Today — as I realized from Google’s doodle; I didn’t actually have the date marked on my calendar! — is the 46th anniversary of Star Trek. It premiered Sept. 7, 1966. The Christian Science Monitor (here) points out the show’s contribution to civil rights (Martin Luther King, Jr. was a fan and told Nichelle Nichols…

  • What Use is a Journal?

    When I was a teaching assistant in grad school, my adviser showed me an English 101 journal that he was grading, full of a student’s lovesick descriptions of her boyfriend. I think it was that moment that gave me a horror of journals–pointless, purposeless, desperate filling-up of pages, they seemed. I didn’t understand what a…