every writing tip article and their mother: dont ever use adverbs ever!
me, shoveling more adverbs onto the page because i do what i want: just you fucking try and stop me
simply cannot ever resist what i call the little mermaid or the tin man or the pinnochio plot, the one about a character who is either inhuman or human but outside in some way, constantly searching for whatever it is that they consider to be the quintessential proof of humanity, preoccupied by it so deeply that they fail to realize the proof is in the act and fact of the search itself
ok but like when did self-sacrifice become synonymous with death? writers seem to have forgotten that people can make personal sacrifices for the greater good without giving their lives. plots about self-sacrifice and selflessness don’t always have to end in death. suffering doesn’t have to be mourning. you can create drama and emotional depth on your show without killing everyone. learn to explore the meaning of living rather than dying
There are many primers on how to start with Ursula K. Le Guin, all of them perfectly fine, but I haven’t seen any that just go with “Start with what’s available and easily accessible”.
“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is available online, and it’s only four typewritten pages. Confession: I hadn’t read this until today. You may think, as I did, because you know the story through osmosis (as probably many people who are familiar with sci-fi do) you don’t need to read it. You would be wrong.
This website has collated stories that are available online. They all appear to be from free sources like Baen, Lightspeed, and Clarkesworld.
On Le Guin’s personal website there is a great deal of stuff: poetry (original and in translation), book excerpts, interviews, and writing advice.
She blogged pretty extensively for many years, and there’s some lovely stuff in there. Her penultimate entry was about her cat Pard and the Time Machine. (just Ctrl + F for “pard” on the archive index. Trust me.)
Don’t let me stop you from going to the library or your online bookstore of choice to get her books, of course, but there’s plenty of stuff available that you don’t have to go very far to access.
Surnames are just as important as given names. So, I compiled a list of the websites I use to find my surnames.
English Surnames
Dutch Surnames
Spanish Surnames
Scottish Surnames
German Surnames
Italian Surnames
Irish Surnames
French Surnames
Scandinavian Surnames
Welsh Surnames
Jewish Surnames
Surnames By Ethnicity
Most Common Surnames in the USA
Most Common Surnames in Great Britan
Most Common Surnames in Asia
obsessed with stories where the message is that you can’t bring someone back from the dead even if you can bring someone back from the dead
things that might inspire me or help with with my writing skills
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