Can This Technology Help You Be A Better Writer?

 

        Like anybody can tell you, I am not a very nice man. I don't know the word. I have 
always admired the villain, the outlaw, the son of a bitch. I don't like the clean-shaven 
boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth 
and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and 
explosions. I also like vile women, drunk cursing bitches with loose stockings and 
sloppy mascara faces. I'm more interested in perverts than saints. I can relax with 
bums because I am a bum. I don't like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don't like to be 
shaped by society.

~Charles Bukowski,

 Can This Technology Help You Be A Better Writer?

Lynit is a digital platform that helps authors visualise, plan and weave together the various elements - such as characters, plot arcs, themes and key events - that form a story. - BBC

The Value Of Profanity

Even in a society which tells itself the half-truth that it treasures ‘free speech’, there are, indeed must be, words that are beyond the pale – words that can still shock, thrill or shame. - Literary Review

There’s No Joy For An Actor In Playing A Perfect Character

That is, the character might be perfect for the actor - perfectly broken. - The Observer (UK)

We 

Are Writers Being Left Behind In The New World Of Streaming?

“Creatively, it’s sort of like the Wild West — you can do anything you want and find a home for it, but financially it’s like an emergency what’s going on.” - Los Angeles Times

Is It Possible You Have Too Many Unread Books?

Unread books now exist in three states for me: Actual books, piled horizontally on a five-foot-wide bookcase; books listed in a tab on my reading spreadsheet, some sorted by category or interest; and the many books I’ve tagged “to-read” in my library app. - Tor

How Essay Collections Became A Hot Genre

When  the century began, essays were considered box office poison; editors would sometimes disguise collections of the stuff by packaging them as theme-driven memoirs. All that has changed. Paris Review

The Painful Cost Of The Writing Life

The financial cost, the personal cost, the emotional costs ... who chooses this? - LitHub

Bloggers, Poets, Writers Beware

“Words cascade like an avalanche in spring. Try chewing your pencil and staring out the window in despair every

Jan Herman

How plants have influenced human societies

The Harvard Gazette: “In March, Batsaki, executive director of Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks research institute, library, museum, and garden in Washington, D.C., and a group of colleagues launched the Plant Humanities Lab — a digital repository of information and narrative storytelling on the historical and scientific lives of plants like the peony, turmeric root, and the banana. The project is part of a broader movement in humanities research that engages with critical questions of climate change and knowledge production. Researchers come from the social sciences, biology, botany, and other disciplines that rarely converge in academia. Through collaborative storytelling and information-gathering, they hope to shed light on the historical relationships between humans and their environments — and improve our current and future relationships with nature…”