Jeff Coleman's Blog: Jeff Coleman Writes, page 35
July 28, 2014
How to Create a World
You start with nothing.
You’re sitting alone in the dark, thinking. Then from out of nowhere, there’s a brilliant flash of blinding interior light, a searing white-hot fire that consumes thought and vision.
You have an idea.
Everything your world is and everything it will become is locked up inside of it, an infinitely hot, infinitely dense point of creative energy embedded in your soul. There’s a crack of mental thunder. A flash of lightning. For one brief instant, an entire universe that has y...
July 7, 2014
What’s My Mission?
Purpose. It defines our existence. We spend our whole lives searching for it, and we don’t stop untilour ephemeral presence here on Earth comes to an abrupt and unpredictable end. We pay counselors, therapists and psychologists hundreds of dollars to help us find it. We spend many solitary moments beneath the stars, hoping and praying that in the stillness of the night the cosmos will whisper their designs into our ears, and we grow restless and anxious as the years pass without an answer.
Ult...
June 30, 2014
Why An Artist Should Share His Work
Many artists believe they have to strike out on their own, that art is an inherently personal endeavor and that the opinions of others should never matter. This is a perfectly acceptable outlook if one’s work is private. But if an artist ever hopes to publish his creations and share them with the rest of the world, at some point he’s going to have to accept that the opinions of others do matter, that he can’t go it alone and expect to build a significant following.
Don’t get me wrong. A lot of...
June 23, 2014
You Are a Universe
Have you ever gazed up at the stars? Have you ever peered into the fathomless depths of space and time, pondered a vastness that you can’t possible comprehend and asked yourself if you’re really that significant, if you’re more than just a speck on a grain of sand in a sprawling desert?
If you have, take heart. Though you may be small in stature, the world inside your mind is astronomical, a boundless cosmos consisting of thoughts and dreams, experiences and beliefs, which themselves form more...
June 16, 2014
Rationalist Software Developer Encounters Paradox and the Supernatural
I was freewriting a couple of days ago, trying to flesh out an idea for a new story. I wanted to explore the overlap between the rational and the transcendental. Given my own experience as a software developer, I thought it would be interesting to take a rationalist programmer, whose daily experience is with logic and code, and place him in a situation where his philosophy would be challenged by something that human reason alone would fail to explain.
I haven’t figured out what this story is g...
June 2, 2014
Writing is Hard
It really is.
Sure, you have the occasional explosion of creativity that spatters the walls of your mind, so that all you have to do is scrape the surface to create beautiful prose without really trying. This kind of intense inspiration can last for days, even weeks or months. But there inevitably come in every writer’s life moments when the ideas are gone, when all you can do is huddle in a dark corner with your hands over your eyes, wondering how suddenly it could have all been snatched away...
May 26, 2014
Book Review: The Forbidden Library, by Django Wexler
The Forbidden Library, by Django Wexler
Synopsis from Goodreads:
When Alice’s father goes down in a shipwreck, she is sent to live with her uncle Geryon–an uncle she’s never heard of and knows nothing about. He lives in an enormous manor with a massive library that is off-limits to Alice. But then she meets a talking cat. And even for a rule-follower, when a talking cat sneaks you into a forbidden library and introduces you to an arrogant boy who dares you to open a book, it’s hard to resist. E...
May 21, 2014
Does What You Do Matter?
If you’re like me, you probably stop to look around once in a while and wonder if your actions are noticed, if the decisions you make affect the world in any remotely measurable way. After all, you’re only one individual, just so much flotsam floating around in a boundless roiling sea of people who will never know your name.
When you try to help out a friend, when you give food to a homeless person, when you do anything at all to show the people around you that you care, have you really contri...
May 15, 2014
Steady As She Goes
Writing and I have had a tumultuous relationship, and throughout the course of our affair, I’ve had the tendency to oscillate between emotional extremes. One moment, I’ll obsess over something I’ve just written, convinced in the most private chambers of my heart that I’m the next William Shakespeare. The next, I’ll regard whatever project I happen to be working on with contempt, convinced I’m nothing but a fraud, that it’s only a matter of time before the world sees me for the hack I truly am...
May 5, 2014
California Bookstore Day, 2014 (and How I Came To Acquire a Standalone Copy of Neil Gaiman’s “The Sleeper & The Spindle”)
What is Bookstore Day?
Bookstore Day was a state-wide celebration that took place in California on Saturday, May 3, 2014 to honor the relationship between readers and the independent bookstores who support them. 93 shops participated, hosting various events such as readings and author signings. Special books and other items were sold in limited quantities, merchandise that was only available on that day and from those sellers.
I heard about this the day before it happened on Twitter, and decide...
