146 posts tagged with writing.
Displaying 51 through 100 of 146. Subscribe:
It's No Game: A sci-fi short film (mostly) written by AI, starring David Hasselhoff
Last year, Oscar Sharp and I made the short-film Sunspring in just two days for the Sci-Fi-London 48 Hour Film Contest. It was (so far as we know) the first film created from a computer-generated screenplay [1,2,3,4]. This year, Oscar and I followed up on Sunspring with a new short film created for the same contest: It's No Game, starring David Hasselhoff. See the accompanying article in Ars Technica for more details. (Rather than generating the screenplay in its entirety, this time we used our neural nets as augmentative writing tools to generate short snippets of dialogue in various styles. )
Capsule Reviews of Classic Speculative Fiction Stories
For years and years, I’ve been collecting editions of the Annual World’s Best SF anthology series, which ran from 1972 to 1990. A couple of years ago I decided to commit to reading or rereading every single one of them, and to reviewing every single story in each of them on Goodreads. As of April 2017, I’ve gotten through 10 of them and reviewed a total of 107 stories. [more inside]
Hyacinth & The Secrets Beneath
My first novel comes out next month from Random House. It's aimed at 8 to 12-year-olds, and it's about an American girl who moves to London and encounters a giant pig in a bathing suit, a centuries-old magical conspiracy, and a bunch of monsters who work for the Royal Mail. Booklist calls it "fun, freaky, outlandish, and suspenseful." The School Library Journal calls it a "fantastic, funny adventure." Kirkus calls it "a rollicking adventure with a lulu of an ending." Me? I call it "a book I spent ten years working on, and I'm prouder of it than anything else I've written, and I really want it to do well." (I probably need to work on my blurbing skills.) [more inside]
Burning the Days
Dual-function site: New mailing list of my creative writing and limited archive of my past writing projects (Victory Shag, Wrestle the Future to the Fucking Ground, etc.) -- fiction, poetry, love letters, what have you. [more inside]
Essays on Poverty and UBI
I wrote a five part series on poverty and basic income. Part One: Introduction --- Part Two: Poverty and Health --- Part Three: Conditions and Motivations --- Part Four: The Case for Universality --- Part Five: How UBI Will Disrupt Poverty.
The Revolution, Brought to You by Nike
This is a (longish) short story about brand strategy and revolution, published by Fireside. Deeply informed by being nose-deep in the never-ending election/political threads since, what, July? ...Content warning for contemporary politics.
Jackass Letters: Archive Volume 1
This is the first volume in a projected three volume set. All letters are taken from the back catalog of jackassletters.com and are published by Run Amok Books.
Previously. And previously. [more inside]
Learning How To Scream Again: Promoting Leftism for Artists and Writers
The culmination of a lot of conversation I've had with fellow artists, designers, and writers. How do we effectively sell Leftist ideology ? How did we get here? What does a new left art look like? What should it's goals be? What's the best way to achieve them?
Liberty Tales
2015 marked the 800th anniversary of the first Magna Carta, and Liberty Tales is a collection of stories and poems that take a wide-ranging collection of responses to the issues of liberty, both personal and legal. Some of these 25 tales relate to specific clauses of the original document, while others are more concerned with how we experience and search after freedom in the 21st century. [more inside]
CC: Otherworlds
Original weird and wonderful art and stories in the mail - snail mail or email - fortnightly! [more inside]
The Crack of the .bat
My first professionally published short story. It's about robots playing baseball. Well, sort of. But mostly it's about industrial espionage.
A Year of Stories: Cobalt Blue
At the beginning of the year I decided to write one short story, every weekday, until December 31st (260 stories). To help motivate me, I'm releasing twelve Collections of these stories on Amazon. I've been at this since January, and so far I'm 135 stories in. This is Collection one, if you like it, it would be awesome if you could leave a review. Also, if you're interested in following the project in real-time, you can see all the stories here.
A Writing Forum
A small, informal and friendly writing forum. If you write, want to write, or once wrote and have stopped and are looking to start again and need some encouragement, or if you enjoy reading short pieces of writing, come and join us! [more inside]
The Cut: A Play by Patrick Cleary
A play I wrote was picked as the third place winner in Rover Dramawerks' First Annual 10 Minute Comedies Festival. They were kind enough to send me a copy of the video they recorded of the show. It's a play about office manners, fate, and snipped neckties.
