Losing the plots

This is the longest I’ve neglected my blog since I started it about three years ago.

And right now I should be working on a novel, rather than poking at this post. Except I’ve lost the plot. The structure of my narrative escapes me just now.

Call it writer’s block, or simple lack of sleep. Or maybe this book is really a classic hobologoistic project that should be presented to the jury now, with a view to burning the ms. … Read more

Get your new words while they’re hot (warm, anyway)

Watch the English language evolve! Here are some of this site’s neologisms—original, borrowed and even commissioned—from my posts over the past year or two. The numbers refer to how many hits each gets on Google as of right now.

* Cymbalalalazophobia (fashioned to order by Dr Anthony Alcock, coiner of words for our age extraordinaire). 0 hits (a big surprise) 

* Iktsuarpok (with thanks to the Inuit and to Adam Jacot de  Boinod for collecting this specimen). 7,570 hits

 … Read more

Inspirational hobologoist aphorisms & epigrams

Insights into the hobologoist mindset.

Money corrupts.

Impecuniousness rools, OK!

 

 

 

Artists must suffer.

I have my principles.

Solipsism means never having to say you’re being corrupted by money and prizes.

I like semi-colons; commercial editors can go screw themselves.

I like [literary practice of your choice]; commercial editors can go screw themselves.

Hobologoists don’t write query letters.

Nobody ever read Antoine Blorschacterforth either.

Save the trees, save the bytes, save having to explain to critics why … Read more

Hobologoists International FAQs

What is it? Hobologoism is the principled resolve to write and write in such a way as to never, ever produce anything remotely publishable or in any way profitable.

Who are we? Hobologoists International is a global association of writers who have written at least one book that fellow members agree is clinically unpublishable under any imaginable circumstances, even taking into account revolutionary changes in contemporary commercial publishing and popular reading habits.

Why does our logo incorporate a portrait of Read more

Gallows humor for writers

I see I haven’t posted an item since 17 March. Excuses range from “I’ve been too busy to blog” and “I’m suffering a multi-tasking deficiency” to “I’ve sustained a fit of sanity, wherein I see no percentage in posting elaborate messages into the Void.”

Mostly, though, I’ve been in thrall to a fiction project, a series of speculative novels. The Muse, revealing herself as a dominatrix this time around, has shacked up with me big time. (I speak only figuratively, … Read more