bittersweet_bun
ourhour

Zettai Kareshi watchers: shatteringice is having problems with her internet, but she's hoping to get it fixed very soon. So she'll be a little late with the Zettai Kareshi updates. Please be understanding towards this, kay? :D

xkcd_rss

http://xkcd.com/423/

officialgaiman

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/05/what-you-cant-help-doing.html

Not sure if the cover for Absolute 4 is a mock-up or the real thing. I suspect it's not the final, mostly because I'm pretty sure that face is from Sandman #1, and for Absolute 4 we'll be taking a cover portrait from somewhere in the last 20 issues.

...

Regarding the Julie Schwartz Memorial Talk at MIT on the 23rd of May: To reiterate from the other day -- over at http://cms.mit.edu/juliusschwartz/tickets.html we learn that Tickets to the event are $8.00 and will be available at the door, pending availability. There won't be any available on the door, because they have almost all sold out. The website has a list of places selling the tickets -- yesterday there were about 60 tickets still out there. So this is a sort of a last call -- you can try phoning the places at the website to see if they still have tickets...


...

An ebay auction with a story... I've been rereading some old Batman comics recently, although I don't think I'd want these. But the story that comes with them is wonderful...

I'm worried and upset about the earthquake in China. From Nancy Kress's blog I learned that at least some of the friends we made in Chengdu last summer are okay -- and so are the pandas.

...

Rice pudding re-prompt! Once you get home to proper milk, of course. "Your general guidelines for a batch of rice pudding please, Mr. Gaiman!"Thank you!! ^_^b

I'm working on it, honest. Decided to figure out the proportions I'd used by a) finding a very similar recipe on the web and starting from there and then b) fiddling with it.

Two night's ago's rice pudding (the web recipe) was much too salty and wrong. I fiddled with the proportions and last night's was a lot better but now too sweet. Tonight's rice pudding would have been perfect I have no doubt but I forgot to buy more milk, so I didn't actually make one.

Dear Neil,

The press down here in Brazil have enthusiastically announced you'll be here for the Paraty International Book Fair, first week in July. But since you're also scheduled to lecture at Clarion, I'd like to ask if this is true. Or maybe you have a doppelganger. Or maybe the organizers here had a dream. Or maybe you're taking a weekend of from Clarion down here in Rio (if so, it'll be winter here, and rainy, not the best time to come...) Best regards,Eric

That sounds right, yes. (I teach Clarion the 3rd week in July.)

Hello hello hello,

To quote one of your other fans, “I have a question for you about writing”. I find that my own writing will echo the style of which ever author I am currently reading. Any idea how I might get around constantly mimicking others?

You write more.

I don't think there's anything wrong with copying other people's styles -- it's a skill you'll need, after all. Many actors begin as mimics. You don't worry about it, and keep writing, and after a while you'll have written enough that you can't help sounding like yourself, whether you want to or not.

Style is what you get wrong, that makes what you do sound like you. Style is what you can't help doing. Style is what you're left with.

(I just googled "style is what you can't help doing" because it sounded half-familiar, and I wondered who said it originally, and discovered that it may actually have been me, as I found myself looking at an extract from a speech I gave to an audience of comics artists and writers in 1997 at ProCon in Oakland:

We are creators. When we begin, separately or together, there’s a blank piece of paper. When we are done, we are giving people dreams and magic and journeys into minds and lives that they have never lived. And we must not forget that.

I don’t want to sound like an inspirational speaker here. "Be you." "Be the best you that you can be." But this is really important. It’s something that we mostly lose track of when we starts, because when we start in comics we’re kids, and we have no idea who we are or what our voices are, as artists or as writers.

Young artists want to be Rob Leifeld, or Bernie Wrightson, or Frank Miller, just as young writers want to be Alan Moore, or Chris Claremont or, well, Frank Miller. You’ve seen their portfolios. You’ve read the scripts.

We all swipe when we start. We trace, we copy, we emulate. But the most important thing is to get to the place where you’re telling your own stories, painting your own pictures, doing the stuff that one-one else could have done, but you. Dave McKean, when he was much younger, as a recent art-school graduate, took his portfolio to New York, and showed it to the head of an advertising agency. The guy looked at one of Dave’s paintings—"That’s a really good Bob Peake," he said. "But why would you I want to hire you? If I have something I want done like that, I phone Bob Peake."

You may be able to draw kind of like Rob Leifeld, but the day may come, may have already come, when no-one wants a bargain basement Rob Leifeld clone any more. Learn to draw like you. And as a writer, or as a storyteller, try to tell the stories that only you can tell. Try to tell the stories that you cannot help but tell, the stories you would be telling yourself if you had no audience to listen. The ones that reveal a little too much about you to the world. It’s the point I think of writing as walking naked down the street: it has nothing to do with style, or with genre, it has to do with honesty. Honesty to yourself and to whatever you’re doing.

Don’t worry about trying to develop a style. Style is what you can’t help doing. If you write enough, you draw enough, you’ll have a style, whether you want it or not. Don’t worry about whether you’re "commercial". Tell your own stories, draw your own pictures. Let other people follow you.

If you believe in it, do it. If there’s a comic or a project you’ve always wanted to do, go out there and give it a try. If you fail, you’ll have given it a shot. If you succeed, then you succeeded with what you wanted to do.

ziasudra
daily_snitch

• Actors and Movies: "Deathly Hallows" To Film in Scottish Highlands Later This Year
  
  "Half-Blood Prince" Set Visit Report and New Tom Felton Photo
  
  Lucius Malfoy, Prisoner of Azkaban
  
  
• Communities: hp_tarot is looking for feedback and mod help for its next round.
  
  hp_traditions has started posting. (also posting at hp_traditions)
  
  
• Discussion: torino10154 wonders about Snape's 'Other Women'.
  
  
• Hot Recs: A Game of Fox and Hounds, by djinnj. (Snape/Skeeter, NC-17)
  
  How to Handle an Enemy, by Anonymous, from hp_wankfest. (Draco Malfoy and other characters, NC-17)
  
  The Art and Science of Change, by atdelphi. (McGonagall/Snape, rated 18+)
  
  
• News: Finalists announced in Amazon competition to review 'Tales of the Beedle the Bard' in London
  
  
• Participate: ravenna_c_tan is looking for Terminus attendees to participate in a Slash and Fanfiction Night at a book and zine store in Chicago.
  
  
• Resource: The Phoenix Rising Compendium is now available
  

wasabiguy
flcosplayers

Wasabi Anime's Wasabi Photoshoots (www.wasabiphotoshoots.com) will be hosting a room dedicated to photographing cosplayers for the weekend of JACON. The room (Pelican A) will have a studio set up and will be able to print photos in the room for you to take home (for a small fee.) The photoshoots are FREE of charge, and the photos will be posted on the Wasabi Photoshoots website after the convention.



To sign up for a 15 minute session, please reserve your time slot in the scheduling thread found here:

http://www.greenmustard.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=809

See you at JACON!