And the award goes to…

'The Social Network' (photo by Alex Eylar)

A creative and talented way to look at this year’s Oscar nominations.

Every year after the Oscar nominees for Best Picture are announced, people flood the interwebs with their parodies of the films. This year, not only is there an incredible lineup competing for Best Picture, but there are also some incredible parodies.

via The 2011 Best Picture Nominees Get Lego-ized :: Culture :: Features :: Paste.

How to Write Like a Southerner

That’s my goal. One of them at least. To be recognized as a writer of great Southern fiction.  But the question is how to get there.  If often said that I don’t think I could drink enough bourbon to be the great southern author I long to be.  So I’m going to have to take a different approach.

Becoming a better writer consists of two things. Reading and Writing.  It sounds simple, but those are the basics. 

So I’ve embarked upon a quest to read as many southern authors as I can.  Last week I finished Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven by Fannie Flagg.  Unfortunately on my return trip to the library tonight, I neglected to select something exclusively southern.  But I’m working on it.

The other side of that is that I need to write on a daily basis.  That may be a little more difficult.  But I’m convinced that the combination of reading the styles of other authors and the practice of putting word on paper (or into the pc) will bring results.

Will it get me on the New York Times best seller list?  Probably not.

Y’all know how those Yankees are.

Some resources for the apsiring southern author are below.  I’m not necessarily endorsing them all.  But they’re worth a look.

Amazon:  Books every aspiring writer should read

Paul Combs at Suite101.com:  Books Every Writer Should Read

Amazon:  The Best Southern Writers

Athens Georgia Regional Library System:  Guide to Southern Writers: a selection of resources

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:  Library of Southern Literature