There is also a curious aspect I hadn’t thought of – that of writing facing the front of the house again. Our bedroom faces south, to the back garden – I am now adjacent to the north-facing window looking out onto the front garden. And, suddenly, there is a strange mental shift to being part of our village facing the front rather than the back.
Notebook, Lydia Crow, 7th January 2023
Category:
Quotes
One of the mistakes the tech stan makes is assuming more is always an improvement. That we always want more features, more apps, more enhancements. But when you have a well-functioning technology, often what you want is less.
Maybe the Book Doesn’t Need to Be “Disrupted” in the First Place? by Lincoln Michel, 24th January 2023
No longer producing work that might suggest an alternative to established tradition, it is at this point that their work is no longer art and they no longer artists. There might be a great degree of craft involved, a great degree of skill involved, but craft, skill, and art are not one and the same. To be an artist is to be revolutionary.
Ganzeer, 22nd December 2022
It’s always a good day when there’s an update from Robin Sloan in your inbox. The other day I was particularly delighted to read his comments on C.S. Lewis and Donegality. The three books referenced have all been added to my “to read (one day)” list.
There seems to be a direct link here between the consideration of Ward’s analysis and the concept of place theory, specifically sense of place. Having not yet read the book mentioned (“Planet Narnia” by Michael Ward), I imagine there may well be a reference to Edward Relph and Yi-Fi Tuan (and others) and their work on space, place and placelessness, especially given Ward considers in this vein Donegal and London (both, obviously, physical places).
Applying the theory of sense of place to literary works, rather than identifying (a) sense of place in texts, is something I’m interested in considering further, not least because I am currently working on a fiction project where the place(s) mentioned could be said to feature as the main character(s).
I am certain there will be much written on this already in other guises. Please do let me know if you can think of any interesting texts.
The good stuff can’t be named, only sensed; we are like deer desperately licking our snouts out here. Even so, it’s helpful to have some language to throw around. Balancing and patterning. Meshes and nets. Donegality!
TRESPASSERS — There’s room for everybody by Robin Sloan, 6th January 2023
Virtuosos do incredible things within preset conventions through maximizing technical or mechanical skills. Artists, on the other hand, reveal the staid conventions underlying cultural activity and posit a “solution” of rival conventions.
Links on Culture – November 2022 by W. David Marx
My mother, Susan Crow (née Temperton), shared her latest blog post on Monday. You can read it – and catch up on all her blog posts about life in Caithness – here.
The milky way, stars and planets were punching the darkness with their brilliance.
October, What’s It Like Up There? by Susan Crow, 31st October 2022
Students are not fools. They were, after all, once young children who if they reached too close to an open flame might well have gotten a smack on the hand, or a scary lecture about the dangers of third degree burns (skin grafts, my child, unimaginable pain) and never did it again. Decades later they too often apply those same lessons to writing: red ink = bad. Do not do that again. Which, in turn, risks molding a young writer into someone who forsakes creativity into someone whose core skill is avoiding pain.
Writerland Chapter 79: Don’t Be So Mean by Michael Shapiro
Emphasis mine.
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