Review #1

Hired as a reviewer for The US Review of Books. First review.

New Post Jan. 2, 2013

Here: http://stacychambers.com/?p=293

New Blog Post

New post at www.stacychambers.com

New Post and Page

Hi! New post and page at www.stacychambers.com.

ETA: Halloween Special! Get 15% off Chicago Cemeteries prints at photos.stacychambers.com.

Lascaux Review Flash Fiction Contest

My entry.

Hacked

My website at www.stacychambers.com was hacked and is going to look a little wonky for a couple of days. It seems to be only one (important) file was defaced, so I'm hoping it will be a simple fix. Hope to be back up and running by the weekend at the latest.

Update: Not that anyone's waiting with bated breath, but I've successfully downloaded a new zip file of my Wordpress theme for my site - something I was unable to do last night at all, despite trying for ... well, we won't say how long. Now I can either re-install the file and/or the entire theme. We'll see which solution works.

Update 2: Looks like I got it back up and running.

New Post

New post at Stacy Chambers.com.

New Website

I'm happy to announce the launch of my new website, stacychambers.com. Among other things, it includes a blog, which will focus on creativity. I'll also announce publishing and contest opportunities as I run across them.

I will leave this one up and will still be posting from time to time. 

Screenwriting Blogs

If you're into screenwriting (or even if you're just into writing), these blogs are great resources whether you're looking to improve your story, dialogue, scenes, what have you:

The Bitter Script Reader

Go Into the Story

Scriptchat

I'll be adding links to my blog roll in the next couple of days. 

Submission Opportunity

Have a short story you thought would never get published because you have an evil protagonist? There may be a home for it. Find out more info here at John Hartness's site for the Big Bad Anthology he's putting together.

RIP, Orson. You were a good friend. The best. I miss you already. 

Facing the Sun

Friend and fellow writer Richard Levangie had surgery yesterday to remove a brain tumor. He's not going to be able to work for a while, so some friends put together an anthology (to which I contributed) to keep him afloat financially while he recovers. The anthology, called Facing the Sun,can be found here. Any dollar amount will get you the anthology—which, given the writers involved, promises to be good reading.

Free 3D software

Free 3D software from DAZ Studio for a limited time. 

Mira Bartok and THE MEMORY PALACE

You may not know Mira Bartok. I don't, either. But I do know she runs a great site to help artists in almost every discipline by posting information about grants and their deadlines. If you create, it's likely Mira has posted about a grant or two to help you forward your artistic career. This is something she does completely free of charge for us.

She released THE MEMORY PALACE a while back, her memoir about her childhood and early adulthood with a schizophrenic mother. The book just won The National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Autobiography.

Go on over to her website and give her a congrats, if you would. And buy the book.

Congrats, Mira!

EE's 1000th Facelift

No, that's not something out of science fiction. The facelifts are query letter critiques. Those of you who write and want help with story openings, synopses, and query letters could do a lot worse than sending them to Evil Editor for his spot-on analyses. You'll get more than a few belly laughs, too.

I'm a day late with this. But send him a congrats, anyway. 

The Happiness Advantage

Shawn Achor applied to Harvard on a dare. To his surprise, he was actually accepted. So delighted was he with Harvard, that he stayed there for the next twelve years—first as an undergraduate, then a graduate student, then to research his "happiness project."

Achor was intrigued by the difference between his attitude of feeling blessed and lucky to be at Harvard and the stress he routinely saw his classmates go through. Those that weren't happy tended to cut themselves off from their colleagues and friends, and even though they worked just as hard or harder as their classmates, they tended to suffer academically as well as socially. One student, for example, decided to spend all her time at the library, cutting off her friends so she could study. Another opted for study groups, sometimes taking time to enter an Oreo-eating content now and then. You'll never guess which student fared better academically and reported feeling more well-adjusted by the end of the semester.

I confess I used to be the worst example of the first kind of student. I have no problem with the discipline side to creativity—it's the fun part I struggle with. I have a feeling that, had I been a monk in 16th century England, I would have had no problem flogging myself to sleep every night.

