Tag Archives: writing

Lovecraft’s Magick Realism

H.P. Lovecraft claimed to be a total materialist, so how did his stories become so involved with the realms of the esoteric and magical?

Eric Davis, in an essay titled “Calling Cthulhu,” writes,

This phenomenon is made all the more intriguing by the fact that Lovecraft himself was a “mechanistic materialist” philosophically opposed to spirituality and magic of any kind. Accounting for this discrepancy is only one of many curious problems raised by the apparent power of Lovecraftian magic. Why and how do these pulp visions “work”? What constitutes the “authentic” occult? How does magic relate to the tension between fact and fable? As I hope to show, Lovecraftian magic is not a pop hallucination but an imaginative and coherent “reading” set in motion by the dynamics of Lovecraft’s own texts, a set of thematic, stylistic, and intertextual strategies that constitute what I call Lovecraft’s Magick Realism.

Speaking of new Lovecraftian visions, I finally saw The Call of Cthulhu, a retro-silent movie released in 2005.  The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has more, much more, unspeakably more.

The Lovecraft cult has even reached the shooting sports: “Bullets over Arkham.”

 

Gallimaufry with Graphs

• The writing process, graphed, from Boing Boing.

• The “great conversation” lives on: University students discovering ideas that their so-called teachers kept from them because they were not “relevant” or something.

•  Why did Borders crash? Here is one view. Too much space given to music. for one thing, says the writer.

• Support for a “gap year” before university grows in the U.S. I could have used one.

Another Bright Idea Not Working

FedEx “Office Print Online” sounds like a great idea for work-at-home types like me. But if it won’t work in Los Angeles, I hold out no hope for southern Colorado.

The follow-up customer (dis)service is equally bad.

No doubt FedEx is promoting this as a wonderful time-saver for the self-employed.

Among the Writer’s Style Books

The AP Stylebook, the holy book of the American journalist, is making some changes, such as now specifying “email” instead of “e-mail.”

In my journalist days, I used to tell people that I had it memorized, but now I have moved on.

Since entering academic journal and book editing, I have embraced the true path of the Chicago Manual of Style—the Torah, nay, the Urantia Book of style books.

And if there is any question that it does not answer, its editors will issue a fatwa to the seeker after truth.

I have received one, and I felt blessed.

Still, in deference to the AP and just to keep my hand in, expect to see “website” instead of “Web site” here in the future.

Tools for Writers

Here are some software tools for writers, particularly novelists.

I have had Scrivener installed for months, but I have not used it, because my internal censor says, “Fiddling with new software is not writing.” (Blogging, however, is.)

Anyone have experience with it? Is it significantly better than Word, Open Office, or anything like that?

Dave Haxton at MacRaven, in a post titled “Why Crunch Mode Doesn’t Work,” endorses the Pomodoro Technique for pacing your desk work.

It’s good, although you don’t need special paper and a T-shirt. I sometimes use a basic wind-up kitchen timer and set in a bookshelf on the other side of the study, where I won’t be tempted to look at it until it dings.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina Seeks Pagan Writers

Bibliotheca Alexandrina publishers seek writers for a new series of anthologies dedicated to various gods. You may also read  longer versions of the calls for submission at Amanda Blake’s blog, Temple of Athena the Savior.

There is, of course, no connection other than name and some history between this publishing project and the newish building in Alexandria, Egypt. Somehow I doubt that if you went to the latter, you would find the works of Iamblichus or Plotinus on the shelves.

Why I Love Typographers

Because they have standards, damn it, and they don’t get all PC about them.

“Forget about tolerating differences of opinion: typographically speaking, typing two spaces before the start of a new sentence is absolutely, unequivocally wrong,” Ilene Strizver, who runs a typographic consulting firm The Type Studio, once wrote. “When I see two spaces I shake my head and I go, Aye yay yay,” she told me. “I talk about ‘type crimes’ often, and in terms of what you can do wrong, this one deserves life imprisonment. It’s a pure sign of amateur typography.”

What prompted this tirade was an observation that people who learned typing on computers do it. Putting in two spaces after a period (full stop) is the correct thing to do on a typewriter.

When I edit a piece of text, the first thing that I do is run a search-and-replace for two spaces. I know that I still sometimes put two spaces between words, but that is more of a nervous stutter-while-typing.

Via Ann Althouse.

This is not Good Academic Writing

Contrary to what some people think, this is not good academic writing:

The theory of [redacted] that have [sic] been presented in this paper [not that she actually, like, presented it ] could considered as plausible theoretical guesswork that could illuminate that presumed cognitive imaginative devices that led to the conceptualization of the initiatory experiences and their incorporation in the wider narrative life-story …. [it goes on].

That sentence fails the “Who did what?” test. It could be revised as “Blank’s theory does XXX because YYY.”

But I think it deserves as Author’s Query to that effect, because I really cannot tell what the writer wishes to communicate here.

There is a verb, however. Several, in fact. We have something to work with. But what should be the main verb?

Glass of red wine time.

‘Free Classic Weird Fiction’

Peter Begerbal’s headline says it succinctly, so go read his post and follow the links.

Only the Work Endures

Last week I signed a contract for the next book. I emailed the publisher’s director of sales and marketing to let her know that the signed documents were in the post and added jokingly, “Now my life will have meaning.”

To which she responded, “Surely you have thought deeply enough about the human condition to know there is no meaning. Contractual obligations, sadly, do not distract us from ‘ the sure extinction we travel to.'”

Note to self: Do not open her emails before the first cup of coffee.