Building Blocs Feature Editor Katerina Bryant on greyhounds, great writing, and writing wrongs
When I think of my life, I can’t help but think of that niggling list of regrets. Buying a guitar on a sweeping gust of ambition only to realise I sucked; throwing out every screwdriver in the tool box because ‘how often will I need that’ (the answer was, and still is, pretty regularly); those bitter mistakes I made when I started my writing career.
Is your writing original? Probably not. But that’s no reason to get stressed about it. Raphaelle Race dives into the sea of neurosis that is the creative process.
The ‘anxiety of influence’ was first coined by one of America’s most beloved pomposities (also Professor of Humanities at Yale University), Harold Bloom. He used the term to talk about the fact that writers are constantly battling against every word they’ve ever read – especially the people they admire most – when the try to create original work.
Justin Heazlewood, on the art of balancing a relationship and a creative career.
When it comes to a choice of partner, there are two schools of thought. Some will be stimulated by those involved in the arts, while others will welcome an outside perspective. In comedy, it’s common for neurotic stand-ups to marry their grounded publicists or managers, while many visual artists I know form romantic collaborations with fellow practitioners.
A guide to avoiding savage nerds converging upon your innocent science fiction story and ripping it to shreds.
By
Raphaelle Race
The journey into writing science fiction can be perilous. No writer with a brain wants to accidentally alienate the hard-line physics nerds or quantum theory junkies who lurk in their own parallel universe in specially designated areas like insultingly stupid movie physics.
This is a Building Blocs piece on checking oneself before one wrecks oneself.
If you write from home, chances are, things get a little weird sometimes. Most of the time it’s just you, your big old brain, and a computer. There are probably half-empty cups of tea everywhere, and your version of ‘getting ready’ in the morning is simply having a shower and changing into a different pair of trackies.
Have you always wanted to write a sex scene, but don’t know how to start?
Maybe the whole thing terrifies you, or you could just be terribly confused about the whole thing. We’ve done the dirty business of asking some of our favourite authors how they put together sexy, steamy, thrilling words about people having it off.
