With November approaching with the speed and force of a runaway freight train, it has struck my fancy to consider a topic that I have been somewhat ambivalent towards in recent years.  My gripe with NaNoWriMo is not with the spirit of the event (motivation to write) but rather with the ultimate outcomes of that [...]

I tag-lined this blog (for twelve months, at least) with the claim that my ever-growing blog, this what you are reading now, bradgarten is “where 2008 is the year of the short story.” And while many of you have been keenly keeping up with the more non-fiction content posted, I’m never certain whether anyone is [...]

December 16
I came across an image the other day that was some art — or a screen-cap — or something from the Lord of the Rings. Remember in the first movie when they are in the boats going along the river? And the river takes them between the two massive statues of some [...]

funkypig: Hey. I’ve missed you.
8r4d: You jest.
funkypig: No. Really. It’s been quiet down here without you. I enjoyed it for a while. I enjoyed the solitude. But now I’m just bored. Nothing to do but watch from behind the glass. You should try it sometime — you just [...]

Some people know that I’m a real sucker for animation. I should have done that for serious, gone to art school, learned to draw, and then sketched out little animated movies. It would have been more real.
I’m not talking about every bit of animation. It all has it’s place. But there [...]

I was thinking about how I could put together some kind of download-ready minatures game.
Chris introduced me to Warmachine a couple years ago. You go to the store. You spend ten bucks on a little metal figurine. You bring it home, paint it to look all mean and evil. [...]

I stumbled upon an interesting link the other day; It’s a simple little web page that generates ideas to help get one started on writing a blog post, when one has not the foggiest of what to write about. I clicked there just a moment ago to search for inspiration and this was the [...]

There is a cascade of creativity. It becomes somewhat katamari in nature. A seed. A thought. Transcending. Growing. Picking up refuse along the way.
My little writing project has been going exceedingly well. I crossed the thirty-thousand word mark on the weekend. It’s still modular, bohemian gibberish, but the [...]

writing can be a very odd thing. This becomes even more true when one partakes in a sporadic writing project with a vague idea, a vague ending, and the intention to let the ideas work themselves out and into the firmament. I’ve strictly forbidden myself from doing edits of any kind, small or large, [...]

Despite needing to break for a few hours to move my sister and subsequently feed my family, I cannot fully express how well the writing went yesterday.
I was up with the dog at 6:30. I should have been dismayed. I should have been frustrated. But my brain had been churning all night long, [...]

I set dad up with his own little photogallery — and he even posted some pictures.

For those who have not yet sent in a picture for the first official nanosmurf.net photo quest (and that’s a lot of you since only Steve and I have bothered) you can look at the (two) current entries here and send me your submissions for this week’s quest at photos@nanosmurf.net
PS: if you go to the [...]