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Author: harmamae

  • How to Establish Your Fame Forever – Exemplified by Ovid

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    harmamae
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    Wherever through the lands beneath her sway The might of Rome extends, my words shall be Upon the lips of men. If truth at all Is stablished by poetic prophecy, My fame shall live to all eternity. – Ovid, Epilogue to the Metamorphoses Well, Ovid, here I am reading your words two thousand or so…

  • Happy Birthday, Dracula!

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    harmamae
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    I’ve been sick as a dog all week, with some kind of cold which plugs up my head and leaves me unable to think very clearly. However, I can’t leave Stories and Stuff without some kind of post on Friday, can I? So I’ll just note that yesterday was Bram Stoker’s 165th birthday, and Bram…

  • The Debate: Literary vs. Genre Fiction, and Is There a Chasm Between the Two?

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    harmamae
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    When I began submitting stories to fiction magazines, I was amazed to find there was a large gulf between “genre” fiction and “literary” fiction, and that literary fiction was usually considered to be the superior kind. As a person who enjoys reading all types of books, I’d always thought a good story was a good…

  • A Call to Creativity

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    harmamae
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    What do the pyramids, the MineCraft Earth, and my short stories all have in common? Hopefully they’re not all insane projects, though piling virtual block on top of virtual block inside a video game is only slightly weirder than piling actually physical blocks into a tall, pointy shape. They’re all made by people, of course.…

  • Share the Love (of Writing)

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    harmamae
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    Today I am talking to a Grade 9 class about writing. I have a friend who is a teacher, and he asked me to come in talk about what exactly you can do with your writing other than hand it in for marks in English class. And I think that is a really good idea,…

  • Are Writers Original? A Quote

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    harmamae
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    The original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate. – François-René de Chateaubriand, Le génie du Christianisme (1802)  People like to rag on Shakespeare for re-using the plots of other people for almost every play he wrote. They also like to claim J.K. Rowling stole all her good ideas from Tolkien (I…

  • There Will Be Superheroes

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    harmamae
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    A call to abolish them is completely misguided The other day I came across this article, which reviews the claim of film critic David Denby that our society needs rescuing from our obsession with superheroes, and that the movie business never will be mature and realistic until it stops focusing on fantasies like these. As…

  • Writing Vs. Editing – and Oscar Wilde’s Commas

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    harmamae
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    “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.” – Oscar Wilde** Editing can take forever. I can slave over one passage for hours, knowing it doesn’t say what I really want it to say yet, but without…

  • No Such Thing as Creativity

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    harmamae
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    What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. – Ecclesiastes 1:9 According to this article in Slate, a wave of critics are asserting there never was any such thing as creativity, genius or innovation, and that everything new is merely…

  • Why Writers Should Take a History Degree

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    harmamae
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    “Take journalism,” people will advise young, aspiring writers who feel they should go to university to get a degree in something. “You’ll learn more about writing, and get a practical job out of it too.” Clearly this was not advice I took, or could take, since none of the colleges around where I live offered…