Serdar Yegulalp's Blog, page 129
April 7, 2017
Say Yes To Me Dept.
Of all the temptations writers can succumb to, few are more all-devouring than the urge to show someone a rough draft — especially a rough draft you��know is a rough draft, with all of its continuity errors and inconsistencies of tone and speeling mistaekes.
April 4, 2017
Bad Guys Never Lose Dept.
My friend and creative colleague Steven Savage has published several books about creative processes and tooling. The latest of these is actually a sequel to a previous book about worldbuilding.��Way With Worlds 2,��as it is called, can be read standalone, but it works best when paired with its predecessor, since it expands on and provides additional discussion for many of the ideas in the original.
The book has been��hugely useful to me as of late. This is less because it taught me things tha...
April 2, 2017
Henry Sez Dept.
When something���s done, I���ll go, ���Okay, cool,��� and I���ll shelve it, and I���ll rejoice that the damn thing is done and my desktop is empty so I can fill it with the next project.��I���m a shipbuilder. I don���t want to sail in them. I want you to sail in them. I���m just happy that they leave the harbor so I can have an empty workplace.��And the glee of getting the component parts and starting from scratch starts all over again, and we build the next ark.
Emphasis min...
March 28, 2017
Not Everything Is About You, Not Even You Dept.
This is a sequel to my earlier post about not waiting for the good times.
There are many days when the real world feels like it's engaged in this quiet conspiracy to keep me from doing anything. It guilts me into doing busywork, or it gut-punches me with reminders that I have unfinished business, or it wastes my time with tiresome and thankless chores.
Wait, stop — you see what I just did there? I just��anthropomorphized��all this. I wrote all that as if all those problems and obstacles were�...
March 26, 2017
Stop Waiting For The Good Times Dept.
This one may be a twisty-turny kind of discussion, but stick with me. (You know how we go to the most interesting places. We don't always come back again, but we sure know how to voyage.)
D��gen, a key figure in Zen Buddhism, once offered up a piece of advice about zazen practice: "We establish practice just in our delusion." Meaning, we don't sit around and wait for Good Times or Clear Mind to come along before engaging in practice; we��just practice��and let everything else sort itself out...
March 24, 2017
Third Division Dept.
Robert Fripp, a Brian Eno collaborator and a musical force in his own right, talked once about three "divisions" of creative work that someone can fall into:
The Zen of Fripp | Hardcore Zen
.... The third division is research and development, interesting ideas and civilized lifestyle, but you won���t earn a living. Second division will earn you a living if you graft and you can get to be professionally respectable, but you won���t change the world. First division is an entirely different bag...
March 19, 2017
Book Nook Dept.
Here is, organized in no particular order, the 2017 edition of my ten desert island fiction selections:
Notes From Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler The Star Diaries, Stanis��aw Lem The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester Last Exit To Brooklyn, Hubert Selby, Jr. No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai Kokoro, S��seki Natsume Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?,��Philip K. DickMarch 16, 2017
As Of Late Dept.
Sorry about the silence — been submerged in things. Here's what's rolling:
Welcome To The FoldIn case you missed it, the first few chapters — more on the way! — of my��last��novel, can be��sneak-previewed at Inkshares.
SYNOPSIS:
When a young woman joins an underground street-theater movement with plans to change the world, her boyfriend follows her in to "rescue" her ... only to find it may cost both of them their personalities, and maybe also their lives.
ACTION ITEM FOR YOU, AND YES I DO...
March 4, 2017
Artitude Dept.
The Transcendental Face of Art ��� Guernica
"You think and talk all the time about the artist ... What of the people, the working class, whom he should serve? I believe in the greatest potentiality of their talent and understanding. But I cannot serve like a waiter." (From John Berger's novel��A Painter Of Our Time)
A number of mostly laudatory pieces have emerged in the wake of John Berger's death, the linked article being one of them. I picked up��Ways Of Seeing after reading Berger's obi...
February 28, 2017
Pain Management Dept.
I'm currently dealing with a health issue that has left me in a great deal of pain, and made it difficult to be even passingly functional. Expect very little from me over the next couple of days. (On the other hand, being doped up might well give me the excuse I need to bring everyone up to speed on what I've been working on. We'll see.)
