Hmm…

Author: harmamae

  • Travel? Research? – Getting Your Setting Right

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    harmamae
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    OR: Write What You Know, Or Risk What You Don’t Know  I always wonder if writers have visited or lived in the places they write about, and if they haven’t, how they feel comfortable enough writing about places they’ve never been. I’m always incredibly afraid of messing the place up and getting some hypercritical reader…

  • Strange Flotsam in My Bedroom – A Photo-essay

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    harmamae
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    Cleaning your room can unearth the oddest things you forgot you had. I’m a bit of a packrat – a bad habit – so it was high time to do a deep cleaning and clear some stuff out. It’s a wrench to part with some of these things. In fact, most of these I ended…

  • It’s the Readers’ Fault! Why Bad Writing is Called Good

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    harmamae
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    OR: Don’t Blame Them, They Didn’t Notice the Difference Anyway Authors agonize over metaphors. They might spend ages debating word choice. They careful revise their sentence structure. What would you say if someone told you readers rarely notice this kind of thing anyway? I’m a poor student, and like many a poor student I participate…

  • Update on the Splayed Novel

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    harmamae
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    As you can see from the picture, my organizational system for keeping track of the plot of my novel is getting unwieldy. (For comparison, see the picture in this post). On the plus side, I am one tenth of the way through! The trick now is to not bog down in the middle part, but…

  • Does Writer’s Block Exist?

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    harmamae
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    Lately, I’ve been coming across numerous writers who insist writer’s block doesn’t exist – it’s just an excuse for writers not to write. I can kind of see that point of view. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure writer’s block exists, because I suffered from it for five years. “Writer’s block is a fabrication,”…

  • Luck of the First-Time Novelist

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    harmamae
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    Conventional wisdom in the writing world says that it takes at least three published novels to establish your name in the public eye. Don’t even think about quitting your day-job until then. But then, while leisurely reading the morning newspaper, I come across the name of Shilpi Somaya Gowda, whose first novel sold 300,000 copies…

  • Subscription Disorganization

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    harmamae
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    Or: Aaaaaaaaaah, How Do I Keep Track?   I haven’t come up with a good organizational system to keep updated on the blogs I follow yet. Not that I’m the most organized person on the planet – see last week’s post for the messy system I came up with to keep my notes for my…

  • Death of the Em Dash?

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    harmamae
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    Or, Why I Will Never Give Up This Bad Habit Never, never, never, I will not give up the em dash—even though I probably overuse it. Em dashes are not hyphens. They are not used to connect two words, but rather to connect two different thoughts, and they are longer than hyphens. I used one…

  • A Freshman’s Observations on College

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    harmamae
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    Revised and Updated with the Wisdom of Attending for Five Years… While cleaning my room, I stumbled across a list of observations I made about college way back in my freshman year. Needless to say, not all of it applies to every college, or every faculty or program, but it was entertaining. So I have…

  • Yes, That Is My Novel Splayed All Over The Walls

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    harmamae
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    This is my current workspace: And that is AFTER I spent a couple hours last night organizing my notes. Since I have a lot more free time (in theory) than I do during school, I am trying to get a large chunk of writing completed on my latest novel. I’m posting this pic because I…