This terrific article was brought to my attention the other day by one of my creative writing professor at school. The Turkey City Lexicon a hilarious look at the clichés, pitfalls and incongruities of the Science Fiction genre and looks to help writers, new and old alike, avoid them in the future!
Lewis Shiner, the original editor of the article, explains:
The terms here were generally developed over a period of many years in many workshops. Those identified with a particular writer are acknowledged in parentheses at the end of the entry. Particular help for this project was provided by Bruce Sterling and the other regulars of the Turkey City Workshop in Austin, Texas.”
Here are just a few of my favourite quotes!
“Said” Bookism
‘An artificial verb used to avoid the word “said.” “Said” is one of the few invisible words in the English language and is almost impossible to overuse. It is much less distracting than “he retorted,” “she inquired,” “he ejaculated,” and other oddities. The term “said-book” comes from certain pamphlets, containing hundreds of purple-prose synonyms for the word “said,” which were sold to aspiring authors from tiny ads in American magazines of the pre-WWII era.’
A little over a week ago one of my favourite new authors, 
I know… I know! Another post about Patrick Rothfuss, brilliant author and hot topic here on A Dribble of Ink, but what can I say? I love the man, the rest of the Fantasy world loves the man, and my interview with him (
I thought this was pretty cool. I was checking my blog stats today and noticed several visitors came by way of a french web site named elbalkin.net. Curious how they found my way from there to my blog, I clicked the link and found a nice surprise!