Though mortally aware that by this act o' linking I am only fulfilling his estimation that most blogs exist only to parse the internet for others, I have been reading some of Warren Ellis' columns over at the Suicide Girls website and was given particular pause by his tribute to Philip K. Dick (his one on how American broke sex is also worth a read). This same week the professor in my L.A. Crime Fiction seminar related this entertaining and complementary anecdote regarding Raymond Chandler's writing process on The Blue Dahlia. While they're both good tales in and of themselves, they also offer strikingly contemporary counterpoints to the assertions put forward in Stephen King's On Writing (which I read this past Christmas) that writing should not be romanticized as an act of extra-personal inspiration. While one might question the romance of paranoia or alcoholism, at least one of these two authors apparently believed his ideas came from somewhere without, and by all accounts (or at least Ellis') went loony trying to come to grips with the reality of his imagination. Chandler strikes me as too much of a cynic for such flights of fancy, but, like Dick, his story operates to confirm the impression we might wish to form of the author based on the writing we consume. I guess you might call that his legend. And while the part of me that has flailing aspirations to a kind of creativity wants very much to believe in King's view of the creative process (much simplified here), I also cannot help but find such legends irresistible. Unfortunately, such romance does apparently little to boot my own sorry behind into any kind of a gear. Perhaps I should try the bourbon.

While I'm parsing away, I also enjoyed both these two videogame-related items (both via The Grumpy Gamer).