Comments on: LitPunk and Zickzack Tech

By: Helix

Helix — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 10:08:37 +0000

Someone has already hijacked one of those pump-top tvs http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4600305904274907592

Also, I enjoy you using the word ‘like’, it really throws me for a loop and also helps me feel less bad about using it so much myself. Us Californians have to, like, totally stick together, dude :]

By: vanderleun

vanderleun — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:04:44 +0000

“Paul Mavrides wearing a t-shirt of his own design.”

And about fifteen steps away from a suspended leather sling.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:56:12 +0000

I don’t think that you’re being dissed on John’s board (the funniness is more in the wrassling of the two sides). What seems to be going on is that you sparked a discussion about good writing vs. immediate writing on blogs. It’s a discussion worth having, snarkiness and all (come for the snarkinessm, stay for the discussion).
I don’t think anybody’s said that it’s not valid to write anything you want – or did I miss something?

By: Rudy

Rudy — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:44:02 +0000

Michael — are you saying someone dissing me on Shirley’s message board? Whatever is in that thread, it isn’t something I’m going to go and read, as I recently had to deal with a number of flame comments on my own blog post, and I don’t need new ways to make myself miserable.

My point regarding the use of “like” is this: I think it’s perfectly valid to write prose in a language-with-a-flat-tire spoken-word California style. It’s just another scale, another modality, another stop on the giant language calliope.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:00:54 +0000

Common error: it might sound as though Jimmy is wrong, but he’s right. It’s the “use” in “use of expressions” that seems etc., not the “expressions.”

Did you catch all the drama about this on John Shirley’s blog? Funny stuff!

My two cents is that these are not someone’s internal thoughts, but a written representation that is supposed to convey them. I doubt Rudy was actually thinking “like, what am I doing”: the “like” is a well-worn popular idiom indicating that someone said, thought, felt, or meant to say something, as I’m sure you know. Whether or not it has a place in good writing’s a matter for individual judgement. Even in expressing a character’s inner voice, I find it overused: if someone is writing to express their own feelings, it would only seem ironic iof they were using it to indicate something such as the level of articulation that they’re putting up with in others. Was that the irony?

By: Steve H

Steve H — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:10:17 +0000

Jimmy, wouldn’t that be ‘seem’ instead of ‘seems?’ Wouldn’t want no bad writing here! Seriously, are you suggesting that Rudy’s internal comments to himself should be more grammatical? Why?
Not that I would ever do such a thing (perish the thought!), but magnets are very bad for monitor screens.
Rudy, could you make a zwall skateboard? Maybe stand on one while one under it turns, or even everything moves but the part you’re standing on? Or a flying carpet even? How about Heinlein’s moving slidewalks, taking you from point A to point B. How small can zwalls be? Small enough to be inside machinery, like a watch gear?

By: Darryl Parker

Darryl Parker — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:12:04 +0000

Rudy,

Thanks for the tips. The Twitters are certainly more like seeds, some more pregnant with possibilities than others. I think that’s why I like it. It’s a place to keep those seeds

I plan on a submission for Flurb #8, to specifications of course.

By: Russ Van Rooy

Russ Van Rooy — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:56:48 +0000

I would love to see someone hack one of those gas station tee vees with something like “Zombies Ahead” as seen at the link here:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/01_06/ZombiesAheadAP_304x337.jpg

By: Rudy

Rudy — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:50:09 +0000

Darryl, I assume you’re talking about your tweets at http://twitter.com/twirledview. Some of these are clever and thought-provoking, but for FLURB I’d want to see something more like a fleshed out story.

The tweets you’re posting are like IDEAS for stories, or like descriptions of standard genre topes. I get more interested when someone wades in and engages themselves with characters and an action-arc.

So if you can flesh one of your ideas out into, say, a 1,000 word story, fee free to submit it and I’ll see if it works for me. Here’s a thought: see if you can put four of your tweets into a single document and then add material to make them flow into each other…might be an interesting exercise in any case…

As I mentioned before in a blog post, the Flurb submisison policy is:
http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2008/09/16/flurb-6/#comment-16436

Note that I’m just about done getting stories for the forthcoming Flurb #7, but I’ll be reading for Flurb #8 next September.

By: Darryl Parker

Darryl Parker — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:32:23 +0000

Rudy – would you consider any 140 character Twitter stories for the next issue of Flurb?