You may not have heard of the West Baden hotel, which is a shame. It was built in the town of West Baden Springs, near the better-known today French Lick, and was a luxury hotel to offer the wealthy leisure and access to the natural phenomena of the area — mineral springs considered medicinal.
Today’s travelogue is a bit different, since while I’ve visited West Baden, this isn’t that trip. It’s just the necessary backdrop.
The Angels of West Baden
They happen. Some days, you just can’t squeeze out a sentence.
Maybe you just don’t have a clue what to say or how to say it today.
Maybe your brain is fried. “It’s December first,” I heard a bunch of NaNoWriMo participants say during a quiet post-November meeting. “We’re all out of words!”
Or maybe life smacks you upside the head, and we react in different ways. A few months ago, when my dog Shakespeare was diagnosed and given weeks to live, I pounded out a short story that afternoon (and it promptly sold). Last month, when I learned my dog Laev was probably coming out of remission even before her final scheduled chemo treatment, my NaNoWriMo graph flat-lined for nearly a week. It’s hard to say how things will affect us or our writing.
But we need to recover and write on. So today we have a guest post from Bryan Cohen, whose new book 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts, Volume 2: More Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More is now available on Amazon (and yes, he had a Volume 1 of 1,000 other prompts). Also, there’s a writing contest with big money, details at the bottom.Guest Post: How to Salvage a Bad Writing Day
So I’m not gonna lie, I was a little worried about putting the widget up on the blog so you could all track my NaNoWriMo progress, but it worked out: I validated my word count at just before 4 AM on Nov 27.
Go, me!
I’m a Winner! NaNoWriMo 2013
What do you do with that cosplay idea you’ve had forever and you know you’ll probably never actually use? Write it into the novel you’re working on.
Con Job: “Hello, my name is Laura”
Being a writer means you get to look up all kinds of wacky stuff and pretend it’s valid work. While researching for a story, I learned that the party game we call “Truth or Dare” is actually centuries old even in its current form. In fact, per some… The Joys of Research – Truth or Dare
I’ve said that people just passing through a hotel hosting a writers’ convention must be frequently alarmed. For example, I was sitting in the hall at my last such conference and overheard someone pleading for ideas on how to dispose of a body. “I tried burying it, but that didn’t work,” he said, “and I’ve thought about acid in a tub but it didn’t seem likely to clean up well. Can you help?”
Beware of Writers
In a Western forest, when you see lights drifting over your path and beckoning into darkness, you might call them a will-o’-the-wisp. And you should know better than to follow them.Kitsune-bi and Kitsune no Yomeiri – foxfire and fox wedding
A quick blur of moment drew his eye — a mouse, skimming over the ground? No, a tiny youkai, galloping through the tangled grass, waving stubby arms and piping something in a shrill, unintelligible voice.
Kaworu bent toward him. “What?”
Metal split the air above his bent shoulder and struck the tree beyond. Kaworu did not waste time looking after it but made his lean a roll, dodging to one side and coming up in a crouch.
Tiny Youkai
It’s hard to shift gears; I’ve been completely immersed in old Not-Japan and focused entirely on the upcoming launch for Kitsune-Mochi. But now Kitsune-Mochi is out and I need to think about geeky fandom and murder and amateur sleuthing, because it’s November and I have a mystery to write.
NaNoWriMo 2013: Con Job
Happy Halloween! Let’s talk about something spooky.
Her footsteps in the litter and debris muffled the forest noises around her, and for a moment she considered humming to further drown the sounds that frightened her. But it would be foolish to handicap herself. She kept quiet, listening to her too-loud footsteps.
Twilight made the way difficult, and she hoped she was still going the right way. She slipped, half-losing her zouri. She paused, to refit it to her foot, and the footsteps did not.
Betobeto-san, the Footstep Youkai
