the word studio notebook

I'm a freelance writer, designer, and game developer. My name is Will Hindmarch, and this is a casual notebook I keep on the web.
  • Here's the blog, The Gist.
  • Here's my website, wordstudio.net.
  • Here you can read my work.
  • Here are my Haiku Year posts.

"But I do not think that the average reader—no matter how happy he or she is with their voluminous digital libraries on their diminutive screens—will be satisfied to never have access to a true literary artifact, something tangible that connects them to a favorite author. It makes perfect sense that larger printed works violate both our economic and our evolving green sensibilities, but small artifacts of the author may remain a necessity, if only a psychological one." 

“In Praise of the Lowly Chapbook,” by Bryce Milligan.

Let’s hope.

How To Write A Novel 

Eleven authors tell the WSJ how they do it.

Lift and Drag

A little while ago, I published five little poems here, drawn from the text of a Cessna Manual of Flight. Yesterday, I put them together into a little chapbook called “Lift and Drag,” which you can read or download or remix for free. Find them here:

If you enjoy them, you can read more about them on my long-form blog, where you can also donate if you like. Thanks for your time.

The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. My business partner recommends this book highly, but I’m still on the fence about it’s self-helpy qualities.

Life Before Artificial Light, by Jon Henley 

“But those who had good reason, legitimate or illicit, to venture outdoors “during the night season” nonetheless developed a whole range of tricks to help them. […] People knew their neighbourhoods intimately: every tree, every hedge, every post. On the Downs, great piles of chalky soil, known as “down lanterns”, served as beacons. Bark would be cut from strategic trees to expose the lighter wood beneath. The senses of hearing (barking dogs), smell (a honeysuckle bush) and touch (a notch cut in a banister at a sharp turn in the stairs) became all the more important.”

(via scout)

Missing Edinburgh.

Detail like this—that enters a character but refuses to explain that character—makes us the writer as well as the reader; we seem like co-creators of the character’s existence.

James Wood, How Fiction Works

Not only is the quality of the output high, but so is the diversity of style and genre. This has to be connected to the break-up of the old US network cartel. In the last decade the four major US broadcasters have had stiff competition from free and pay-per-view cable channels, turning US television into a seller’s rather than a buyer’s market. The creative people have more control and the commissioning process is more open. 

“Why Britain Can’t Do The Wire” at Prospectmagazine.co.uk

The Stoakes-Wibley Natural Index of Supernatural Collective Nouns, by David Maliki of Wondermark

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