And here’s a nice post from the blog of Richard Thomas, called
Ten Ways to Support Your Favorite Authors This Holiday Season
Check it out.
Some numbers so far
I have been told that it is in poor taste to talk about our small daily victories or losses when it comes to selling what we write, because our art should be pure and ethereal.
But I do not give a damn about such silly posturing, and today one of my stories bounced back, together with a nice rejection letter, and one was shortlisted and passed to a second bout of evaluation to see if it will be accepted.
Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.
October has been an intense month (13 stories pitched, picking up from the slack September schedule) in a rather intense year, so I decided to go and check a few numbers in my submissions spreadsheet.
I post them here, in open disregard of everything pure and ethereal.
Learning stuff
It’s that time of the year again, and I’ve enrolled in two new courses – well, I meant to enroll only in one, but then, you know how it happens, and I clicked on the button and… OK; so today I took the first lessons in two new online courses on Futurelearn.
Continue readingRunning camels
Here at Karavansara we love camels, and we are surprised of the fact that they are sometimes considered indolent animals.
A camel can run at 70 km/h on the desert floor.
And here is a beautiful photo, from the IPA Awards 2018.
Pandora in Krasnojarsk
For my next story, that will be part of the Seven Lives Project, I have put together a handful of pieces, like cards in a solitaire, or pieces of a puzzle. I will start writing the story tomorrow, and work on it for the whole week, and once it’s ready (hoping it’s ready in a week) I will translate it in Italian, and post it to my patrons.
This, at least, is a plan.
But right now, these are all the pieces I have…
Continue readingModesty
Today is Monica Vitti’s 88th birthday, and I decided to celebrate by watching again the 1966 movie Modesty Blaise, based on Peter O’Donnell’s character of the same name.
Now two things I need to make clear: I always loved Monica Vitti, and I always found the Modesty Blaise movie hard to digest.
And it is weird, because we are talking a film directed by a giant of British cinema, Joseph Losey, and featuring a cast that includes not only Monica Vitti, but also Terence Stamp, Dirk Bogarde, Harry Andrews and Clive Revill. The problems are others. First, much as Monica Vitti’s voice has always been one of her assets, her accent stops very soon being exotic, and turns out to be just irritating (but that’s just me). Much more important, to me, is the general campiness of the set-up. Now the Modesty Blaise comics and novels were never high literature, but the movie does at time try too hard.
But hey, celebration day, so on we go with Modesty Blaise, 1966.
Or not.
Anger
Conveying emotions in writing is particularly tricky but also an essential skill if you want to write. The basic rule of thumb should be that you do not declare the emotion of an action or a line of dialogue, because doing it explicitly is not elegant, and the clear mark of the amateur.
“Two sugars and no milk,” she said angrily.
… in other words, is not the best we can do as we write a scene in which an afternoon tea turns into a duel with cake knives.
We need to find a way around it.
This is not, of course, an unbreakable commandment – but as usual when writing, we need to keep an eye out and try to suggest tone and mood tot he readers without telling them.
This is the notorious show-don’t-tell rule, that’s generally abused by first-timers.
Karavansara 