Author: harmamae
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A Thought From Diana Wynne Jones – To Plan Or Not To Plan (Your Novel)
“Another common question which naturally follows on from here is Do you plan your book out before you start it? and my answer is always unequivocally, No that kills it dead. This always shocks teachers, who are accustomed to have told their pupils that you can’t write that way. But I am afraid I do,…
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Do You Need to be Younger than 40 to Write Great Novels?
The other day, Little Brown Mushroom Blog linked to an article in the New York Times – an article which claims that most great novels are written by authors under the age of forty. The Little Brown Mushroom Blog was interested in this because they wanted to know if the same was true for photographers.…
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Why Scathing Critiques are More Fun To Read
Some of you may be of the opinion by now that I hate Wuthering Heights, Romeo and Juliet and other assorted romances that don’t fit into my standards of “healthy romances.” I assure you I do not. As some of the comments pointed out, classics become known as classics because they relate to something in…
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The Top Literary Couples as Bad Examples
Healthy Romance Makes Bad Novels, Part II Last week, I argued that healthy, functioning romances (which we’d probably all enjoy in real life) have trouble generating the kind of conflict that drives romance novels. Logically, the next step would be for me to look at some famous literary romances and see if they were healthy…
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Two Questions for Those Who Wish to “Occupy Wall Street”
Occupy Wall Street is scheduled to “sweep” through my city today. Yes, my blog is wading into the seas of current events for a moment. If you’re here to find out about writing and literature, ignore this post. First of all, some questions for the protesters of Occupy Wall Street: 1.) Do you expect the…
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Healthy Romance Makes Bad Novels
What’s a Novelist to Do? I come up against this problem all the time when I try to write a romance about two healthy, well-adjusted people – what on earth should come between them and prevent happily ever after? This is related to ‘The Trouble with Modern Romance.’ In the good old days, the couple…
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A Thought From C.S. Lewis – On Reading the Classics
“It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.” – C.S. Lewis (full text found here) Very…
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The Lesser Known Works of the Better Known Writers
Or, Wait–She Wrote That? Sometimes an author is so good you want to read everything they wrote–so you go out and read every single thing on their list of publications. You know, like when you finish Lord of the Rings and go out and find The Silmarillion (somewhat of an interesting surprise for people!) Sometimes…
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A Thought from John Donne – Today a Bell Tolls for Thee
No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thine own Or of thine friend’s were. Each…
Hmm... 