Writing, the Pinboard

writing pinboardOne of the things I do as part of my teaching practice is keep an eye on links about writing and, when they seem right for a given class, post them in my classroom at UCLA. What I’ve taken to doing as of this quarter is pinning the links on a single board called, not surprisingly, Writing. This way all of my classes can access all of the links, new and old, that I’ve posted.

As I’ve begun to do this, I’ve realized that posts without graphics (the text-heavy stuff we writers naturally tend to favor) don’t pin well. I was always aware that essays with at least a few pictures were more readable–giving the eyes a break, yadda yadda–but there’s this extra element of ‘need a picture’ now that is part of the reason you’re seeing all these little meme-y things and screengrabs popping up on my site.

Visuals aside, this board has some great writing essays on it. Go, read, enjoy!

In which some links are Tweets…

Let’s face it – I find most of the things I read on the web at Longreads, Tor.com or via my Twitterfeed. Here’s some of what I read this week, thanks to all of you:

And here’s Chuck Wendig, with a humorous and profane list of 25 Things Writers should Stop Doing Now.

Tuesday’s Girl is Full of Post

Angel gets his stalk on in this week’s Buffy rewatch post, which is about “Passion.”

Contests! If you are in the U.S.A., Goodreads is giving away ten copies of Blue Magic. Contest deadline is May 4th–last I looked there are about 450 people with their hats in the ring for it. Those are better than lottery odds. And The Qwillery, meanwhile, has copies for Canadians and Americans.

I have been making appearances in other blogs in the past week. One was at The World in the Satin Bag, and it’s about why I chose Oregon as the setting for the Books of Chantment. People, especially Oregonians, ask this a lot. Another was at John Scalzi’s blog–I got to be a Big Idea author. I am a huge fan of Whatever so this was a big thrill.

Fundraising for Rape Crisis Centers

As a tie-in with April being Sexual Assault Awareness Month (in the U.S., I assume), Jim Hines is running his annual fundraiser for crisis centers around the world. I’m in on this–one of the prizes up for grabs is an autographed copy of Blue Magic.

The eloquent why and details on how to enter the contest are at Jim’s blog.

If you want to give locally, here’s a link to Vancouver Rape Relief, where I worked in the Nineties.

Other donors include Elizabeth Bear, Stina Leict, Martha Wells, and Marie Brennan.

Weekend reading

I didn’t spend much time just surfing around this week, but Warren Ellis tweeted this article about Hong Kong’s effort to put certain city buildings underground: http://bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/burying-bits-of-city-hong-kong.html
And I loved this Michael Swanwick story: The Woman Who Shook the World-Tree.