WickedThought

Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, the long-awaited and long-promised Orphans album, collecting over thirty years of rarities, b-sides and special appearances (along with some surprises, we’re told). Three discs full of Tom Waits madness.

I officially cannot wait.

You know, it’s just an urban myth that the guy who created Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston, was a kinky old fellow getting his rocks off writing comic books for kids with vague hints of the S&M he was into with his wife and their “open relationship” mistress.

The urban myth is that he was subtle about it.

… dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick…

My dreams are getting more vivid, intense, and symbolic. I’ve re-opened my dream journal, something I have not done in years.

It seemed more appropriate for lordstrange to recount this one, so he did.

Friendly warning: I’ve been dreaming about you.

Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and other wonderful and semi-wonderful books, has put up 13 Writing Tips. Considering I just made a list of 10 things I would always do as a writer, I decided to check it out.

(The egg timer rule is worth the price of admission alone.)

I have a confession to make. I’ve made it before, but it must be made again.

I am helplessly, hopelessly and desperately in love… with ABBA.

And here, Faithful Readers, is my all-time favorite ABBA song. Just for you.

I know what my documentary is about. It’s about the Game Design Seminar.

I’ll be interviewing folks who attend, the speakers and the guy who thought of this crazy idea in the first place. Yeah, Jared. That’s you.

I’ll also have one big question to ask. I’m very curious about the answer folks will give me:

“Who designed your five favorite games?”

I know many folks in the indie crowd know the answer to this, but I also know 99% of the crowd at GenCon don’t. It’ll be an interesting experiment.

As usual, Robin (robin_d_laws) has a lot of smart things to say. This time, his subject is the Origins Awards.

Stephen Colbert, on his Colbert Report, made a rather interesting suggestion to his audience… albeit a suggestion that came right out of the side of his mouth. He suggested that Wikipedia allowed us to define reality “by concensus.” If you watch The Colbert Report at all, you’ll know just how funny this is.

Then, he suggested that his audience go to Wikipedia and change the page on “elephants” to report that the population of elephants has actually grown over the last ten years.

Well, they did. And they blew Wikipedia’s servers.

Here’s the story on it.
And here’s the segment on the show.

The Discordian in me is dancing to raindrops.

In her own journal, learsfool listed a bunch of things she would never do in a fantasy novel. Inspired, I endeavored to come up with my own list. However, also inspired by Shel Silversteen’s Twenty Commandments (which were all things to do rather than things not to do) and inspired by Elmore Leonard’s Easy on the Hooptedoodle (the best “rules of writing” I have ever found), I decided to come up with a list of things that I will always do in my writing.

1. I will remember that people are paying for what I write.
2. I will assume my reader is smarter than me.
3. I will assume my primary job is to entertain the reader.
4. I will fuck with preconceived notions (protagonist/antagonist identity, plot, exposition, trustworthy narrator, etc.).
5. I will remember my writing teacher’s advice: “Writers don’t use cliches, they invent them.”
6. I will go easy on the hooptedoodle.
7. I will assume my primary job is to challenge the reader.
8. I will only read authors who challenge me and not waste my time on crap.
9. I will leave in-jokes for my friends to remind them, years from now, that I was thinking of them at that moment.
10. I will never compromise.