LISTLISTLIST I LOVE LISTS THIS ONE IS SPECIAL IT IS A LIST OF LISTS OF CREATIVE AND ART

Creation and Absorption Grand Catalogue

Hiya! What is this very long sheet of paper we have here? Oh, it is the CaA catalogue! Here you shall find every external link I have ever put in the aforementioned newsletter on creation and absorption, split into sections for specific kinds of creations and resources. You'll see.

All you gotta do is scroll down!

Creation

Writing Programs:

  • Scrivener - the writing program I use to write my longer stories and collections! It is paid, though it’s not overly pricey.
  • LibreOffice - a good option for if you don’t wanna be tied to a major corporation like Google or Microsoft for your document editors. It’s got a whole suite of free programs! That don’t try to connect you to the C L O U D.
  • Obsidian - A wonderful notetaking program that uses markdown. Very smooth, very wiki-able.

Books/Essays/Blogs on art:

  • Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer - a book I borrowed from my partner, and though i’m very much still diving into it, it has been fantastic. a creative take on teaching creative writing :).
  • The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction - A fantastic essay on the merits of a different, more measured, less conquering form of storytelling.
  • How Should One Read a Book? by Virginia Woolf - An old essay by an early-20th century writer, and though this piece is mostly about reading, there’s some valuable things to glean about writing, I feel.
  • The Marginalian - a fantastic site full of essays about poetry, literature, and philosophy that are sure to inspire.
  • rumblewrites - a great substack that posts writing resources (among other things), and the thing I like the most is the monthly list of writing opportunities.
  • this manifesto is a part of you now by Natanya (aka Fox with a Fountain Pen) - a wonderful manifesto made by my partner on their art-making process, and I think it could inspire you as it has me!
  • A fascinating article where a famed Polish poet answered a bunch of letters from people asking for poetry advice—except the original letters aren’t included. Only the answers.
  • 4 Exercises for a Better Understanding of [Your Own] Writing - a wonderful set of writing exercises on itch.io!
  • take the weird route to marketing your art by Elizabeth Aman - for something more concrete, here’s a good essay on how weird marketing can be a lot better (and often cheaper) than typical marketing methods. for you authors and general creatives who are trying to build your own career!

Channels and Videos:

Writing Generators:

  • A flash fiction prompt generator over on itch.io. It’s a delightful little thing that isn’t just random—it seems to be exclusively prompts that real people have written!
  • writing prompt generator - a fun program from itch.io where you can generate little prompts. the abstract option is especially fun.
  • Cascade Dice - a wicked-cool framework for using a pair of dice to generate story ideas.

Misc Creative Resources:

  • A list of worldbuilding resources - what it says on the tin. a fantastic list of resources, very comprehensive, honestly. just found it a few minutes ago, lol.
  • r/conlangs resources page - a grand list of resources for if you want to get into making your own fictional languages (conlangs) for worldbuilding or otherwise!
  • Paint Chip Poetry - For you poets out there, here’s a fun little game to play with a group of friend poets! Poet friends! It’s a great way to practice free poetic creation :).
  • Decker - an AMAZING program able to make games, slideshows, visual stories, and much more, all with a real cool pixely style!
  • If you’ve been around the writing/worldbuilding scene long enough, you probably know about picrew, but I figured I’d link this picrew character maker in case you haven’t heard of it yet. Great for visualizing your characters!

Absorption

Longform Stories:

  • Ursula K. Le Guin Works:
    • Always Coming Home - My favorite book currently!! It’s a measured, loving, and honest fictional ethnography of a far-future culture living in California.
    • The Dispossessed - A sci-fi novel about a physicist alienated from an anarchist society who travels to a capitalist society, determined to unite them.
    • The Left Hand of Darkness - A sci-fi novel that’s story mixed with anthropology. About gender and the clashing of cultures.
  • All the books in the epic fantasy world of Osten Ard by Tad Williams (including the two series Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and The Last King of Osten Ard).
    • There are seven books total, and both series are finished, and the sequel series doesn’t require you to have read the first! I like the prose, the worldbuilding is deep, and, oh, have I mentioned that the original series partially inspired A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin? Because it did. Lots of political intrigue and shocking plot beats, highly recommend.
  • Finnegans Wake by James Joyce - I still haven’t read this book yet, but just reading the first page left a huge impression on me. Do it. It is a WILD experiment with what’s possible with writing.
  • The Magnus Archives - Primarily a horror podcast, but it has some very interesting writing decisions that make its plot and story stick out to me. The ending especially is one I wouldn’t have guessed leading up to it, but that makes perfect sense. It’s very much a story that fits very well with its themes.

