by Dan Stout
I recently came across a very cool project by the artist ~meroth on Deviant Art. He's slowly transforming a sketchbook into his own version of Lovecraft's dread Necronomicon. Very beautiful work. Hopefully he'll age out the pages at some point and share the finished result!
Seriously, it just goes on like this... amazing stuff.
by Dan Stout
The pendulum has swung the other direction...
Last week I managed to write and submit a story, but struggled with finding time to revise older pieces.
This week I did extensive revisions and resubmitted them, but didn't write anything new.
It's a delicate balance, made more complicated by a week with limited time to write. I'm trying to take each rejection as an opportunity to review my stories and improve them, rather than blindly resubmit.; at the same time I think that the point of W1S1 is to keep generating new work, to walk through the creative path over and over again, until I can find my way in the dark.
But the good news is that I'm learning to strike that balance. I'm excited to see what I can pull off for Week 14.
by Dan Stout
Just looked over the status updates at Write1Sub1, and it's been another week of impressive placements. Certainly helps me to keep writing when I see so many talented people plugging away week after week.
This week I completed and submitted a flash piece. I also worked on revising "Dear Mr. Sumers", but I'm feeling like my wheels are spinning on that one. It's starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth, so I'm shelving it until April, when I can look at it with fresh eyes.
This coming week I'm looking forward to writing a new story and reworking/resubmitting the two that came back to me last week.
Photo Credit: wikimedia.org user: Drake
by Dan Stout
I'm still working through the Write 1 Sub 1 challenge this year. Inspired by Ray Bradbury, it's a challenge for writers to write and submit one short story a week, every week for a year. (The challenge can be modified to one a month if the original concept isn't practical for you.)
Being new to W1S1, I'm chalking this week up to a learning experience. I got a lot of writing done, but didn't finish anything. I spread my time out among too many pieces, and I was guilty of jumping from them when they got to a difficult stretch.
I think that I need to pick a single project for the week, then focus on that with all of my core writing time. If I'm able to do work beyond that, I can move to something else. (Kind of like a reward for doing the tough slog of the other stuff.)
In any case, I'm looking forward to putting this into practice this week, and seeing what the results are.
by Dan Stout
Just a quick mention of Fungi Week over at Weird Fiction Review. You know, like Shark Week, just slower and more insidious. They're promoting the publication of Fungi, a new anthology of weird fiction incorporating fungus in some fashion. WFR is also highlighting some great fungus photography, short stories not found in the anthology, and other variations on the theme. (In a measure of self-restraint that far exceeds my own capabilities, they don't have a single headline declaring that they're putting the Fun back in Fungus.) Anyway, it's worth checking out.
And now, a fairy ring growth in a pleasant suburban yard:
![By User:Mrs skippy (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFairy_ring_on_a_suburban_lawn_100_1851.jpg)
By User:Mrs skippy (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
by Dan Stout
The Worthington Library is running a "Blind Date" promotion for Valentine's Day. They have a shelf in their entryway of books wrapped in brown paper bags, with hints of story within. If you're intrigued, you can check out the book (barcode is revealed on the back), take it home, and find out what you've gotten.
I picked the one labeled "Murder..." and decorated with bloody Valentine's hearts. (I know, big shock, right?) I got my blind book-date home and unwrapped it to find...
And yes, I love it.
Looks like the author managed to sell it as a series. Nicely done, Mary Lou Kirwin!
Anyway, I mostly just wanted to give a shout out to the Worthington LIbrary for a simple but ingenious promotion.
by Dan Stout
I finally picked up a copy of the Hidden Ohio map.
It's a big, beautiful map which points out areas of interest for fans of Weird events. Whether it's Big Foot sightings, UFO encounters, hauntings, or other unnatural phenomena, if you're looking for it in the Buckeye state, the Hidden Ohio map has it.
The front is loaded with areas of interest, and the back is backed with a item-by-item description, grouped into sections such as Hauntings, Native American Sacred Sites, etc.
