Rick Cook Jr.'s Blog, page 22
July 22, 2013
Claim Your Writing Space
This article is posted in Brain2Page.
__________
Where do you like to write? At your home office looking out a big bay window on the sand and surf? Curled up on the couch with a blanket and your laptop, sipping a hot cup of tea? At the library using public computers in near tomblike silence? At a coffee shop with your tablet, a cappafrappalatteccino and your headphones?
Maybe you like to vary your writing places and your writing spaces. Maybe you go sit on a park bench with a notebook and write...
July 20, 2013
Lilavati’s Morning Routine [1,070 words]
This short story is posted in Fiction, Short Stories, and Literature.
A bit of a departure from my regular genre fiction, but here’s hoping someone out there likes it.
A quick shoutout to K.C. Wise of Writing While Black, from whom I borrowed the last two lines. I’m hopeful she won’t be angry with me (or for changing it a bit), but I did really love this line and wanted to use it.
__________
Her Morning Routine
by Rick Cook Jr
Lilavati did not sleep last night. She lay awake, running her morning ro...
July 17, 2013
I Wrote An Epic But Fell Into The Plot Holes
This article is posted in Page2Print.
__________
There are times when I enter a sort of revision fugue, where I’ve been writing and rewriting the same words, sentences, paragraphs, scenes, chapters, stories to the point that I can’t reliably tell what’s going on anymore. I come out the other side with a net wash. I may have been editing for three hours straight, but when I look at what I’ve been working on I honestly can’t see the work anymore. All I see are letters mashed together in some semb...
July 15, 2013
The First Line Was The Last [890 words][nsfw-drugs]
This short story is posted in Fiction, Short Stories, and Writing Prompts.
__________
The First Line Was The Last
by Rick Cook Jr
Once upon a time, there was a story so short, it was only a single line.That line danced up the straw into my nose, a churning whirlwind of promise. I leaned back, snorting and coughing, holding my nose shut against the tingling urge to sneeze all that powder back out. Everyone around me laughed as I started to sniff. I didn’t feel anything different, except a pleasant...
July 14, 2013
How I Felt When I Saved The World [2,300 words][slightly NSFW]
This short story is posted in Fiction, Short Stories, Fantasy, and Grimdark.
If you aren’t familiar with Grimdark, just let me warn you: nothing good happens in this story. It’s full of awfulness and I apologize in advance. Also a little NSFW for mild language and sexual content.
__________
How I Felt When I Saved The World
by Rick Cook Jr
Our white clothing blended with the whitewashed walls and décor. Sprays of crimson marred the columns on our way up. Delaana wiped her daggers on the corpses as...
July 10, 2013
Write It Down, Write It All Down.
This article is posted in Brain2Page.
__________
This one will be pretty short. Probably. Maybe. Just go with me on this.
In a previous post about Maintaining Momentum I spent a lot of time talking about a lot of different things, all of them designed to keep you striding forward confidently and quickly. But one thing I barely mentioned is the concept of Saving Everything, which has nothing whatsoever to do with maintaining momentum, and everything to do with future inspiration.
Doesn’t matter wh...
July 8, 2013
Writing Lessons From Ice Sculpting
This article is posted in Page2Print.
__________
Imagine a block of ice. You take your chisel and hammer and you go to work, making small nicks and grooves. You know what it looks like, you just have to get there. The first thing you do is knock out the basic shape of the sculpture. We’ll say it’s a banana. You like bananas, right? It’s a damn banana.
That basic shape? That’s your outline. You just outlined how you’re going to carve a banana out of a block of ice.
The next step is to start making...
July 6, 2013
Ferryman’s Bluff [1,350 words]
This short story is posted in Fiction, Short Stories, and Fantasy.
__________
Ferryman’s Bluff
by Rick Cook Jr
They collapsed in a heap on the ferry as it pulled away. Rangold was first to his feet, sneering and jeering at the group of five on the pier, who were shouting and cursing.
“Hah,” Rangold shouted. “This is last time you see us empty-handed!” He turned and dropped his trousers to the group, who all averted their gazes or threw rocks. One bounced off Rangold’s rump and he jumped up, yelpin...
July 4, 2013
Big Words Don’t Make Big Ideas
This article is posted in Brain2Page.
Anyone who read my first novel knows I was fond of big words. I went out of my way to use words like “peripatetic” and “eructation” simply because I knew them. It took a while to understand that this was a mistake. I’d artificially raised the bar for people to read and enjoy my novel with absolutely no gain.
When I was younger (and not very much younger) I had this mentality that “I’m writing for people like me” when “people like me” was a flimsy, shifting...
July 2, 2013
An Original Sin [3,100 words] [NSFW-language]
This short story is posted in Fiction, Science Fiction, andShort Stories.
__________
Rembrandt’s lost work “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee”.
An Original Sin
Eva slipped in through a rusted, decaying vent on the surface level. It came apart with a simple heel stomp and she glided down the shaft, knocking loose a fan on the way. It clattered and tumbled, coming to rest some hundred meters below.
If anyone was in the bunker, her element of surprise was gone. She continued down, muttering.
Soon she re...
