Monday, May 13, 2013
by Steven E.A.
My students call me a fashion terrorist, but I’d like to disagree. Open up my wardrobe and you’ll see primarily earth tones. I’m huge fan of navy blue, brown, and gray. I know what I like, and I stick to it. Am I fashionable to others? Probably not. But I’d much rather feel comfortable in what I’ve picked out than what a magazine tells me would properly accent my eye color. The same goes for most other things in my life, too. I like a wide array of music: hip-hop, dubstep, instrumental, folk, indie, and even 90s music if I’m feeling nasty. I love everything Stanley Kubrick touched. Kathleen Graber is my favorite poet. Deadpool is my favorite comic book character. All of these come together to form a rich amalgamation of Steven soup, and, since I’m an aspiring writer, these influences come out in my writing. And just like everything else, I know what I like when it comes to my writing, but in this instance, it definitely matters what others think. Writing can’t be just what its author likes. It has to be more.
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Friday, May 10, 2013
by Julie Goldberg
I began reading when I was four years old and haven’t stopped since.
Immersive reading was my drug through an unhappy childhood and adolescence, with all the desperate need and avoidance of unpleasant reality that addiction entails. Books damaged my eyes rather than my liver, but they gave far more than they took. I lived more in books than in my hometown. I mainlined stories and characters and other lands, other realities.
There are worse ways to shut out the world.
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Monday, May 6, 2013
by Steven E.A.
I’ve not often considered myself a fan of Hemingway, but a few years ago I decided to give The Old Man and the Sea a try. It wasn’t especially exciting, but it did evoke nostalgic memories from my childhood of fishing on lazy summer afternoons with my father. Shortly after finishing, I sat down at my computer to write a short story that harkened to those memories, but fast forward about two years and a 117,000 word novel has now sprouted from my fingertips. It’s the novel I’ve wanted to write for years. As I look over some of my old work, I see influences rooted throughout. But now that I have finished a readable draft, I’m plagued by the question, Is it any good at all?
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Friday, May 3, 2013
by Neil Fein
Whether the narrator is the voice of the author or a character telling us the tale in first-person, your narrator is a character in your story. And omniscient, all-knowing narrators shouldn’t be all-knowing; it makes them bland. Limiting what the narrator knows is an effective way to make a book seem more relatable and realistic.
Viewpoint is a slippery thing. When you’re using first person–as I’m doing right now–what the narrator should know is easy to figure out: The narrator knows exactly what the main character does. But when you’re using third-person, that narrator can know anything at all, and things get a little trickier.
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Monday, April 22, 2013
by Steven E.A.
Grass stood in patches and small tufts, like the patchy beard of the Earth. As a fourth grader, I sat and fidgeted, but soon the small movements of insects caught my attention, and I imagined them a story. We’d been instructed to sit outside and observe nature, taking mental notes to serve as inspiration for a poem. Mine was inspired by ants, and dealt with a horrible mishap during a picnic in which a grape smashed and killed a particularly bold ant that had snuck onto the blanket to steal some food. With it came a crayon drawing depicting the event, the ants legs frayed outward from underneath the fruity boulder. My mother liked it so much that she’s kept it to this day in her small treasure box of memories that’s stored beneath our living room couch.
In seventh grade, I left a girl for someone new, effectively breaking her heart in the process. But due to the tumultuous state of middle school romances, I soon wanted her back. To apologize and win her heart, I penned a long sappy note full of regret. I can still see it scribbled in ink, folded neatly into a scare, with her name scrawled on the top. But before I gave it to her I had a (girl) friend of mine read it. She held it to her chest after she finished and said, “You should be a poet.” And if there’s one thing I know for certain it’s that seventh grade girls are experts on what makes excellent poetry. With my ego inflated, I passed the note off to the broken hearted girl, we made amends, and had a very solid, three-month long middle school romance. It was magical.
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Wednesday, April 10, 2013
by lexiconia
Durian is a strange fruit. With most other fruits, people either love them or treat them with indifference. Durian, however, polarises. There’s a great divide between the “love it” and “hate it” camps. Those who love it will wax eloquent on its deliciously distinctive flavor slightly reminiscent of custard, the sweet creaminess that melts in your mouth, and even the joy of licking it off your fingers. Those who hate it, however, will speak with disdain of its ugly, spiky exterior and its pervasive, pungent aroma–though durian lovers will contest just how malodorous it actually is.The thing about durians is that no matter the camp you may be in, when you encounter one, you know exactly what it is.
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Wednesday, April 3, 2013
by lexiconia
The was a time when I used to think that critiquing others’ writing was a necessary time-drain. In the same way you might help a friend to level up when playing a multiplayer game for the purpose of having a required companion to run through a dungeon with you, there was always a major element of self-interest when it came to beta-reading. The reasoning went as such: I suppose I’ll critique their work, so someone else will do the same for mine.
Sound familiar?
But as I’ve spent more time in the past few months critiquing a variety of writing, I’ve come to realise that it also provides invaluable experience for me as a writer. (Yes, I realise there’s still an element of self-interest there.) But as I’ve taken the time to look over someone else’s work with a genuine intent to improve it, I’ve found that it’s carried over into my own writing as well.
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
by lexiconia
One of the key rules all writers are taught (or should be taught!) from the beginning is: Show, don’t tell. And it’s definitely one of the keys to solid prose. After beta-reading a friend’s novel, however, I think it needs a small addition to the end: Show, don’t tell… but don’t forget to motivate.
We all do things for a reason. There is always a driving factor to our actions, whether or not we are aware of it. Consciously, I speed because I’m running late, and I feel embarrassed when attending an event that I consider important, or where I’ll miss part of it–I hate the feeling that I’ve missed out on something. I suspect it’s due to the inherently competitive culture of Asian society. In Singapore, there’s even a common word to describe people who are scared to lose. (“Kiasu”, for those who are curious.)
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Monday, March 25, 2013
by Steven E.A.
I have fond memories from my college years sitting at the student union in a group with our books spread open over the table. We chatted as we took notes and sipped our coffees. Since I was an English major, I’d not use a textbook, but would instead be bent over a novel, using a highlighter or notecards to mark a selection. It was never here that I was asked the question that I knew, in the back of my mind, would eventually be asked. It was always somewhere in passing, such as on a walk through campus or passing by each other in the dining hall.
“Could you edit my paper?”
“Sure,” I would say with a smile, but I wasn’t excited about it. I had my own papers to write and books to read, and looking at a report on a subject about which I knew very little, would be time consuming if I wanted to do a good job. But there was something even worse: the prospect that the paper would be so bad that it needed an entire rewrite. Because if that happened, not only was I going to have to tell them that their writing was no good, but I was also going to have to spend a lot more time helping out than I’d like to.
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Friday, March 22, 2013
by Neil Fein
Fiction may be the glamor child of writing, but it too has elements that are, kindly, drudgery. Fortunately, help is at hand: Questions dealing with topics like research and summarizing plots and character information have been asked and answered over on Writers.stackexchange.com, and their answers can help make these chores a bit easier.
Writers is a pro and enthusiast Q&A site built by users. Instead of wading through a lot of random discussion to get to the good stuff, the best answers are always voted to the top.
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