Some of this is my genetic makeup. Some of it, I think, is that somewhere along the way I lost the trick of knowing how to be happy. I let the world steal it. It's taken time, and a lot of soul searching, but I can say that these days, both mentally and emotionally (alas, not physically ... at least not yet) that I'm better off than I was a year ago. I've had to learn how to train myself to be happy. THE HAPPINESS ADVANTAGE, by Shawn Achor, confirms my belief that a person can indeed do this. Happiness comes more easily to some people than others. For some of us, happiness is a skill that has to be developed. And it can be.

There's a growing body of empirical evidence that being happy actually increases intelligence and creativity. I think I've found this to be true in my own life: when I have money in the bank, the words and pictures definitely flow much more easily, and the ideas are better. It's when I'm down to my last nickel that I'm not writing, and instead incessantly searching the Internet for the next gig. Those are not happy times.

But I used some time during this last downturn to start examining previously unexamined beliefs. I think it's paid some dividends. It's funny how our most irrational beliefs—some we're not even aware that we have—can power our lives in ways we cannot see.

Voice Lesson

Those of you who've been around for a while know I dig Gary Oldman. I'm also on Team CoCo, though CoCo has no idea. Here's Sexyface demonstrating his voiceovers for the Call of Duty videogame: 

Had to post. Too funny.

Branding Your Platform

One thing I've been thinking about lately—and this is prompted by Justine Musk's post—are writers who aggressively promote. (Justine has a great blog, by the way, and she's very engaging. Can't wait to read more of her work.)

We've all heard of "branding" and "platform." I confess these are words I can't really get my head around. What do they mean? Are they words coined by some ad exec? Don Draper, perhaps? According to Nathan Bransford, there is no such thing as a brand.

Do you agree? I think I do. I think for me, it's not so much the "branding" or "platform"as the willingness to engage with people. A couple of my "friends" on Goodreads are authors, and they only use the site to promote their own work, rather than share what they read. They're clearly trying to brand, but as a reader, that's a lot less interesting to me than authors who DO share book recommendations. One of them has written a series that looks awesome, but I haven't made time to read it, and I think that's at least in part because s/he does nothing online (that I've seen) but promote the blog and the books. It's kind of a turnoff. Authors who are willing to open up a little—even if it's insecure or negative—are a lot more likely to stay on my radar. It's not so much about the willingness to engage with people one-on-one (although I very much appreciate the authors who do that); it's more about the willingness to show a little personality. Authors on Twitter, for example, who link to articles they've read, who take a stand on some issues, who have opinions and are not afraid to share them—those are the authors to whom I naturally gravitate. Even authors who tweet what they have for breakfast—as long as the breakfast is awesome—are far more likely to attract me than authors who do nothing but aggressively promote their books. I'm still loyal to some authors, such as Stephen King, who don't use social media at all. But he did plenty of engaging in ON WRITING. Engaging can work wonders—whether it's online or off. I did two films (shorts) with a guy I "met" on Twitter, and we still keep in contact, even though we've yet to meet in real life.

I think this is one of the reasons Neil Gaiman is so popular. I wouldn't call what he does as branding or a platform at all. His blog is more like this smorgasbord of great links, book recommendations, advice on writing, etc. It started off as advertising for AMERICAN GODS and just grew from there. Yet he gets requests all the time to post pics of his dogs, cats, beekeeping stuff, etc. His fans think those things are just as interesting as everything else. I think one of the reasons he's so popular now is because he's willing to engage with his fans—perhaps even eager to do so. I once went to one of his readings here in Chicago, and he was a lot more earnest than what I expected. He really wanted people to enjoy the reading, and he spoke with every single person who wanted to get a pic, or a hug, or whatever. Not a bad "platform" for authors to model themselves after, in my opinion. I mean, obviously it helps that his writing is great. It always does. I guess what I'm saying that the people who are really good at branding make it feel like it's not branding. Because it isn't. Not really.

Great Post

All the things writers should know about rejection. 

No Worries

I've been sweating my NaNoWriMo word count for a few days, but no worries now. Gatsby's been helping.