Category: Inspiration
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Inspiration: Guards! Guards!
Back in October, I shared that I had become a major fan of Terry Pratchett and his absurdist fantasy universe. I have continued to enjoy his books inbetween other reads, and a new favorite has emerged: Guards! Guards! Guards! Guards! cleverly approaches and hilariously twists tropes in the best ways. The premise: some wanna-be wizards…
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Inspiration: Ursula K Le Guin
Ursula K Le Guin was a rockstar of a writer. She lived from 1929-2018 and wrote 23 novels and change, covering sci-fi, fantasy, and more. I have heard some people praise her as the mother of science fiction, since she invented the idea of the Ansible, and I have heard others claim she was overrated.…
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Inspiration: Nghi Vo
Nghi Vo has a beautiful way with words. I cannot repeat that enough. It is a pleasure simply to hear her prose when read aloud, and I am sad when I finish each of her stories because I just want them to keep going. One day not so long ago, her Singing Hills Cycle series…
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Inspiration: Crafting
This has been a great year for my hobbies, and I cannot recall a time when I was happier, though I am sure the California weather helps too. For the last 20 years, my hobbies have been: writing and singleplayer videogames, with an occassional side of programming and D&D. Both of those primary timesinks are…
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Inspiration: Detective Noir
Ever since reading The Maltese Falcon in Undergrad, I loved the idea of detective noir. The 1930s novel and its film adaptation with Humphrey Bogart (1941) is often considered the beginning of or at least the solidification of the noir genre. Noir is a work of aesthetics as many genres are and often includes gangsters,…
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Inspiration: Fairy Tale
During November’s month-long rush to write a 50,000 novel, I often pick a book to read to inspire my writing. Last year it was Patrick Rothfuss. This year is Stephen King’s Fairy Tale. The book was recommended to me because of my interest in the merging of the supernatural and mundane, and since it touches…
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A Playlist for Teeth&Dreams
Music plays an important role in my writing by giving me ideas and setting a tone, so in recent years I create a playlist for each new project. My current NaNoWriMo project, Of Teeth and Dreams, now also has a working playlist. Currently sitting at just over an hour, the occassional jarring combination of indie…
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Inspiration: Terry Pratchett
Leave a surprise for your readers in every paragraph. This writing advice was gifted to me during my undergraduate creative writing fellowship, but I did not understand it until I started reading Terry Pratchett. His writing is brilliant, hilarious, and unique. I originally discovered Pratchett because of Good Omens, a clever and humorous take on…
Grant Pearson 