My Kickstarter Project Gamer Theory
From the Kickstarter: "My book is divided into two parts. The first part is a point-by-point response to McKenzie Wark's excellent Gamer Theory (2007, Harvard University Press). The second part offers an expanded definition of Gamer Theory, complete with suggestions for ways the reader can think critically about gaming and still enjoy the hell out of it. " [more inside]
The hats of your mortal enemies, turned inside-out and used as flowerpots
A Tumblr with one list a day, almost completely unburdened by truth or common sense. Some examples: nine notable letters and marks; seven guests not to invite to your party; seven lesser-known pirate hoards; three light meals; the seven great societies of time travellers; Instructions for Those Who Wish To Take the Path Through the City and Emerge Unscathed on the Other Side; four lesser-known English Explorers of the Early Victorian Period; six proposals for a transient architecture.
Cookbook Title Generator
Today's bestselling cookbooks can seem a little formulaic. The titles start to sound the same. The success of one book begets sequels, riffs and shameless wannabes. With such nakedly formulaic titles, couldn't you assemble a cookbook title by slapping together some diet buzzwords, food trends and publishing tropes? Why, yes you could!
The Smoking Moon
The Smoking Moon is an album by Toby Vok, with an accompanying science fiction novelisation by Ted Vaaak. All available for the great price of free (or more, if you so desire). [more inside]
Matriarchal Storytelling
These are my findings and observations stemming from my experimental writing in fiction. This is an ongoing series of nonfiction essays about writing fiction in a modern era.
I am an author who noticed the stranglehold the Patriarchal style of storytelling had on fiction: a single point of view with a hero who has an evil antagonist and a supporting characters who are less interesting and capable than the protagonist. It limits what a storyteller can do, and as an author, I decided to challenge it by exploring and testing it. [more inside]
Money Boss
Ten years ago in this space, I announced my new money blog called Get Rich Slowly. With your support, that blog grew into a business and a career. Now I've launched a new money blog called Money Boss, which covers "advanced personal finance". Money Boss is about achieving early retirement and financial independence, about mastering your money -- and your life. Because it's great to get rich slowly, but I believe you can do better! [more inside]
I Butchered a Pig
I butchered a pig this weekend, and decided to write about the process. [more inside]
Chrindie 95: A collection of essays about a seminal year in Christian indie rock.
1995 was also an incredibly important year for the scene we've come to call “Chrindie,” for Christian indie rock. Much has been written about the weird world of contemporary Christian music, but whatever you think it is , you’d be surprised by how many genuinely great Chrindie records were released twenty years ago. [more inside]
thank you notes
A Thousand Solomons
My story, A Thousand Solomons, is up on the Baltimore Science Fiction Society website, as a winner of their Amateur Writing Contest. The contest is held every year, there are cash prizes, the winner's work is published online (for a year), and the winner has the opportunity to read their work at Balticon.
Words for Music for Films
Written accompaniment for Brian Eno's classic album Music for Films. [more inside]
Trans, Kink, and Poly-inclusive sex ed
I am a Quaker, and the Quaker magazine Friends Journal asked me to review a book on sex ed by a Quaker teacher, Al Vernacchio's For Goodness Sex. As a radical sex-positive poly person whose nuclear family has a 50/50 trans/cis split, I found Vernacchio's mildly progressive approach inadequate, and said so. Plainly, in keeping with Quaker tradition.
I self-published my first comic, The Offbeat Path!
I've been drawing and posting comics for a while, and I finally had enough decent material to make a book out of it. It's 26 pages worth of autobiography, dreams, and musings on the culture I live in. You can download the book (a pdf) for a buck fifty from my Gumroad page, or you can go to my Tumblr and poke around in my archive to see most of the stories included.
Jordan Harper on bandits, crime fic's race problem, and fuck Mickey Spilane
I interviewed crime author and fellow MeFite Jordan Harper for The Life Sentence.
I'm Getting Really Tired Of My Mysterious Flakey Friend
Having friends can be hard! Especially when your friend is constantly jetting off to exotic destinations or cleaning guns or scaling office buildings n black turtlenecks....
Finding Miller
The story behind a very very good, very very bad, day that began with AskeMe. [more inside]
The Cat Vs Kirk
A man watches a movie. A cat takes a nap. Who used their time more wisely? [more inside]
Generic Screenshot Domain
Need a URL for your project? Manual? Screenshot? Want to make sure it won't redirect to anything sketchy? Well, for at least two years, you can use www.genericscreenshotdomain.com and know that it'll stay exactly what it is. [more inside]
smiling face withface
Randomly generated glitch emoji, automatically posted to Tumblr. GHFACE. STEAM LOSKI BOOT. OCTONT MOON. A conversation. [more inside]
Litblog Roundup
What's happening at the intersection of literary culture and the internet? I've started a new bi-weekly blog series intended to address that topic and more. It's called "Litblog Roundup." [more inside]
esoteric.codes
esoteric.codes is my blog about esolangs (esoteric programming languages), aimed at a less technical audience. Esolangs are created by programmers at play, challenging conventions of coding, looking at how we communicate with the machine, and indulging the strangest what-if scenarios in code. The blog looks at the ideas behind these languages and explores connections to code art and conceptual practices -- but it is also a fanzine to my favorite languages. It features interviews with the original designers (recently: Ben Olmsead of Malbolge, coming up soon David Morgan-Mar of Piet and Whenever) alongside posts about common themes between languages (e.g. languages that produce no output). It was recently awarded the 2014 Arts Writers Grant.
The Art is Not The Artist: On Holding Abusers Accountable & Enjoying Problematic Media
This is the thought process I go through when I’m considering the creative output of a horrible individual, and the questions I ask myself about whether I can consume the work in good conscience. [more inside]
The Finest Art, the Dumbest Writing
Were making comic books! But more importantly, for here, a comedy companion blog to hone our skills. Follow as Daniel takes his work more seriously, and Ken takes his less seriously.
ITP Code Poetry Slam 2014
I'm organizing a code poetry slam in New York City on November 14. Submissions are now open. Judges, special guests, etc. to be announced. Stay tuned. [more inside]
Magehollow: A Web Serial
Magehollow is an ongoing work of serial fiction that explores a young girl's introduction to the world of magic. It's a bit of modern-day fantasy that's about a quarter of the way through its run now. [more inside]
This Is What Anne Frank's Arrest Looked Like
70 years ago, Anne Frank and her family were arrested after more than two years in hiding in Amsterdam. But what did their arrest really look like? I write about it for mental_floss.
Go Ahead, read my stuff.
This is just a tumblr I've put up to put up anecdotes for my grandchildren to read. Saves me the trouble of having to remember all the details when I'm 80, I hope, I can hand the kids an iPad with all the tales neatly formatted and pictures alongside. The next generation of grandpa's knee!
Of course, that's the excuse I use on myself: that someone will want to read them. So, I thought I'd stick it up here and let you folks look and critique my writing/style/whatever.
Dickens.me: Collaborative serial storytelling
Dickens.me is a community creative writing project to craft an interactive adventure in the style of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories, with authors writing chapters of up to 400 words that each end in two choices for the reader.
Lapsed Historian - Because History is Fun. Honest.
A website for long form history writing, such as The Longest Forecast, the story of the Meteorologist Eisenhower challenged to find the right day for D-Day. Also for sharing interesting history pieces found elsewhere as well. [more inside]
March Madness Bracket: The Greatest Fictional Colleges of All Time
Many hours were wasted making seedings and filling out spreadsheets and unartfully ms-painting to create this bracket of fake colleges, universities battling it out for dominance. Here it is! Despite being full of errors, it is definitive. [more inside]
Dinosaurs!WTF?
This is my blog covering the Conservative Dinosaur Readiness Movement. It is a satirical blog about a right wing survivalist group that is paranoid that dinosaurs are going to return somehow and conquer earth. While it is satire, I also try to incorporate good science when I can, I interview legit people in the paleontology field such as Kirk Johnson and Peter Larson. [more inside]
2003 Trans Zines Article
I ran across what I think is a previously unpublished article I wrote in 2003 giving an overview of what was at the time the previous 15 years of zines on topics related to trans issues. It also lumps in drag with transsexual and transgender writing, which might be problematic, but it does illustrate how drag was a topic covered earlier in zines than trans topics.
LitKit: A Curated Index of the Literary Blogosphere
Even in the midst of some technological turbulence (see also: “blogging is dead,” “Google Reader is gone“) there remains a vibrant and enjoyable literary blogosphere. You can still subscribe to a huge number of blogs and join the conversation. I’ve created a tool to help make it easy to do this, so you can get back to reading and posting. Using Silliman’s Blogroll as a starting point, I’ve created an OPML file. This file is a big list of all the RSS feeds of all the blogs on Silliman’s list. The file is designed to be imported into your blog reader of choice. Since Google Reader isn’t around anymore, I recommend Feedly (my current favorite) or Digg Reader (also very good).
Openings: first lines from books, articles, poems, songs, movies
A collection of great first lines. Just launched this week. If you want to recommend a first line, please comment! Excited to share my first project with you, I've been an AskMeFi lurker for years.
Writing Blocks
A text drafting tool so minimalist that the words you're writing are invisible [more inside]
NaNoWriMo Doom Clock
I made this for myself when flirting with the prospect of writing last autumn, but I felt compelled to clean it up and share it with the world for this year's contest. Starting November 1, it's going to start counting up from zero to 50,000, which will be reached at midnight on the 1st of December. It was designed as a tool to inspire, but I think the actual effect might be more troubling. I guess that depends whether you're on pace or behind.