I wrote the following introductory text for my personal ChatGPT account when I wanted to use it to help me brainstorm (???) ideas for my new YouTube channel. As I’ve already found with prompt writing, it was clarifying to describe myself to an LLM for this very specific purpose. I’m much more honest/blunt than I … Read more
Poirot: Makes pies? Hastings: Yes, pies. Hastings: Miss Lemon says he (Benedict Farley, British Meat Pie Tycoon) makes pies. Poirot: Hastings, to say that Benedict Farley makes pies is like saying that Wagner wrote semiquavers. Hastings: They’re good pies, are they? Poirot: No, horrible. But there are a great many of them. Not sure if … Read more
My shadow took fright at the moon and huddled between my feet.
from col– together + –loquium speaking, from loqui to speak A talking together; a conversation, dialogue. Also, a written dialogue. A meeting for conference. Church blah blah. All the modern dictionaries mention that it’s specific to elevated speech/conversation. Interesting that “colloquial” is used to mean common speech.
VERB literary (of light) flash or sparkle. ‘the light was coruscating through the walls’ Origin Early 18th century from Latin coruscat- ‘glittered’, from the verb coruscare. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/coruscate NB: Never doubt my commitment to Sparkle Motion.
I liked this bit from Susan Sontag’s journals. Apparently, the LitHub post from whence this came was in violation of something, so it’s gone. Rules for Being a Writer from Sontag’s journals, December 3, 1961 The writer must be four people: The nut, the obsédé The moron The stylist The critic 1 supplies the material; … Read more
I know I’m not the first to notice that lots of recently-authored books seem more like a verbose screenplay written in prose than a novel. This seems to especially be the case with genre books. I recently finished the first book in an acclaimed new fantasy series, the Draconis Memoria trilogy. The Waking Fire is … Read more
The elements of Christie’s fiction are all already in place: a country house, a finite list of suspects, the outsider detective intruding into a place of order and hierarchy that has been disrupted by a crime. The world of Christie’s books is something like the ‘imaginary’ as described by Cornelius Castoriadis, a mental representation in … Read more
