mix & mash - the great NZ remix & mashup competition Sponsored by: The National Library of New Zealand $2000 will go to the best digital remix that tells “A New Zealand Aotearoa Story” using Creative Commons, public domain, no known copyright, or openly licensed New Zealand digital content. Be it our history retold, a traditional story refreshed, a tale about a NZer, or a ‘day in the life’ with a particular NZ flavour – we want to see digital content re-mixed in a fresh and interesting way to tell a uniquely New Zealand story. In addition, we also have a special prize pool for the best entries from New Zealand Primary and Secondary students.
John Crowley Little and Big - The List This is the reading list I have compiled with the help of all of you. Now that I am just about to press PASTE and stick it in I remember that there was an animadversion -- I guess -- to Chatwin's Songlines with a knowledgable alternative, which I will use. Italics have not survived the paste.
Dancing Makes You Smarter For centuries, dance manuals and other writings have lauded the health benefits of dancing, usually as physical exercise. More recently we've seen research on further health benefits of dancing, such as stress reduction and increased serotonin level, with its sense of well-being. Most recently we've heard of another benefit: Frequent dancing apparently makes us smarter. A major study added to the growing evidence that stimulating one's mind by dancing can ward off Alzheimer's disease and other dementia, much as physical exercise can keep the body fit. Dancing also increases cognitive acuity at all ages. You may have heard about the New England Journal of Medicine report on the effects of recreational activities on mental acuity in aging.
The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do. Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts. Think of your laptop as a machine like the one at the gym where you open and close your inner thighs in front of everyone, exposing both your insecurities and your genitals. Because that is what writing is all about. Procrastination is an alluring siren taunting you to google the country where Balki from Perfect Strangers was from, and to arrange sticky notes on your dog in the shape of hilarious dog shorts.
How to Write with Style: Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Keys to the Power of the Written Word Find a Subject You Care About Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style. The Big Book of Yoga: The Yoga Family Treehouse (page 1 of 4) Yoga has been around for a long, long time. The earliest reliable evidence we have of Yoga being practiced in ancient India is a carving from the early Indus Valley settlement, Mohenjo-Daro, possibly dating back to 3300 BCE1. By way of comparison, Lao Tze, Socrates, and Buddha wouldn't be born until almost 3,000 years later.
Drawing Mental Illness: Artist Bobby Baker’s Visual Diary by Maria Popova Harvesting the daily flow of consciousness, or what group therapy has to do with marine life. Despite our proudest cultural and medical advances, mental illness remains largely taboo, partly because the experience of it can be so challenging to articulate. But when performance artist Bobby Baker was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in 1996, followed by a breast cancer diagnosis, she set out to capture her experience and her journey to recovery in 711 drawings that would serve as her private catharsis over the course of more than a decade. MyStar Welcome! 8.8.2013: Had some intermittent server problems over the last couple of weeks. Things should be back up to speed now. The 5 Best Pieces of Writing Advice I Didn't Get in School As readers of a site that welcomes and encourages submissions, there's a decent chance some of you want to be writers. Several months ago, I wrote an advice column on how to go about freelancing for the Internet and magazines, but some readers have their sights set on short fiction or even novels. And right now, some are contemplating education choices like picking a major or attending graduate school to get that MFA. photos.com"MFA" stands for "Master of Fine Arts" and should not be confused with the old porno Master of Fine Ass still available on VHS. Let me be clear: Education is wonderful. There is nothing you will ever learn that you will not ultimately use.
How to Write a Book In Your Spare Time Many people say they would like to write a book. That statement is usually in the form of “I have this great book idea”, “I’ve always wanted to write a novel” or “I will write it when I have more time.” I used to say things like that. 6 Rules for a Great Story from Barnaby Conrad and Snoopy by Maria Popova “And remember: Always aim for the heart!” You might recall Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life (public library), which gave us Ray Bradbury’s wise words on rejection. To recap: Barnaby Conrad and Monte Schulz, son of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, asked 30 famous authors and entertainers to each respond to a favorite Snoopy comic strip with a 500-word essay on the triumphs and tribulations of the writing life.
Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Tips on How to Write a Great Story By Maria Popova The year of reading more and writing better is well underway with writing advice the likes of David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac’s 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck’s 6 pointers, and various invaluable insight from other great writers. Now comes Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922–April 11, 2007) — anarchist, Second Life dweller, imaginary interviewer of the dead, sad soul — with eight tips on how to write a good short story, narrated by the author himself. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.Start as close to the end as possible.Be a Sadist.
English 50 Exercises for Story Writers English 50 – Intro to Creative Writing: Exercises for Story Writers Basic Theory: What is a short story? Writing Workshop If you go to a good art school (and yes you STEM readers out there, such places do exist) they teach you to think of your art as a practice. And yourself as a practitioner. There’s a purpose to this tradition, although admittedly it takes most art students – myself included – until well after they graduate and are in to their practice to understand why. Before I say more about practice, I should say why I think this idea is useful at this time for writers. Today the writing world is in a certain amount of turmoil. Digital technology means that the limitations imposed by print have evaporated overnight.