Jim Nelson's Blog, page 18

Making the most of your writing notebook

Pablo Picasso – Tête d’Homme (1969) (CC BY 2.0)

You keep a writing notebook, right?

Years ago I attended an exhibition of Picasso’s sketch pads and notebooks. People thronged he museum fascinated with the charcoal and pencil scratchings of a 20th century oil painting master. Most of the sketches were loose, ad hoc, even sloppy. None of Picasso’s originals were on display. Scaled-down reproductions were presented beside the sketches produced in preparation for the final work.

What drives my fa...

Eye-popping origami at Setting the Crease

Brill’s Double Cube, from Setting the Crease

Readers of Bridge Daughter might be interested in Setting the Crease, an origami blog I recently stumbled upon.

Just as I was amazed at the prizewinning origami displayed at Paper Tree in San Francisco’s Japantown (inspiration for a chapter in Bridge Daughter), Setting the Crease likewise is a demonstration of crafting stunning sculptures from flat paper. “No cuts, no tears, no glue.”

Calling itself a blog dedicated to “paper-based procrastination,...

Computer programming & writing fiction: Iterative processes

Repetition (elPadawan, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Previously I’ve noted the similarities between computer programming and writing fiction, saying both attracted their own practitioners. I then explained why I view computer programming, as well as computer programs, as forms of art.

How else is writing fiction like computer programming? Practicing the two, one common aspect I’ve gleaned is their repetitive natures. Both are iterative processes.

I cannot in good faith declare any fiction I’ve written “done”...

Bridge Daughter on sale for 99¢

Kindle Scout is celebrating its 2nd anniversary this month! To mark the occasion, the entire Kindle Scout catalog will be on sale for $0.99 from March 20th to April 3rd.

This sale includes Bridge Daughter, so if you’ve not picked up a copy for yourself or a friend, now is the time!

And check here for more Kindle Scout books from a variety of authors, from science fiction to mystery to contemporary.

Published March 20, 2017 by Jim Nelson. Updated March 19, 2017

Writing better fiction with Syd Field’s three-act screenplay structure: Now write it again

Syd Field

(See my “Continuing Series” page for a listing of all posts about using Syd Field’s paradigm to write fiction.)

Previously I discussed the fiction writer’s treatment (and how it’s different than a film treatment) as part of this series on how to use Syd Field’s three-act screenplay structure for writing stories and novels.

To recap, a fiction writer’s treatment is a way to prepare yourself for producing a rough outline. The treatment asks direct questions about your story and force...

Twenty Writers: David Kidd, Peking Story: The Last Days of Old China

See the “Twenty Writers, Twenty Books” home page for more information on the series as well as a list of other reviews and essays.

David Kidd’s Peking Story: The Last Days of Old China has settled into a somewhat unnoticed shelf of American literature: the remembrance.

Serialized in The New Yorker in 1955, collected in book form in 1961 as All the Emperor’s Horses, and republished in 1988 under the title it holds today, David Kidd’s book is an underappreciated classic in American nonfiction....

Computer programming & writing fiction: Is coding art?

In my last post comparing writing programming and writing fiction, I concluded both were similar because of their relationship with their practitioners. “Art is a kind of recruiting poster for itself,” I wrote. “An art attracts its own artists.”

Wait—is computer programming art? It’s accepted to call fiction art, but can computer programming really be considered

the conscious use of the imagination in the production of objects intended to be contemplated or appreciated as beautiful, as in the...

Computer programming & writing fiction: Art as a recruiting poster

How is computer programming like writing fiction? Is writing code anything like writing stories?

When I was young, perhaps seven or eight, I banged out my first short story on a second-hand IBM Selectric typewriter my mother brought home from her office. Powered on, the Selectric vibrated the whole desk and emanated a low mechanical hum, some unseen engine in the contraption idling. I still recall the tang of the ink in the typewriter ribbon and the satisfying, officious schock as the typebal...

On Don Herron’s Fritz Leiber Tour

Saturday I had the pleasure to take Don Herron’s Fritz Leiber Tour. Like his more famous Dashiell Hammett Tour, Herron recreates through personal research, recollection, and local points-of-interest Leiber’s life story and the circumstances that led him to spending his last years in San Francisco.

My attendance in the tour was accidental. In October, while talking with Nicole Gluckstern after the conclusion of the Bikes to Books Tour, I mentioned what can only be called a minor parallel in my...

Bridge Daughter on sale for 99¢ all December

Go ahead, open before Xmas: As part of Amazon’s “120 Kindle books” promotion, Bridge Daughter is on sale the entire month of December for the bargain price of 99¢!

Jump straight to Bridge Daughter on Amazon to take advantage of this deal or visit Amazon’s “120 Kindle books” to see all books priced at 99¢. (Sale ends December 31st.)

“Thought-provoking story blends action, introspection, and social commentary.” – Publishers Weekly

“Intelligent, gripping, and hard to put down.” – The Drifting Pa...