- Politics, YA, and Narrative | Foz Meadows
- On how personal politics is tied to writing, and the importance of dissecting our assumptions.
- Let Me Tell You a Story | Catherine M. Valente
- Response to Race Fail '09 about why diversity matters in stories.
- The Paper Menagerie | Ken Liu
- 2012 Hugo Award winner for short story. So amazing it made me cry at work.
- Is the Book Blogosphere Too Nice? | Kristan Hoffman
- I'd say yes. Part of the reason is because "niceness" is not a trait I value. Helpful, relevant, well-reasoned, honest, entertaining, thought-provoking — I'd much prefer any of these to nice.
- The Importance of Proper Research | Ellen Oh
- THIS. It bothers me a lot when authors get things wrong (when I notice, that is). Totally pulls me out of the story.
- An Illusion of Reality | Patricia C. Wrede
- Different things break different readers out of the story, so as a writer it's best to avoid as few of those as possible
- Eight Million or So | Patricia C. Wrede
- On the flip side, the most important element is different for every reader, and not every book should focus on the same ones
- The Omniscient Breasts: The Male Gaze Through Female Eyes | Kate Elliot
- The male gaze is a gendered gaze, but sometimes readers and writers don't realize it.
- Diversity vs. Appropriation | Zoë Marriot
- Yes, there's a difference. Cultural appropriation is not cool.
- Magic vs. Science, the Fucking Singularity, and Anti-Intellectualism | acrackedmoon
- Attitudes toward science and technology in spec fic are things I do think about. A lot of YA does seem to be very anti-reason/logic/intellectualism. (Should be obvious from the title, but yeah, there's profanity.)
- On Worldbuilding, Patchwork and Filing Off Serial Numbers | Aliette de Bodard
- On why worldbuilding matters, and how it can do harm when done poorly
So yeah, these are just a few of the posts I enjoyed in the past few weeks. Hope you find these posts worthwhile and thought-provoking! :)
