Warning: This post contains thoughts about a big, existential sort of topic, triggered, in part but not in total, by the recent devastating fires in Maui. At the moment, I am able to approach it with curiosity, but that’s certainly not always the case, and it might not be the case for you right now. If you don’t want to be thinking about climate change and other slow-moving disasters, and what some of the potential follow-on affects might be, even…
So! Did you catch that? I just published a short story (technically, at just over 10,000 words, some people would call ‘Because the Desert is a Great, Broad Beast of Memory’ a novelette – but I’m not sure I’m ready to consider myself quite that fancy). Now, you might be asking: Published? Where? Answer: Here. On my blog. This really does count as publishing. Merriam-Webster defines ‘publish’ as “to disseminate to the public” (and it defines ‘disseminate’ as “to spread…
So. I super-dooper love the Chinese fantasy drama The Untamed. The show is set in an ancient kingdom both during and after a great war between the clans, where the main character, who is gifted in black magic, has created a powerful, dark artifact to vanquish his enemies and help his side win the day. It’s 50 episodes long, but the actual war, from start to finish, comprises only about 10 of those, because who wins a war – and…
Okay, I said last writing post that I like revisions. And recently I experienced a good example of the importance (for me*) of Targeted, Mid-drafting Revisions. There are lots of kinds of revisions, and I mostly adore them all (what’s not to love about effective problem-solving?), and so I thought it would be nice to share an example of this particular kind. * Important disclaimer: I don’t want to try to give any instruction about when a writer should or…
This is a Father’s Day post! because my dad is great! I’m not very good at writing about things that are really important to me in a good way – my words get extra stilted for some reason. But that’s not a good reason not to tell you that my dad is great, and important to me, and I’m really proud to be his daughter. A quick sketch of my father can be summed up with three activities: I think…
Yay! I’ve revived my raggedy hat. Or rather, I patched the original hat (again, like I do) and then replaced the flowers. You have to understand, I’m not good at replacing things, particularly not articles of clothing. Instead I just patch or mend them until they’re mostly one giant patch. Or, you know, I don’t mend them. I just wear them forever until they become Very Frayed. The first time I started patching my coat it was because it was…
Okay. So. I’d really like to write a blog post on something to do with writing and/or my stories. But it seems…like it would be inappropriate at this particular juncture? I’ve got nothing published so far, except for half of my first Serial-Steam-of-Consciousness Story (SSCS; on this blog). And realistically it’s going to be years before any of my work is noticeably more available than that. (Okay, to be perfectly accurate: In high school, 2 or 3 of my poems…
Hello! Today I would like to tell you about an artist whose work I quite adore. Kirsty Mitchell (website here) is an art photographer who, for her Wonderland series, built elaborate set pieces, props, and costumes and utilized the natural beauty of the English woods and countryside to create windows into her Wonderland. The details are so exquisite and the boundaries between the woods and the Wonderland so carefully blurred, that many of the pieces look like they must be…
I have recently completed the latest cross-stitch I’ve been working on, a pattern published in 2000 by one of my favorite designers, Nora Corbett of Mirabilia Designs, whose designs are always oh-so eye catching. This one is called Scent of Old Roses, and yes, the title was definitely one of the reasons I just couldn’t resist it. Though another reason was the somewhat understated website photo, which, as you will see, doesn’t quite capture the quite glittery effect of the…
I am an introvert, and I like to travel. I also have anxiety, though, so those first two traits don’t always go together as well as you might like. I also like to go for walks (less scary). As a happy traveling/walking introvert, I was once asked by a friend of mine who is not an introvert what did I do while I was walking. She was baffled at how I would sometimes walk the two miles from campus to…