Name your weapons
Sadly, we’ve recently been learning the names of weapons. There’s one name that’s the most successful name for a weapon in human history.
At the Quill
At the Quill: About creative writing in my experience and practice. Also posts about independent authorship and self-publishing. Read Creative Writing and Independent Authorship for more details or scroll down.
Personality questionnaires and character development
The origins and perennial attraction of personality tests and their potential as hooks to motivate writing and for characer development.
Writing a wreath – adventures in poetry
In which the author shares an eight-line wreath poem in iambic tetrameter, and atempts to explain how and why he went about writing it.
Morning pages in the quarry store
A follow-up to my writing resolutions from last month: this is what my writing process looks like at present – morning pages and quarry store
Bruce and the Spider – writing resolutions in 2022
My writing resolutions for 2022 are much the same as for 2021. Here’s a look back and a look forward in the spirit of Bruce and the Spider.
Liminal places: on the threshold – a reading diary
Liminal places are the spaces between, whether libraries or buildings, corridors or dark woods; threasholds we must cross in order to grow.
A November Legacy – looking back at TheSupercargo
After all these years there’s a legacy of posts at TheSupercargo stretching back for 10+ years; here are some November adjacent ones.
Curse words we all use – but less often nowadays
I use the F-word more often and curse more, going against several trends among English speakers, it seems, but also with them in one respect.
Actual author meets implied reader – or doesn’t
In which we consider the author, the author’s imagined reader and the author’s actual reader, and the gaps between them.
Of the muse Clio and other daemons
Do you have a muse? Long ago I co-opted Clio, muse of history, but like Rudyard Kipling’s cat, she walks by herself and isn’t very reliable.