In addition to the title track from their forthcoming CD, The Church have included a couple of Shriek CD tracks on their MySpace page: Aan Tribal War and Incident on Bannerville.

Via John Coulthart. I’m having my mushroom suit custom-made.

Another entry from the old blog I’m just bring back over to here, loosely under writing tips. It’s actually kinda funny, because I realize I’m talking about Finch. And I sound kind of bitchy. Still–I was right, I needed the extra time to think about it. Meanwhile, this year is shaping up to be an even mix of fiction and nonfiction, a balance I rather like. Archiving complete.

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But where are all the peoples? Oh, there they is.

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(DeVotchka covers the Velvet Underground, transforming the song by re-envisioning it through their own musical imagination.)

The imagination moves beyond passion: it is a life-long relationship with the world that transforms both the world and the writer. All of the best fiction hums and purrs and sighs with the imagination, and in this way fiction mirrors the best of life. But no imagination can long survive without recourse to curiosity and receptivity and discipline as well. It needs all of this as fuel for both its serious and deeply un-serious aspects. On the one hand, it is the most visible manifestation of a “soul” and on the other a quality that allows us to express the most absurd and silly aspects of play. During Medieval times, the imagination was often associated with the senses and thus thought to be one of the links between human beings and the animals. Only with the Renaissance was the imagination firmly linked to creativity and thus the intellect. The imagination defies easy measurement, even though we “know it when we see it.” It brings yet another level of uncertainty to an endeavor already supersaturated with the subjective — and yet that uncertainty is a kind of blessing. (Is it true that imagination cannot be taught? Yes. It is a brutal truth, too. But one with an escape clause. A latent imagination can be drawn out of its shell. A change of topic, focus, or even setting can also reveal in a writer an imagination not previously in evidence.)

(The Velvet Underground had a different kind of musical imagination, a different fundamental vision of the world. Sometimes texture and pacing and cadence are a form of imagination)

I’ve finally, with Luis Rodrigues’ help, created a separate tag and drop-down option for all Evil Monkey posts. So you can now review Evil Monkey’s sordid, drunken, disgusting history in one place, if you so desire. Let’s take a little trip down memory lane, shall we…

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Another entry I’m posting as a refugee from the old blog. In this case, the context is messy because it’s in response to Jenn Reese publishing the Growth Cycle of a Writer, which no longer on the net. As she says, it doesn’t apply to every writer, so this post was not meant to castigate her for outlining her own course as a writer–what she’s saying is, of course, perfectly valid. (Even though she mixes stuff about career and stuff about the actual writing–which are two different animals that must be kept in different cages so that they do not devour each other or you.) Still, maybe you can grok the context from Evil’s responses…begin old post…

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…as evidenced by this exchange, precipitated by the post set out below. And the companion piece. Posting now just to archive it on Ecstatic Days.

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Despite this prior post, I’m warming to Monitter. Not because I want to monitor anything on Twitter, but because it’s ripe for experimentation.

Experiment #1:

>>within 10 miles of Warren Ellis

>>search terms–
“blood nest”
“pouring out of my neck”
“marshmellow pocketbook”

As I work on Booklife this afternoon, I will periodically check in and see if any of this stuff is within 10 miles of Warren Ellis on Twitter…

(A video of some truly messed up looking writers. At least, these all look like writer types to me. See anyone you recognize?)

So…no 60 in 60 restart this week, and probably not next week, either. I’m currently engaged in a glacial edit war with Booklife and, soon, Finch. I’m still dealing with the developmental edit for the former and then the copy edit for the latter. I feel like I’ve got one hand tied behind my back. I can’t start any new major projects until this other stuff is done. All I can do is discharge heat lightning by pretending to be a wombat on Facebook or turn an aquarium into a nexus for alternate universes or have a marmot answer your writing questions.

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