Short Stories:

  • Story of Your Life (1998) by Ted Chiang - This is the my favorite short story. It explores linguistics and physics in a heart of a story wrapped tight in symbolic cords.
  • The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (1973) by Ursula K. Le Guin - A short story that’s more challenge to the reader than a story. A challenge about imagining utopia and our expectations of how it would actually work. Treat it like a one-way dialogue.
  • The Woman Who Went to Hell (c. 1885) by Patrick Minahan - FASCINATING! This is a wild folk tale from Ireland that mayyy be a very late evolution of the journey-to-the-underworld myth seen in so much of ancient mediterranean and near-east literature. Or maybe it’s its own thing, but whatever it is, it’s awesome.
  • Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor (c. 1900 BCE) by an unknown author - Also FASCINATING! An ancient Egyptian story about some guy who tells his tale of being stranded on an island with a giant snake god. You have to read it, and read it all the way through.
  • The Library of Babel (1941) by Jorge Luis Borges - More worldbuilding than story, but that does not lessen it any. A thought experiment of what a world would be like if it was just… a giant library. Explores how people tend to try extracting meaning from the random world.

Poetry:

Literary Magazines:

  • Strange Pilgrims - Publishes weird short stories, essays, and flash pieces.
  • ONLY POEMS - Publishes, well, poems. This one isn’t new per se, but did recently start a Substack.
  • Fang & Flower - Dedicated to gothic literature!
  • The Alchemist's Cabin - Wants raw, experimental, personal works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Films:

  • Stice’s Satyricon (2021) - A WILD film! It takes a lot for stuff to make me gape at its strangeness, and this was most definitely a lot. Shows just what you can do with art!
  • The Wolf House (2018) - I put this at the top because it is the most creatively-presented moving picture anything I’ve ever seen. It’s ostensibly a stop-motion animation, but one done through paint and weird sculpture. And its themes are poignant: colonialism, generations of abuse, parenting, among others.
  • Yellow Submarine (1968) - another wild film, but one with very different vibes. ‘Tis a Beatles animated film where they visit a surreal world and sing a bunch of songs. It’s awesome! Reminded me a fair bit of Fantastic Planet (1973) at some points.
  • 9 (2009) - an animated movie from my childhood. It’s about a bunch of puppets trying to make it in a post-apocalyptic world, rife with symbolism, well-crafted all around. Also, it was released on 9/9/2009, which is fun.
  • Video Diary of a Lost Girl (2012) - a strange film about succubi who suck the souls out of the men they make love with. There are silent films, resurrection, and a fair bit of blood magic. Oh, and it’s very low-budget, which is always fun!

Art Books:

  • Ars Goetica - WOW. I mean... WOW! A collection of beautiful illustrations of various demons.

Music:

  • My partner's Camp Boneyard 4 set! - a yearly internet concert thing hosted by underscores’ underscord. and my partner played in it this year!

Games and gamelikes:

  • Slay the Princess - In case you’re not familiar with this game, it’s one of my favorites, and it has some fantastic writing and story. You kinda must play it to experience it. Very inspiring.
  • Centoquest by Bibliomancer - A FANTASTIC text adventure game where you explore a house and make a poem from bits and pieces of writing scattered about.
  • Frantic Fanfic - a creative writing party game to either have dumb fun with or practice some writing on the fly with friends!
  • This little game/story/thing called void is an interesting use of the tool Twine, with themes of the divine and of being.

They sure are art!:

  • The Diaries of Virginia Woolf! - A fascinating look into a wonderful writer whose books, I’ve heard, are some of the best of the 20th century (you can bet I’ll be listing them here when I’ve gotten around to reading them).
  • The debate between sheep and grain - Now here’s something from leftfield! This is an ancient cuneiform piece of writing that was apparently part of a whole genre of inanimate-objects-dissing-each-other. I think this could be a delightful thing to inspire weird literary traditions for worldbuilding.
  • unlws - this one’s wild. it’s a nonlinear conlang that bends and experiments with what written language can do. very inspiring if you’re interested in strange or alien conlangs.
  • Vivian Maier's Photography - a wonderful photography collection from the 1950s and beyond. were taken by a woman just being happy dabbling in photography, with no visions of releasing her work ever. they were discovered after her death.

OTHER

Search Tools:

  • An open-source stuff look-up tool from Creative Commons. I think you should use it for whatever articles/videos/games you make; or even better, make your own assets!!
  • Marginalia Search - a great alternative to the big company search engines. focused on the small and obscure internet.

Research:

  • The grand Wikipedia art portal, if you’re down for some inspiring research rabbit holes.
  • The Internet Speculative Fiction Database - a FANTASTIC wiki cataloguing authors and writings of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and more! It is just a catalogue, though--it doesn’t have the works themselves on there, so you’ll have to open new tabs if you wanna search for whatever you discover. Still, amazing resource if you’re looking for new speculative fiction to read and learn from!
  • cool wikis - a webpage that lists a whole bunch of interesting wikis. for your internet surfing needs.
  • The Dawn of Everything by David Wengrow and David Graeber - a passionate argument for a different look into the lives of prehistoric peoples and the rise of agriculture, states, and systems of hierarchy. Good especially if you’re looking to make art inspired by very ancient cultures!
  • Here’s a fun history website on Medieval Europe.
  • The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - a wonderful site that explains a whole ton of philosophy.
  • Why did World War I End So Suddenly? - a fascinating lecture from a few years ago about the messiness of the end of WWI.

Misc Things: