Laini Taylor's Blog, page 13

The Discipline of Fun -- part II

I've been working on this Discipline of Fun thing -- that is, pursuing fun in writing, with the fun itself being as much an end as the actual finished manuscript. Well, look at it this way: if it is fun, there's more likely to be a finished manuscript, right? So the question is, how do you going about making it fun, all or at least most of the time?

That is the quest.

Amber Lough made a great suggestion:

"Jacqui Robbins gave me a great idea yesterday---have a secret notebook in which I should w...

Black tie???!!!??? + . . . the competition . . .

It has just sunk in that the National Book Award dinner/award ceremony is a BLACK-TIE AFFAIR. Affair. I don't know what else to call it. Event isn't fancy enough :-) Don't know if I've ever attended an affair. But: black tie! That means I have to buy a fancy dress! And Jim has to wear a tux! Thank goodness he already has one, from his days in the British Secret Intelligence Service -- ha ha. Okay, not really.

I was reading Sara Zarr's account of the 2007 NBAs and there are all the tuxedos in ...

Why keep a writing notebook?

Why keep a writing notebook?

Because when you leaf through it you find things you have absolutely no memory of writing. Like this:

Once upon a time, in a little cottage at the edge of a village, lived a girl with long braids the color of gingersnaps. Her eyes were brown and her freckles were like a sift of cinnamon sugar on toast, and she had a secret no one knew, not even her best friend, who was a cat named Murder.

The secret was hidden in a hollow tree trunk and she visited it on Sundays...

Painting with light -- cool photography effect

Photography class homework from last week:






This technique is so much fun! We were supposed to play with shutter speed to show motion, and these do that, though not in the way I think the teacher expected. I was looking around online for inspiration and I discovered "light painting," wherein, in the dark, you use flashlights and other light sources to "paint" on the darkness. That first swirl photo up top is an example of that, as is the word WRITE two posts ago.

But what ended up interesting m...

Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry

I read a really lovely book yesterday -- Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry. I bought this at a book signing here in Portland last winter (Parry is a Portland author), and for some reason I just hadn't read it yet. It got tucked somewhere -- it's a slim, unassuming little book, easily tucked. Slim and unassuming though it may be, it is also beautiful and deeply affecting, and served to remind me about the soldiers still serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the effect of their absence here a...

Still Snoopy dancing (with interruptions)

I don't think I sounded as madly exuberantly happy in my post yesterday as I actually was, and that's because Clementine has a little cold which was making her uncomfortable and I just didn't have any leisurely stretch of time to craft a well-thought-out blog post suitable to the occasion. This is our first experience with a "sick" child -- it's really just a cold, no fever or anything, so I put "sick" in quotes because I cringe to imagine her or any baby being actually sick. We felt so helpl...

OH MY GOODNESS!!!

I don't even know what to say.

How does one put the Snoopy dance into words? Pure shining, spastic joy :-)

Yesterday morning we were getting ready (running late) to take Clementine to her two-month appointment at the pediatrician when the phone rang. Now, we're great non-phone-answerers. We tend to glance at the number and if we don't recognize it, we usually don't answer. But this had a NYC area code, and what's more, the caller was identified as "NATIONAL BOOK--" (the rest got cut off). So ....

The Discipline of Fun -- part I

Do you love to write?

Sometimes I love to write. Other times I love it after, when it is done. Still other times there is no love to be found, not hiding under any rock, not even afterwards.

Lately I've been thinking about fun and love in creativity, and trying to come up with a discipline that will make it always fun. Or at least: mostly. I don't know if that's possible, but it's worth a shot. The thing is, I generally set out to do something beyond what I can easily achieve, whether it's ar...

ICE by Sarah Beth Durst

I haven't done a book recommendation in a while, but I am motivated to do so this morning, having just closed Sarah Beth Durst's new novel Ice!

I love the fairy tale "East of the Sun, West of the Moon." I have two picture book versions (PJ Lynch and Mercer Mayer), and two novel adaptations of it (East by Edith Pattou and Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George), all of which I love. When I heard last year that Sarah Beth Durst's next novel would be an adaptation of this tale, I admit ...

Twilight readers, heads up:

If you're a Twilight buff and think you're up to some trivia questions, here's another chance to win a copy of Lips Touch! Sponsored by the good folks at Scholastic, it's a contest over at TwilightersAnonymous.com. The questions are specifically about the wolf pack. If, like my niece, you are "team Jacob," you probably have a good shot at winning.

Sample question: What specific fur color does Quil Ateara have in wolf form?

I don't know! Do you know? If you do, go HERE and enter. Contest is open...