random musings

  • Lately, I’ve been entrenched in an awful lot of transcribing, as I’m happily filling up many notebooks and I want to get those drafts committed to a typed copy sooner rather than later. The nice thing about transcribing is that it can work as a little bit of a light edit, in that I keep…

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  • In idly searching on reddit again, I came across this post in r/writing and liked it enough to want to share it. Besides, it seems topical, since I just posted my review of Danielewski’s House of Leaves the other day. Here is a piece of an interview in which Mark Z. Danielewski explains to us…

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  • The Agony and the Ecstasy.

    I can think of very few tests to your will as a writer than transcribing your written draft into a typed one. Having about three different projects for which I have filled up entire notebooks already, I decided it was time to get a jump-start on the typing portion of my writing by going ahead…

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  • The Coffee Shop Writer.

    While I was in college (which seems crazy long ago), most of my writing was done in one of two places. The most notorious and terrible one was during classes, when I should have been taking notes (to be honest, even my writerly ADD was in effect then…I always had two notebooks on my desk,…

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  • Call me Mr. Plow.

    One of the skills I’ve been trying to cultivate this year is the ability to keep plowing through a manuscript, even if I’m not “feeling it.” The most important thing is that I’m still writing toward an end point; making it perfect and improving it can wait for the edits. I’ve found that I’m very…

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  • Author Quotes: Maugham.

    “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” -W. Somerset Maugham Whenever you publish a new post on WordPress, I’ve noticed they always present you with a little quote following information on how this is your five-hundred and whateverth post. They’re amusing, more often than not, and I…

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  • When perusing through these marvelous reimaginings of Roald Dahl works via one of Annie Cardi‘s wonderful linkdrop posts, I got to thinking, “What would the reimaginings of my covers be like?” Promptly, I stopped myself to drop the reminder that one might need to have book covers in the first place before people can even…

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  • To-Do List.

    Today is my day off. These days truly do feel few and far between (and always too short!), and it’s come to my attention at work that I have been a little stressed out and “unhinged.” As a result, I’m taking it incredibly easy today, and I’ve gotten myself a small list of things I’d…

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  • Vegan Schmegan.

    I’m going to take a moment away from writing in this post. Kind of. Technically speaking, this topic ties into an idea for a book that I have, but I mostly want to focus on how unexpected life can be and how you never know where you’ll be a year, month, let alone a week…

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  • Rejection!

    I received a rejection letter today. It wasn’t of a literary variety, though, more of a monetary one, but it did get my brain thinking about rejection letters in general. It’s been a while since I’ve received one in regard to my work, not because I’ve been churning out some brilliant stuff, but because I…

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