http://www.tor.com/2016/10/20/star-trek-pumpkins-hit-a-snag-when-their-red-shirt-explodes/

This is late, but it still applies even if it is past the actual date now. 🙂

International Observe the Moon Night is October 8. This is a day I had never heard of until I saw it scroll past on a friend’s Facebook the other day. But of course I was immediately intrigued. NASA! Space! The setting of some of my very favorite novels and movies and TV shows! Honestly, how could I not have been stoked to learn more about it?

Scientists who study the moon specifically are called selenographers, from the Greek moon goddess Selene. Right away, that’s almost enough to make me want to go back to college. Just imagine the interesting cocktail party conversations! “What do you do for work?” “Oh, I’m a selenographer.” It’s too bad I can’t count past ten and could never hope to pass the math it would require. I have literature degrees for a reason. The word is beautiful, though. Like the moon.

The moon has been our constant companion, and it is clear that our fascination with it is nothing new. Anthropologists believe that the cave paintings at the Lascaux caves in France depict the earliest lunar calendar. It is 15,000 years old. Our distant ancestors spent a good deal of time looking upward and wondering, as many of us still do, what was out there, charting and learning and expanding their knowledge of the place they call home. I don’t know any word for that except humbling.

Some interesting moon facts: According to NASA.com, the moon was originally part of earth but at some point in our past, we got clobbered by something big and it knocked a bit off. That bit eventually turned into the moon. The moon weighs 81 quintillion tons. I literally have no idea how many zeroes that is. It would take 135 days to drive to the moon at 70 mph. I like road trips and all, but Jesus. Maybe these are all things everyone else already knows, but like I said. I have literature degrees. I love science and space stuff, but there is a ton I don’t know. Including what the fuck a quintillion is.

The best thing, at least to me, about International Observe the Moon Night is that it invites people all over the world, wherever they are, to be united for a moment in a peaceful endeavor. How amazing is that? I hope that everyone on Earth does, for even just a few minutes, look up at the moon all together. Maybe there will be even just one breath, one heartbeat, when no one dies or fights. Just a space of time when we all just stop and look up at the moon in the night sky and breathe together.

So, the International Observe the Moon Night has reminded me to look up at the moon, our nearest neighbor, and hope.

In honor of our moon, my list of books for the night is below:

The Value of the Moon by Paul Spudis

The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicistby Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of my favorite astrophysicists. His Star Talk Radio is a podcast I listen to religiously.

Sun Moon Earth by Tyler Nordgren.

Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space by Betty Ann Holtzmann Kevles. OK, so it’s not the moon, per se, but finding adult science books about the moon is hard. Apparently it’s not that sexy anymore. Women in space are rad, though.

And since the moon is the setting of some super fun books, here:

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

And because it’s the moon, and it’s night, and it’s fun, the requisite werewolf book:

Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones.

Originally posted on Book Riot.

via Blessed  — Adventures and Musings of an Arch Druidess

The other day, I was driving home and thinking about my writing. Specifically, the lack of it. I hadn’t written much lately and was in a bit of a writing slump. I needed to get some fresh material, some inspiration to get me writing more again. But we all know writing is hard work, and most successful writers will agree that inspiration is a rare and glorious thing. Most books we read are the end result not of ideas flowing freely from the author’s mind to the page, but rather the daily battle to force words into a semblance of coherence. Stephen King says, “Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up” (King, 2000, 25).

That bit of advice has always stood me in good stead. Once I realized I didn’t necessarily have to generate my own entirely original ideas, I started seeing how the mundane, everyday things around me are nothing but writing fodder. After a while, it becomes reflexive and as natural as breathing. Writing a full story is still a lot of work, but the bare bones for a scene or character are already all around me.

For example, whenever it rains, which is surely a sign of the apocalypse in Phoenix, a ring of toadstools pops up in my backyard. Every time. That one’s easy – it’s a fairy circle! But in the desert? What are fairies doing in the desert? How did they get here? Why? Right there are questions you can answer in the form of a short story.

What about your boring drive to the grocery? What do you see around you? Cars? Other people going on errands? Certainly. Are some of the errands they’re running illegal? Are they being carried out by the scary, tattooed man who looks like a stereotypical criminal mastermind, or by the sweet little old lady in the ancient but pristine Caddy next to you? I’ll give you a hint: it’s the little old lady every time.

What about lost things? The gold locket with an old picture inside that you found on the sidewalk? That’s a story just begging to be written. A cracked mirror in an ornate frame that gives you the creeps at an antique store. The inscription inside a crumbling old book in your grandmother’s bookcase – who is the mystery woman it’s addressed to, and who penned the elegant script and dated it back in 1879? That, by the way, is a true story.

Do you see how King’s advice is accurate? We don’t have to beat our heads against a wall for story ideas. They are already there in the things that surround us everyday, waiting to be recognized. Don’t be afraid to point them out to others.

 

King, S. (2000). On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York: Scribner.