I need to draw a map. This is getting serious. So I did some research and came up with the following applications.
Lior’s Map Creator – This is a fairly old piece of software for Windows that was last updated in 2001, nothing spectacular. But it looks pretty good for fantasy novelists. Hear that Stephi. It lacks a couple of icons for roads and stuff, but you should give it a try.
That’s all I found. I found a lot of tiled map makers on SourceForge, but all of them lacked any usable tiles to draw a decent map. I gotta say I’m very disappoited in the lack of software. I know that 15 years ago, before the era of the Internet I would have been able to find something.
If someone can suggest anything good. It doesn’t have to be amazing. it just needs to be able to draw roads and houses at the most basic level.
I’m really eager to reach the first milestone in my novel. This is where the protagonist will meet the antagonist for the first time. I have a good idea of what will happen. This is where the tension will start to build. But first I need to complete the character build-up.
This part is hard to write. Not in the sense that it’s difficult, but in the sense that it needs to get done, but I really want to be writing the fun stuff. But I holding myself back so that this part can get done well.
I’m 3,000 words into my novel and I’ve finally understood that stories are about people. I always knew that, but I live my life everyday, so a lot of things I take for granted, like emotions, routines, the strangers I meet, the bus ride I take to work everyday. To me that’s life.
But now, I finally understand that stories are about the dynamics between people and their destinies and not the people themselves. Stories are about a person’s journey through life and how someone else may interfere with that journey.
It’s like having an elastic that binds people and other people and destinations together. And when those elastics are plucked and pulled tension is built until either the elastic breaks or either end of the elastic comes loose and then you have chaos. (more…)
I read PostSecret regularly and recently bought two of their books, one was for my father for father’s day. I saw this video on their site today and thought I’d pass it along.
I’ve just removed five blogs from the list of the ones that I was following. It’s a shame because they were good blogs. One of them no longer existed and the other four hadn’t been updated since April 2008.
It’s just sad the number of blogs that don’t make it past two months. Either as a result of undedicated bloggers or bloggers who didn’t know what they were getting themselves into.
I never knew what cannon fodder was until I heard it used again in the show Supernatural and decided to look it up right away. The Wikipedia definition is pretty good and compares well to other definitions.
Cannon fodder is an informal term for military personnel who are regarded or treated as expendable in the face of enemy fire. The term is generally used in situations where soldiers are forced to deliberately fight against hopeless odds (with the foreknowledge that they will suffer extremely high casualties) in an effort to achieve a strategic goal.
I don’t remember having had an unhappy childhood. I keep reaching that successful writers are the ones who had it tough. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But ever since I started following Post Secret I started understanding where having a horrible life can help in your art. Maybe that’s why my photography lacks so much emotion.
So last week I bought one of the Post Secret books. The one on the right was the first book. What I like about Post Secret is not only the secrets that people share, but also gives me the chance to understand them at the deepest level.
At the most basic level people are all the same — we are driven by emotions. These emotions cause us to be deceitful. Sometimes we don’t trust others. Other times we have our own hidden agenda no matter how insignificant it may be. We can get emotionally hurt by the slightest lack of thoughtfulness.
Life isn’t about living, life is about feeling the full sprectrum of emotions. Hurt needs to be savoured to be fully appreciated.
Who the heck invents these words. Even the sample paragraph they use is a weird read. OMG!! And the french origin isn’t any better.
Outside, in the dark, a wobbly patch of life upon the blue snow, the deer perhaps browsed, her soft blob of a nose rapturously sunk in the chilly winter greenery, her modest brain-stem steeped in some dream of a Cockaigne for herbivores.
– John Updike, Toward the End of Time
I’m assuming it may mean the same thing as Eutopia which oddly enough as been replaced by Utopia. The definition is different, but from my perspective it’s the same.
So last week I bought one of the Post Secret books. The one on the right was the first book. What I like about Post Secret is not only the secrets that people share, but also gives me the chance to understand them at the deepest level.