I've been meaning to grab one of these maps for some time, and I wish I'd picked one up when it first came out. Highly recommended!
by Dan Stout
Apparently there's a Canadian spin-off of the BBC science-fiction series Primeval. To generate a little marketing, they are releasing audio and visual effects for fans to use in their own videos. (A sample from PrimevalNewWorld.com is below.)
I'm sure they're being released with all the usual disclaimers, but these look like they could be a lot of fun to play around with. Get yours now before someone in corporate shuts it down!
by Dan Stout
Over at Scientific American, Alex Wild has compiled a list of some of the most disturbing ways for insects to shuffle off this mortal coil, and accompanied it with his own collection of wonderful insect macro photography. I haven't seen his work before, but I'll definitely keep an eye out for more after seeing these pieces.
Especially exciting for me was the photos showing the handiwork of controlling parasites, which is always a personal point of interest.
One sample is below, the rest of the article and photos can be found here.
by Dan Stout
Poet and victim of mental illness, Ivan Blatny.
Poet and victim of mental illness, Ivan Blatny.
Krystian Majewski has a great article on his always interesting Game Design Reviews blog. Entitled Fetishization of Insanity, it challenges the trope of the 'Crazy Powerful' Hero or Villain.
[I]nsanity in general seems more like an easy way out for writers than actual depiction of an illness. Need a memorable, extroverted character? Let’s turn up that dial and say they are insane!
And he's right. In modern fiction, terms like Psychotic, Schizophrenic, Sociopathic, and Manic are usually used interchangeably with 'Bad-Ass'. Is the villain immune to pain and stronger than a normal human? Well, that's 'cause he's a PSYCHO!
Majewski also calls out the selective symptoms that our fictional madmen tend to have.
...pop culture likes to focus solely on Mania. You know, because it’s the fun brand of insanity. UnlikeCata tonia or Depression. Pop culture insanity is fairly stable too. The Joker’s Mania is so stable and reliable, I wonder if you could call it insanity at all. Seems almost like a character trait to me.
(Can't say that I've ever seen the Joker crippled by depression, though there have been comics which addressed the nature of the Joker and Batman's behavior. The Killing Joke comes to mind.)
Majewski's right about fictional insanity often only having the fun symptoms, and he's also right when he identifies that as lazy writing. The HWA's On Writing Horror has an essay on exactly this topic. Written by a psychiatrist, it clarifies the traits of the most commonly used psychoses, and challenges writers to present mental illness as more than just personality quirk.
That's an interesting topic in and of itself, but Majewski's article got me thinking about another use of insanity in modern fiction: the insane as a mystical "other".
As a society we glorify artists who are burdened with madness and celebrities who "burn too bright" and die young, often driven by mania and fueled by drug use. Is it possible that this reflects a cultural memory of a time when shamans and priests lived on the fringes of our communities? Eccentric and mad, these outsiders used psychotropic drugs to bring back visions from an altered reality. They were respected and feared. And they were powerful.
In today's fiction, these mystics often appear as Guardians At The Gate: the crazy bag lady who has secret wisdom, the rambling, toothless old man who speaks in riddles, the shaman and sorceress who give our heroes a potion, allowing them to enter the dream-time. They are sentinels on the border of madness and magic, and through them lies the path to adventure.
Less frequently we see stories where the hero struggles with madness which allows her to transcend the mundane world, but still presents the real challenges of mental illness. A few films with rich characterizations stand out from the pack, such as Benny & Joon, Punch Drunk Love, and The Fisher King. Sadly, works like these are the exception, not the rule. Use of insanity in a story isn't inherently good or bad. The deciding factor lies with the author, and the time and effort he is willing to invest in his craft. In this way it's no different from the rest of the story-teller's toolbox; it's up to each of us individually to determine how much of a voice we'll give to the individuals behind a disease.
