Greetings from my hot-and-sticky neck of the woods. My brain is a bit sluggish today, courtesy of the triple digit heat we’ve been enjoying since about Tuesday, combined with my AC deciding to give up the ghost on Wednesday. As you might guess, my laptop and I have been spending afternoons in coffee shops when at all possible.
None of which has anything at all to do with the Friday links, of course. But I do have a few for you, so I hope you check them out. Have a fabulous weekend, and I wish you comfortable temperatures wherever you may be. Happy writing!
25 Ways to Survive as a Creative Person – Some excellent tips.
We Are Many, We Are Everywhere – Roxane Gay’s terrific look at writers of color, along with an ever-growing reference list.
35 Modern Words Recently Added to the Dictionary – I take exception with a few of these, but there you have it. Amusing, at the very least.
He Hit Send: On the Awkward but Necessary Role of Technology in Fiction – How tech has changed some of the biggest tropes in fiction, and more.
Triple-digit heat…ugh! Thanks for the links 🙂
We’re melting up here, too, but at least my AC still works! I hope yours gets fixed soon.
I don’t have time to deal with it — leaving Tuesday. So it has to wait until I get back. 🙁
Well, it’s winter in New Zealand. That will probably feel great.
Funny links this week! I’m surprised some of those words didn’t make it into Oxford much earlier. The only one I was unfamiliar with was “screenager”, and I am one according to their definition.
The article about tech is interesting. As we progress, novels set in contemporary times will, most of the time, have to address that issue. They’re parts of everyday life for a large portion of the population, and ignoring their existence means ignoring a large part of the reality of your book’s world. If your character wants nothing to do with modern tech, that’s a unique trait. It’s a conscious choice or an effect of poverty or living waaaaaay far out in the boonies. It’s becoming less of a normal thing. It’s not realistic for a character to be that way just because the author doesn’t want to deal with it; it has to be a choice of the character’s or a situation forced upon them, and that lack itself highlights the prevalence of tech in society.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve grown up with a lot of this stuff, but mentioning texting, etc., doesn’t read that awkwardly to me. And authors can always say more generic words and phrases like “phone” or “sent a message” if they feel too weird with cellphones or text messages. In fact, this might keep the book from feeling dated in a few years, especially if the setting is supposed to just be “modern” instead of specifically 2012. (Might be out of luck if you want Facebook, though. Writing about “online profiles” or “social networking sites” without specific names reads just as awkward to me.)
Stay cool in the heat! It’s been in the 90s here, which isn’t hot where I come from but is extremely rare where I currently live. And my cat is scared of the AC because it’s loud, so I’ve been trying to battle it out with fans. It’s only semi-successful.