nevver:

Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

(via sarahstocracy)

A Study in Pink » The Reichenbach Fall

I can’t believe I waited so long to watch these

(via ginagoul)

fishingboatproceeds:

thedailywhat:

Internets Star of the Day: YouTube rapper Kitty Pryde has ridden the Tumblr wave to become the week’s biggest music meme after her latest Internets-inspired track, “Okay Cupid,” garnered positive reviews from Vice,The Fader, and even the New York Times.

Like what if MC Paul Barman were a super self-aware female teenager? This is amazing.

think-progress:

MSNBC host Tamron Hall drops the mic on a conservative journalist for refusing to answer her questions.

The ThinkProgress team actually paused what we were doing to watch this throwdown (quite rare).

(via brooklynmutt)

strawberry-julius:

clay-of-the-earth:

quickdraw-kiddo:

Major plot points:

• First experience with drugs and/or alcohol
• Discovering a band that becomes meaningful. Probably The Smiths.
• The girl falling in love with a jerk and not our protagonist.
• ~Deep realizations in the last paragraph~

Ah, modern teen literature.

OH MY GOD NO THESE BOOKS MAKE ME WANT TO VOMIT

(Source: cheappoet, via brigittetotoro)

Bar bathroom?

justmargaret:

Oh, honey girl, you are so hot.

justmargaret:

bellarayrice:

Jennifer Lawrence from GQ.

Hi I love you.

nevver:

The Official Hipster Survival Guide to New York City

nevver:

“What do you think an artist cares about? Does he think all day about fine wines and black tie affairs and what he’s gonna say at the next after-dinner speech? No, he lives only for that narcotic moment of creative bliss.”

(Source: music-is-my-life8, via sarahstocracy)

hungoverowls:

“In observance of Easter, I feel like I’ve been dead for three days.”

Yesssss

the-star-stuff:

A Field Guide to Alien Planets

(January 10, 2011)

Alien planets come in all shapes and sizes. Generally speaking, these planets — known to astronomers as exoplanets or extrasolar planets — orbit stars outside our solar system, but there are a few surprises out there. Here’s a look at the types of exotic worlds that scientists have discovered so far.

Pulsar planets

The first true discovery of extrasolar planets came in 1994, when radio astronomers discovered worlds around the pulsar PSR B1257+12, about 980 light-years away in the constellation Virgo. A pulsar is not a normal star, but a dense, rapidly spinning remnant of a supernova explosion. The oldest exoplanet known yet, PSR B1620-26 b, nicknamed Methuselah, is also a pulsar planet, located 5,600 light years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius

Hot Jupiters

A “Hot Jupiter” is a gas giant that is as close or closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun. The first discovery of an extrasolar planet around a sun-like star was 51 Pegasi B, an exoplanet roughly 50 light-years away. Of the 429 exoplanets discovered to date, 89 have been hot Jupiters, most likely because their large size and proximity to their stars makes them easier to spot using current techniques.

Exo-Earths

Although the vast majority of the exoplanets found have been gas or ice giants, terrestrial exoplanets most likely outnumber these behemoths, and upcoming missions may soon finally discover rocky worlds the size of Earth with atmospheric conditions that mimic our own. To harbor life, these “Goldilocks planets” would have to orbit their star at just the right distance from  to not roast or freeze — as well as be large enough to retain an atmosphere , but not so large as to become a gas giant.

Super-Earths

A super-Earth is a planet with a mass roughly 10 times greater than Earth’s. The first super-Earths ever found were two of the planets around PSR B1257+12. Super-Earths might be more geologically active than our planet, as astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggest they experience more vigorous plate tectonics because they possess thinner plates that are under more stress.

Eccentric planets

The planets in our solar system have, for the most part, fairly circular orbits. The exoplanets found so far, however, can have far more eccentric orbits, moving in close and then far from their stars. Where a perfect circle has an eccentricity value of zero, roughly half of exoplanets seen thus far have an eccentricity of 0.25 or greater. These eccentric orbits can cause exoplanets to experience extreme heat waves.

Super Neptunes

Only one “super Neptune” has been discovered so far: In 2009, astronomers discovered a planet somewhat larger and more massive than Neptune orbiting a star 120 light-years from Earth. The solid planet earned the name “super Neptune” because it shares many of the physical characteristics of our Neptune. Neptune has a diameter 3.8 times that of Earth and a mass 17 times Earth’s, the Super Neptune (named HAT-P-11b) is 4.7 times the size of Earth and has 25 Earth masses.

Water worlds

There are two kinds of worlds that might be entirely covered with water . “One is a terrestrial Earth-like planet that’s just covered with a lot more water than our world, like the Kevin Costner movie, but is otherwise still familiar,” said astronomer Charles Beichman, executive director of NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute. “Or you can imagine a hot Neptune which is almost totally composed of water that is close enough to its star to not be frozen, but instead have an ocean thousands of kilometers deep and perhaps an atmosphere like a gas giant’s, with lots of hydrogen and water vapor.”

Chthonian planets

Sometimes hot Jupiters or hot Neptunes orbit too close to their stars, and the star’s heat and extreme gravity can rip away the planet’s water or atmosphere, leaving behind the rocky core. Scientists have dubbed these evaporated remnant cores “chthonian planets.” Their proximity to their stars could mean they are covered in lava.

Free-floating planets

There are hints that a number of bodies with the mass of gas giants might be free-floating, rather than orbiting a star. These bodies might either have escaped from their suns or never had a star to begin with, born in star-forming regions without the mass needed to ignite.

Rogue planets

A rogue planet is a planet-sized object that has been ejected from its system and is no longer gravitationally bound to any star, so it orbits the galaxy directly. To become a rogue planet, a planetary-mass object would have to be ejected from its solar system, making it starless. This could be achieved by the competing gravitational forces of the sun and larger planets. Also known as interstellar planet, or orphan planet, a rogue planet would require geothermal activity in to sustain life without energy from a star.

Woah.

(via bay-leaf)