A Book of Creatures | A Complete Guide to Entities of Myth, Legend, and Folklore Michael Lewis on Writing, Money, and the Necessary Self-Delusion of Creativity by Maria Popova “When you’re trying to create a career as a writer, a little delusional thinking goes a long way.” The question of why writers write holds especial mesmerism, both as a piece of psychological voyeurism and as a beacon of self-conscious hope that if we got a glimpse of the innermost drivers of greats, maybe, just maybe, we might be able to replicate the workings of genius in our own work. So why do great writers write? In Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do (public library) by Meredith Maran — which also gave us invaluable wisdom from Susan Orlean, Mary Karr and Isabel Allende, and which was among the 10 best books on writing from my recent collaboration with the New York Public Library — Michael Lewis, one of today’s finest nonfiction masters, shares his singular lore. Before I wrote my first book in 1989, the sum total of my earnings as a writer, over four years of freelancing, was about three thousand bucks. Donating = Loving
The Changing and Terrifying Nature of the New Cyber-Warfare On the hidden battlefields of history’s first known cyber-war, the casualties are piling up. In the U.S., many banks have been hit, and the telecommunications industry seriously damaged, likely in retaliation for several major attacks on Iran. Washington and Tehran are ramping up their cyber-arsenals, built on a black-market digital arms bazaar, enmeshing such high-tech giants as Microsoft, Google, and Apple. With the help of highly placed government and private-sector sources, Michael Joseph Gross describes the outbreak of the conflict, its escalation, and its startling paradox: that America’s bid to stop nuclear proliferation may have unleashed a greater threat. I. Their eyeballs felt it first. The data on three-quarters of the machines on the main computer network of Saudi aramco had been destroyed. A few technical details of the attack eventually emerged into the press. Cyberspace is now a battlespace. II. For the U.S., Stuxnet was both a victory and a defeat. III. IV.
Polygon Map Generation demo The simplest way to explore the maps is to click Random repeatedly. Try the various Island Shape, Point Selection, and View options. Feel free to use these maps for any purpose, including commercial use. This is a map generator I wrote in 2010 for a game[4]; I’m not working on it anymore, but all the code is available so that you can download and modify it for your own needs. I also have an HTML5 version of mapgen2[5] that has slightly different features. In a shape number like 85882-8, 85882 chooses the overall island shape and 8 is the random number seed for the details (random points, noisy edges, rivers). I wrote an article describing the algorithms, and how you can use all or some of the parts in your own projects. Radial, Perlin, Square, Blob are about the island shape.Random, Relaxed, Square, Hex are about how the map is divided up into polygons.Using 4000 or 8000 points can be slow. The code is open source, using the MIT license (allows commercial use).
The Taming of the Shrew: Writing Female Characters & Archetypes One of the biggest topics discussed in entertainment this year, especially the last few months, is the decrease in the number of women in the industry and especially the lack of female directors and female protagonists in cinema. Despite there being a number of films with female leads that have become massive hits, there are still far fewer produced than those with male leads. Studios are still passing on female protagonist projects and it’s our job to figure out why instead of just bemoaning that it happens. Recently, at the Final Draft Screenwriting Awards, the infamous Nancy Meyers labeled 2013 as the Year of the Shrew. That with few exceptions, most of the lead female characters in films last year were basically shrew-like bitches that no one could like and advised that writers “should write women you want to know, instead of run away from.” The more I thought about it, the more I realized – she’s not wrong. Cate Blanchett in ‘Blue Jasmine’ Were some of them complex characters? 1. 2.
Unions and employers hail inclusive Malcolm Turnbull as national mood lifts United on jobs and growth Business groups, unions and welfare representatives have emerged from Thursday's mini-summit with Malcolm Turnbull united in supporting greater productivity. Courtesy ABC News24. Business open to a review of tax breaks that benefit rich The Turnbull government has reached in-principle agreement with unions, employers and welfare organisations to reduce a raft of concessional taxation arrangements that benefit the rich, as all sides hailed the prospect of a new era of consensus and co-operation in Canberra. It followed the first direct ACTU-Coalition discussions since the 2013 election. Jennifer Westacott (left), Innes Wilcox, Cassandra Goldie, Dave Oliver and Kate Carnell at the National Reform Summit in August. "There was a very, very strong agreement that concessions needed to be looked at," said Business Council of Australia Chief Executive Jennifer Westacott. "Absolutely it's a step forward," said Ms Kearney.
15 words to eliminate from your vocabulary to sound smarter Newsprint is on life support, emojis are multiplying faster than hungry Gremlins, and 300 million people worldwide strive to make their point in 140 or fewer characters. People don’t have the time or the attention span to read any more words than necessary. You want your readers to hear you out, understand your message, and perhaps be entertained, right? Here’s a list of words to eliminate to help you write more succinctly. 1. It’s superfluous most of the time. 2. I went to school. 3. People use honestly to add emphasis. 4. Adding this word to most sentences is redundant. 5. Accurate adjectives don’t need qualifiers. 6. Unless you’re a Valley Girl, visiting from 1985, there’s no need to use really to modify an adjective. If you are visiting from 1985? 7. The word means “causing great surprise or sudden wonder.” Newsflash: If everything is amazing, nothing is. 8. 9. See: Always. 10. Literally means literal. 11. It’s a filler word and it makes your sentence weaker, not stronger. 12. 13. 14.
