Stories Without End

June 15, 2009
By Ryan

I recently found an outlet for creative writing, and I’m actually using it. (Ficly) invites users to write 1,024-character (or less) stories. Each published endeavor is flanked by two options—“Write a Prequel” and “Write a Sequel”—to encourage community participation.

Here’s one of my efforts, written to enter a posted challenge to incorporate both fantasy and science fiction:

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A Short Scene From SFO

May 2, 2009
By Bret

(Something I jotted down while waiting for a flight to Reno, with some later editing.)

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Economies of Scales

February 22, 2009
By Ryan


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Though this book’s jacket notes the author was, among other indignities, “sprayed by a bird-eating tarantula” and “ejaculated on by a Bengal tiger,” it doesn’t hold as many up-close and bizarre wildlife encounters as it seems to promise. To be fair, the book’s subhead emphasizes “reptile smugglers” (not the animals themselves), and I’d be lying if I said there weren’t animals on practically every page, but I guess I was hoping for more.

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Time Well Spent

January 10, 2009
By Bret

I started writing this post on my lunch break at work. Not a big deal, I know, but this is significant to me, and germane to what I want to talk about, so I’m mentioning it.

My lunch hours for the last few years have typically been spent reading blog entries or online forums or things like that. As something of an information junkie, I love the new. The worlds of art, music, economics, religion, politics, etc. are in constant evolution, and they push and pull against each other in fascinating ways. It’s not always pleasant to watch, but it feels good to know what’s going on in the parts of the world I’m most interested in.

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Bret's 2008 Retrospective Music Mix

December 24, 2008
By Bret

As in years past (and as mentioned in my previous post), it’s time for my 2008 music mix. The idea is not that it be a “best of” list like you’d see from a music critic. It’s intended to just be a forum for reflection and the sharing of recent listening habits. The guidelines and my list are after the jump, and please leave a list of your own in the comments…

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QUOTES

Humility in the wrong place

"What we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed....

...the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether."

–G.K. Chesterton, from Orthodoxy

Make No Little Plans

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans. Aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us."
–Daniel Burnham, architect of Chicago, quoted in Charles Moore, Daniel H. Burnham: Planner of Cities, II:147. (via Christ is Deeper Still)

Borges on Short Stories


“It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books – setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them.”
–Jorge Luis Borges, from the preface to Ficciones

Strickler on Top Ten Lists

See full post for Yancey Strickler’s 2005 taxonomy of top ten music lists, as cited here.

Berry on Writing Poetry


“Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.”
–Wendell Berry, from How to be a Poet

Twain (?) on History


“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
—Attributed to Mark Twain

Lewis on God's Glory


“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”
–C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Merwin on Writing


“I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t
you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write”
—W.S. Merwin, Opening the Hand