Other gift possibilities: a gift certificate to your local indy bookstore, pens (I like fountain pens a lot), and fuzzy socks to keep their toes warm while writing.Here’s five gifts for the writer on your list (even if it’s yourself).
A little history. One of my favorite reads this year was Bud Webster’s Past Masters: And Other Bookish Natterings. Bud’s book combines hearty doses of interesting history with some deliciously thorough reading lists, that will only lead you to more and more reading. Bud always managed to tell me something about the writers that I didn’t know but which shed more light (and interest) on the stories I already loved. Heartily recommended, particularly if you’re well-read in the SF field and want to know more about some of its greats.
A little inspiration.WonderBook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction is a fabulous, gorgeous book about writing created by Jeff VanderMeer and Jeremy Zerfoss that will inspire and amuse. There’s a lot of writing books produced each year – this is not only the nicest of this year’s, but one well worth dipping into over and over again.
A little fuel. Writers usually require coffee. This year, due to this blog post by Chuck Wendig, I’ve become a fan of the Chemex coffeemaker. It’s got a nice little ritual to coffee-making that helps start the day right. Or a pound of fancy weasel-butt process coffee, if you want to go all out. Uncaffeinated writer? Get them a gift certificate and let them pick their own liquid.
A little efficiency.Dragon Dictate is dictation software available for Windows and Mac (although check what OS you’re running, a version hasn’t been released yet for the latest Mac update.) I love Dragon Dictate and think it makes me significantly more productive. It does take a little getting used to, but once you’ve worked with it a while, writing by hand feels archaic. And slooooooow.
A little notebook. Though it may seem unoriginal, writers always need notebooks. There’s a reason Moleskines keep being popular. Toss in a few fancy pens like this or these for a coordinated gift.
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Catching Up, Plus An Excerpt From Hearts of Tabat
This Sunday’s online class is Literary Techniques in Genre Fiction. Come and pick up some new tools to use in your fiction!Hello folks! January has been crazy, and I have been bad about blogging. One thing I’m going to be doing going forward is scattering in some food posts, because I’m cooking a lot this year as well as working with the SFWA Cookbook Project.
BEASTS OF TABAT is coming out on March 27, 2015, at Emerald City ComicCon, which is very exciting, but also blindingly fast. If you want to get news about the book and other projects, please sign up for my mailing list:
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Meanwhile, I’m working away on two book projects, one a YA novel, the other Book 2 of the Tabat Quartet, HEARTS OF TABAT. It picks up halfway through BEASTS OF TABAT and involves three of the secondary characters. Book 3, EXILES OF TABAT, will take up the characters from BEASTS OF TABAT again at the point where BEASTS leaves off. Book 4, GODS OF TABAT, is plotted but I’m still figuring out the viewpoint stuff.
One of the viewpoint characters of HEARTS OF TABAT is Adelina, Bella’s former lover and closest friend. I’ve been writing about her this morning:
Adelina knew that in producing only one child, Emiliana had replicated the structure of the family from which she’d come. She wondered sometimes if her mother ever had, like Adelina, wished for a sister. What would it be like to have another soul that knew all the peculiar circumstances of your family existence, the conglomeration of odd relatives and circumstances and situations but more than anything, knew all the little sore spots that the world insisted on imposing, like the way her mother could, with a single look, indicate so much disapproval of an outfit.
Adelina straightened her shoulders. This was the first time she’d appeared in front of her mother wearing the cut and device of a Publisher, the open pages of a book, edged in the gold lines that indicated she was the head of a house. There were only five people in Tabat qualified to wear that device, but Emiliana refused to see any distinction in that. A house that worked in paper was lower status than one that worked in metal, let allow the heights that a banking house like the Nettlepurses were at. In Emiliana’s eyes, Adelina had stripped herself of all that, had stepped down into what was for Emiliana the equivalent of a puddle of shit when compared to the rarefied heights she had been born into.
Adelina imagined a sister standing beside her, whispering in her ear, “It’s all right. She doesn’t understand what an advantage such an outlet could be to a banking house.” A sister would have been willing to take the reins of the Nettlepurses and work together with Spinner Press, taking advantage of all that the two could offer each other.
But that was the other part of Emiliana’s disappointment. There were others who could take Adelina’s role, certainly, but they were all of distant blood, rather than her child.
And while Adelina could argue the advantages of her having formed the publishing house over and over again, she couldn’t argue with that disappointment, the real reason that underlay the look Emiliana gave Adelina as she came into the breakfast room.
But Emiliana said nothing, only offered a sharp nod of greeting, and returned her attention to the newssheets in her hands, the accounts of the morning arrivals at the docks, which ships carrying what, traveling mainly from the Southern Isles or elsewhere on the coast, but sometimes from the Old Continent or even places like the Rose Kingdom or the Winterlands.
In other news, I’ll be speaking briefly at an animated short films presentation that’s part of the Seattle Asian-American Film Festival on February 14th. See the Supernatural Seattle blog for details, and follow it on Twitter in order to get news of events and posts as they appear.
5 Responses
In my experience, uncaffeinated writers can often be lured by high-quality hot chocolate.