The Home of Steven Barnes
Author, Teacher, Screenwriter


Thursday, May 31, 2012

Never Waste A Day



Another legendary artist is gone.

http://blastr.com/2012/05/legendary-science-fictio-leo-dillon.php

For those of you who don't know, Leo and Diane Dillon were a legendary team of artists, of superlative skill and grace. They were in such wonderful synch that one of them could start a line, and the other would finish it. Magical. Leo died last week, and it hit me hard.

I had a wonderful lunch with Leo and Diane in Greenwich Village back in the 80's. I was so overwhelmed by the purity of their artistic practice that I ended up breaking down, depressed that the amount of commercial work that I'd done might poison the well. "Is it too late for me?" I asked, tears streaming down my face. Diane reached across the table and took my hand. Leo said: "Steve, if you can even ask that question, it's not too late."

RIP, Leo.

As always, I use the death of friends and family to remind me to work as hard as I can, for as long as I can, and to share absolutely everything, while there is time to do so. I encourage each and every one of you to forget the notion that there is no time, that it is too late. If you can even ask the question...
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One of the things I'm doing is looking at my backlog of unproduced products. Each of these represents hard-won knowledge, and it is wrong for me to wait the perfect time and to create some elaborate structure to support them. So I'm going to be speeding up my teaching of material related to both fiction and life itself.

First up is the lecture "Writing The Thriller", recorded at the Write On The River conference in Wenatchee. Terrific stuff, almost three hours of lecture, plus the PDF workbooks, covering both the Hero's Journey (basic), the Chakras, and applying these critical patterns to the kind of stories that get your pulse racing and sales soaring! Order your copy today!

http://tiny.cc/j5e6ew

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