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Urgently

Barreiro, Portugal
Found this bright street art one rainy morning during my recent Portugese writing retreat.

Turns out I need to expand my knowledge of Portugese poets. The little I’ve since read of Andrade’s work is gorgeous.

URGENTLY

It’s urgent — love.
It’s urgent — a boat upon the sea.
It’s urgent to destroy certain words,
hate, solitude, and cruelty,
some moanings,
many swords.

It’s urgent to invent a joyfulness,
multiply kisses and cornfields,
discover roses and rivers
and glistening mornings — it’s urgent.

Silence and an impure light fall upon
our shoulders till they ache.
It’s urgent — love, it’s urgent
to endure.

(translation by Alexis Levitin, found gratefully on movingpoems.com)

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Current earworm: Horse Thief, I am the Bear.

Totally in love with this song. x

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Recommended resources for writing SF/F? (Mslexia Guest Blog)

Since my last post, some of you have asked for links to useful blogs about writing fantasy/science fiction. Unfortunately, this has made me realise that most of what I read when I started writing is out of date now – no longer updated, or my bookmarks lost from when I changed laptops. Darn.

Recently I’ve been keeping my head down and writing, trying to limit my online reading til this novel is done, so I don’t have as much fresh content to recommend as I’d like. I’ve listed here a few links to some classics and content I still think is relevant, but I’m really writing this to ask what you read.

Which sites or books do you find useful when you’re stuck for what to write, or how to write it? Was there a genre-specific resource that helped when you were starting out?

Or, do you just use the same writing advice non-genre writers would? Is anything extra needed?

Read the full article (including ace Ray Bradbury video and a picture of a Cat Wizard) here.

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Genre is a community, not a ghetto (Mslexia guest blog)

My latest blog about genre-writing is up at Mslexia. Here’s an excerpt – click here for the full read. And I do hope you like the zebra photo. I aim to serve.

No one wants to be pigeonholed. I just want to write books so wonderful that everyone loves them, all over the world. Even people who don’t normally read will adore what I write and praise me. Loudly. You want the same thing, right?

With that in mind, identifying yourself as a genre writer and distinguishing yourself from the mainstream – isn’t that cutting yourself off, selling yourself short?

I don’t think so. Far from being limiting, I have found more support, useful advice and a stronger sense of my writing identity since I defined myself as a fantasy writer. Here’s how it worked for me, and while my references and resources are particularly about Sci-Fi/Fantasy, I hope that some of this will be useful to those writing in other genres, too.

I hope you’ll read the full post here.

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