The Moment
Those bloggers who also write books will enjoy this. I had The Moment today. The Moment when you realize you’ve made a huge stupid careless mistake that will cost a ton of time, and if you’d only been thinking you’d have avoided it.
I’d been forgetting to source my author quotes. I didn’t realize it until I reread the entry I’d written up as a sample, whereupon I had The Moment.
It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. I got all but one quote properly sourced by midday (Google’s inurl: search is a godsend), and I won’t make that mistake again.
If I may offer a hint for author fansites with quote pages, though? Please, please, please source your quotes! They’re great quotes (some author fansites are genuinely stellar; without them I doubt I could even find quotes for some of our new-on-the-scene authors), but I can’t use one if I can’t trace it back to the author actually saying or writing it.
In other book news, I notice an odd correlation between writers I read as a teenager but no longer enjoy, and authors whose attitudes (as expressed in interviews, weblogs, etc.) I find either thoroughly repellent (hello, Mr. Anthony) or completely vapid (hello, Mr. Brooks). Whereas writers I read as a teenager and still read come across much more agreeable (hello, Mr. Alexander and Mr. Beagle). Funny, that. I promise the correlation can’t be causation, and I don’t think I’m reading my current reading habits into my readings of these authors’ statements.
Critical attention to fantasy is a capricious thing, I am finding; but I’m deeply glad that Nalo Hopkinson is getting plenty. Fantasy needs more from her and more like her.