The Neuroscience Of "Harry Potter" Let's do a casual experiment. Here's a brief passage from the first book in some obscure fiction series called Harry Potter: A bush on the edge of the clearing quivered. … Then, out of the shadows, a hooded figure came crawling across the ground like some stalking beast. Harry, Malfoy, and Fang stood transfixed. And here's another passage from the final book of the series: He got up off the floor, stretched and moved across to his desk. Which passage did you find more engaging? The results of our experiment, that action is more engrossing than scene-setting, may be unsurprising. Hsu and collaborators recruited test participants to enter a brain scanner and read passages of Harry Potter (translated into German) about four lines long. As expected, the fearful passages received significantly higher ratings for immersion than the neutral ones—more likely to get readers lost in the book. The results support what the researchers call the "fiction feeling hypothesis" of reading immersion.
Don't believe the hype. Coal employs fewer people than McDonald's | Ben Oquist The prime minister has repeatedly said that the next election should be about jobs. He has attempted to kick-start a new “economy versus environment” strategy in relation to a coal mining. According to the ABS a huge 0.3% of Australians are currently employed in coal mining. If the coal industry trebled in size tomorrow it still wouldn’t be enough to create jobs for the extra 101,900 people who have become unemployed since Tony Abbott became prime minister. Anyone who has ever seen an open cut coal mine will understand why they don’t create a lot of jobs. The ABS provides clear data on this issue for anyone who is interested: it shows that every $1m in mining output creates 1.02 jobs while every $1m from health creates 8.47 jobs and agriculture creates 3.7 jobs. The biggest and most controversial coal project in Australia is the Adani-owned Carmichael mine in Queensland’s Galilee basin. When the prime minister came to power he promised to shed 20,000 jobs from the public sector.
Essential checklist of 140 words you could be getting wrong and that spellcheck might miss Are you making subtle but perceptible mistakes in your writing? Suffering from stuff spell check won’t pick up? Are you looking naïve in your pitches and emails? It’s a complex beast, the English language. In part one of Creative Boom’s Pragmatists’ Guide to Grammar and Punctuation, we’ll take a look at the 140 most commonly confused words in the English language… Mistakes you've probably made – or are making right now 1. Adverse: not goodAverse: not liking, keen to avoid 2. Accept: to get, or take on boardExcept: does not include 3. Affect: make a change, or differenceEffect: a result, creating a result 4. All together: everything in one placeAltogether: completely, overall 5. Amoral: does not give a damn about right or wrongImmoral: not in line with moral standards 6. Canvas: tent materialCanvass: drum up votes 7. Climactic: building up to a climaxClimatic: about the climate 8. Complement: add to and improveCompliment: show admiration 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. Hoard: store Horde: big crowd
How Neil Gaiman Stays Creative In An Age Of Constant Distraction The great German writer and realpolitik statesman Goethe once said “talent is nurtured in solitude.” The only way to achieve true creativity, then, was to become “a child of solitude.” But in our culture of constant connectivity, is solitude still needed, let alone possible? “It doesn’t matter what social media you’re plugged into, or what’s going on,” counters Neil Gaiman. Gaiman, a bestseller today, started out the way many other hopefuls did: as a journalist. Today the horror legend appreciates connectedness, chatting with fans online, a back-and-forth that he says has helped him inform and influence his writing. “I have 2 million Twitter followers,” he says, “ but those 2 million followers are not going to do anything to get my stories written for me. This may sound anathema to the writer as apostle of solitude. So: Gaiman uses the distraction of distraction to escape his own distraction. Digital Publishing’s Peaks And Valley Gaiman puts it simply: On The Bloody Amazon, Hachette Battle
7 Simple Edits That Make Your Writing 100% More Powerful There are some bloggers who seem to have a natural gift when it comes to writing. Some bloggers seem to be naturally gifted writers. They manage to get their ideas across clearly and economically, which means that readers can easily follow what they write. Readers devour their clear, economical prose. Not only is there a lot of respect for what they have to say, but also the way that they say it. People respect what they say – and love how they say it. Whenever they publish a new post on their blog, it always gets dozens of comments and hundreds of shares. It would be great to be as successful as they are, but you don’t know what you need to do to make your writing better. The good news is that there’s a secret you can easily learn which will improve everything you write from now on. The Unfair Advantage Popular Writers Try to Hide You know your writing heroes? Think of your draft as a rough diamond. Somewhat unfair, right? No wonder their writing seems so much better than yours. 1. 2. 3.
How Stephen King Teaches Writing Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft has been a fixture in my English classroom for years, but it wasn’t until this summer, when I began teaching in a residential drug and alcohol rehab, that I discovered the full measure of its worth. For weeks, I struggled to engage my detoxing, frustrated, and reluctant teenage students. I trotted out all my best lessons and performed all my best tricks, but save for one rousing read-aloud of Poe’s “A Tell-Tale Heart,” I failed to engage their attention or imagination. Until the day I handed out copies of On Writing. I asked King to expound on the parts of On Writing I love most: the nuts and bolts of teaching, the geekiest details of grammar, and his ideas about how to encourage a love of language in all of our students. Jessica Lahey: You write that you taught grammar “successfully.” Stephen King: Success is keeping the students’ attention to start with, and then getting them to see that most of the rules are fairly simple.
Author Tips: 10 Steps to Describe Your Character | Crownless Publications Tips for first time writers and self-publishers on how to write engaging character description. Having half formed characters roaming around your head can be a tireless exercise. Try as you might, sometimes it’s difficult to get them down on paper unscathed. Each word you select forms an aspect of that character in your reader’s mind and every choice should be deliberate. For example, your female character, is she a girl, a woman, a lady, a matron, a widow, a wife? All these things can describe a female character but each one will define her slightly differently. Your characters are your story’s ambassadors. Even the space they occupy can define them. You have the power to decide and mostly we like to make our characters miserable. But how do we start? Let’s get physical Well it’s tempting, when you see this character strolling around your head to focus on their physical attributes. This often leads to the common foible of listing clothes and features like a strange shopping list. Timing