Another AB article (no more from me for a while!): “Best Advice, Worst Advice: Why Good Writing Advice is Sometimes Bad.”
Category Archives: Writing
AB Article
Belated November AB: “Write Through This: Strategies For Writing About Real-Life Conflict & Tragedy.”
Blog On
Since my thesis was on blogging, it seems apropos to announce on my (oft-neglected) blog that I successfully defended it yesterday. w00t! Finally.
Final title: Works-in-Progress: An Analysis of Canadian Mommyblogs. It ended up being less about the medium (my original plan) and more about the content, partly because the content was interesting in itself, and partly because gah! blogs are hard to write about! I probably should have written it in WordPress, rather than Word. Of course, then the challenge would have been getting anyone to read it. Oooh! I could have forced everyone to subscribe to it in Bloglines! Hahaha. So now I’m coming up with the brilliant ideas. Hmm, I wonder if anyone has done that. Now, that would be creative…
Anyhow, a few more details to wrap up, and then I’m taking the rest of the fall off. I’ll be starting my PhD in January (last degree, I promise), but in the meantime, I plan to read novels! write something fun! (NaNo?) and go outside! (But of course I jest! I’ve been outside recently! Wait… what’s this wet discharge dripping from the sky called again?)
There’s a Grammar Day? Who knew?
Not me. Apparently March 4th was National Grammar Day… and I missed it! This is what happens when you don’t keep up with your feeds. The irony, of course, is that my feeds were piling up because I was grading midterms that were full of guess what? Yes, bad grammar. And spelling. (And abused apostrophes and unnecessary quotation marks.) But that’s par for the course.
At least I’ll know for next year. 😉
AB Article
I have another new Absolute Blank article at TC: Poetry 202: Sight and Sound. It’s a follow-up to Poetry 101: Getting Started.
Didn’t plan to do another so soon, but we had an opening that needed to be filled… and now back to our regularly scheduled programming (a.k.a. thesis-writing).
An old favorite from the TWoP FAQ:
One of the reasons I got so hooked on TWoP back in the day was because they didn’t take any crap.
Q: I love typing in all lowercase or all uppercase, ignoring proper grammar and punctuation, and writing my messages like I’m text-messaging on a cell phone with an eight-year-old. That’s cool, right? I mean, who cares? This is the internet!
A: Well, we care…but the sad truth is that other posters might skip over your posts if they’re too hard to read. Things like proper spacing, capitalization, and punctuation make your posts much easier on the eye, and they make you look like quite the Captain Smartypants, too.
Look, we’re not grading you. You won’t get banned for misspelling “definitely” or anything. Just try your best to write neat, coherent posts. Don’t type “2” for “to,” or “U” for “you,” or “l8r” or “LOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!” or any of that nonsense. Throw in a carriage return now and then to break up the text, and please use proper capitalization. Your computer comes with two shift keys. Use ’em.
Emphasis added by me. Link.
AB Article
In honor of the papers I recently finished grading, I have a new Absolute Blank article at TC: Tips for Writing a Term Paper.
Dead of Winter Writing Contest
The 7th Annual Dead of Winter Writing Contest is now open.
Dead of Winter is a fiction contest (any genre) for stories with supernatural elements or themes. This year’s theme is: Urban Legend.
Deadline for entries is December 21, 2007.
3 Cheers and a Tiger!
The fall contest is underway!
The theme of the September 2007 “Three Cheers and a Tiger” contest is “Mentors.” The word limit is 1800 words. So, between now and 5pm Eastern US time on Sunday September 23, 2007, write a science fiction and/or fantasy story about a Mentor in 1800 words or less, and submit it according to the rules, which you can find here.
Great way to sharpen up those speedwriting skillz just in time for NaNoWriMo!
November 29, 1918 – September 6, 2007
Madeleine L’Engle died yesterday. She was 88.
Something to think about: L’Engle’s career didn’t really take off until the 1960s, when she was already over 40. A Wrinkle in Time was finally published (after many rejections) in 1962. She continued to publish prolifically into her 80s.
ETA: I made a Madeleine L’Engle category. (Includes my three-part review of the elusive Ilsa.)
Also found this in an old writing file:
Back in the day, I kept my Madeleine L’Engle books on a separate shelf and called them my “special books.” Every time I went into a new library, I’d look to see if there were any books listed that I hadn’t heard of and every time I entered a bookstore, I’d head to the Ls to see if they had any books I hadn’t read.
But I never wrote her a letter.
In fact, the idea didn’t even occur to me until I was out of university and found her book A Circle of Quiet. In the book, she writes about finding an apartment on West End Avenue. She wrote the address. I thought, I wonder if she still lives there? Curious, I headed to the library and looked her up in the NY phone book (on microfiche!) It was listed, not under her name, but under that of her late husband, Hugh Franklin. Imagine that. A reasonably well-known actor and a writer with a listed phone number. So now, I had her address. I even had her phone number. I could write her a letter. I could call. But I didn’t.
I tried to write a letter, but it just came out sounding dumb. You’re my favorite author! I’ve read everything of yours that I could get my hands on! Why is Ilsa out of print? Will you ever write about Vicky as an adult? etc. I couldn’t bring myself to send something so dorky. Eventually I deleted it from my hard drive.
And that was the closest I got to writing a fan letter.
ETA Part 2: Since nearly every tribute I’ve seen begins and ends with A Wrinkle in Time, I thought I’d add this: Madeleine L’Engle’s bibliography and my personal L’Engle collection:
Austin Family. This is my favorite series; The Moon by Night is my favorite of her fiction books.
Murry – O’Keefe Family. My favorites are A Swiftly Tilting Planet and The Arm of the Starfish.
Katherine Forrester. The Small Rain was her first novel.
Camilla Dickinson.
Miscellaneous Fiction.
Autobiographical. A Circle of Quiet is my favorite of her non-fiction books. Must-read for writers.
Miscellaneous Non-Fiction. Miracle on 10th Street is a mixture of non-fiction & fiction. Contains two Austin family stories: The 24 Days Before Christmas and A Full House.
The Remainder Table 