The more I think about this passage, the more I am convinced that it expresses a fundamental and necessary principle of Fantasy; indeed, it may contain the key to the whole art: [Read more…]
The publisher’s tale
29 September 2011 by Leave a Comment
‘I would have liked to know my great-great-great-great-great-uncle Cholmondeley Witherhead,’ the Publisher told me sadly. ‘He used to work as a gatekeeper on London Wall, two or three hundred years ago. Terribly upset he was, when he heard they were going to knock it down; and not just because it put him out of a job. It was a whole way of life that he mourned, and what he feared was nothing less than the end of civilization.
‘ “By my good faith, Sir,” said Uncle Cholmondeley, “I and my Brethren at the Gates are true Servants of the Publick, and London will be the worse without us. How will any one get in or out of the City, if there be no Gatekeepers to let them pass?”
‘And you know,’ the Publisher added in a tone of sad reflection, ‘I have never figured out how those Londoners ever managed without him.’
Magic Dragon plc
28 March 2011 by Leave a Comment
For the director of music. 12-bar blues.
I’m sure you know already, for you must have heard the tale,
of a certain Magic Dragon and his coat of shining scales;
how little Jackie Paper came to play with him no more.
But Puff would soon recover once he found a brand-new roar.
Now he’s traded on the Stock Exchange, a limited company,
and he’s listed on the Board as Magic Dragon plc. [Read more…]
Robert E. Howard on realism
27 February 2011 by Leave a Comment
Nobody writes realistic realism, and if they did, no one would read it. The writers that think they write it just give their own ideas about things they think they see. The sort of man who could write realism is the fellow who never reads or writes anything.
— Robert E. Howard
Scott Meyer: ‘How to Resurrect a Dead Character’
29 January 2011 by Leave a Comment
No sooner had I posted my link to Scott Meyer’s ‘How to Kill Off a Fictional Character’ than Meyer came up with the inevitable sequel:
Rodney lives!
Scott Meyer: ‘How to Kill Off a Fictional Character’
16 January 2011 by Leave a Comment
From the wise and frequently inimitable Scott Meyer of Basic Instructions:
Go thou, and do likewise.
Tartakower on strategy
22 December 2010 by Leave a Comment
Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do. Strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do.
—Ksawery Tartakower
Silly observation #68
15 November 2010 by Leave a Comment
I spilled ink in a pet shop. Now I have a pet spot. His name is Dog.
G. K. C. on ‘Thou shalt not’
8 October 2010 by Leave a Comment
‘Thou shalt not’ is only one of the necessary corollaries of ‘I will’. ‘I will go to the Lord Mayor’s Show, and thou shalt not stop me.’
Anarchism adjures us to be bold creative artists, and care for no laws or limits. But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.
—G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
P. J. O’Rourke on the writing process
26 July 2010 by Leave a Comment
Writing is a slow and a difficult process mentally. How you physically render the words onto a screen or a page doesn’t help you. I’ll give you this example. When words had to be carved into stone, with a chisel, you got the Ten Commandments. When the quill pen had been invented and you had to chase a goose around the yard and sharpen the pen and boil some ink and so on, you got Shakespeare. When the fountain pen came along, you got Henry James. When the typewriter came along, you got Jack Kerouac. And now that we have the computer, we have Facebook. Are you seeing a trend here?
—P. J. O’Rourke, ‘Very Little That Gets Blogged Is Of Very Much Worth’
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