Saturday, April 14, 2007

obiit!


Kurt Vonnegut, one of my most-liked American writers, is dead.
He was 84.

-Vonnegut's rules for short stories
Here's some lovely advice on writing short stories, from Kurt Vonnegut's collection, Bagombo Snuff Box:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Copycatted via Boing Boing


*this post is a small tribute to him
summa cum dolore.

vive quasi cras moriturus!

Thursday, April 12, 2007

..it is not news that we live in a world
Where beauty is unexplainable
And suddenly ruined
And has its own routines. We are often far
From home in a dark town, and our griefs
Are difficult to translate into a language
Understood by others.

CHARLIE SMITH
"The Meaning of Birds"

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

MAGNOLIA, a flower of the other world.


When magnolia is just beginning to bloom
(by the way, this pic shows you of its full bloom),
I always feel like this one isn't belonging in this world...
I just see the world after death.