This week's post is part of the monthly Author Toolbox Blog Hop where you will find a community of writers sharing tips and tools for the craft and business of writing. Do check them out! It wasn't since the impromptu graduation ceremony we held in March that I have had such a busy week. Staff... Continue Reading →
Fiction & Climate Change
This month of school has galvanized my awareness of global heating like nothing before. It began with a presentation by an Australian member of staff about the bushfires still blazing, an impassioned plea that this is the world we are in. Changes are happening now, and not in a distant future. Changes are necessary and... Continue Reading →
How to Use Sentence Structure to Improve Your Writing
Human languages glitter with variety. Rife with synonyms, recursive structures, nuances of tone and pronunciation--the ways we speak and write possess the subtlety of art. Today, we'll examine how sentence structure in English can be modified to bring our texts to life. Let's see. Linguistic Background Multilingual people often debate the merits of their languages.... Continue Reading →
Dialogue #1: Three Core Formsโ#AuthorToolboxBlogHop
This week is my first time participating in Raimey Gallant's Author Toolbox Blog Hop. There are a lot of great blogs here on the hop providing resources to authors, and I'm excited to be taking part. Check at the others at the link above! Today's post is the first in a series on dialogue, throughout... Continue Reading →
Efficient revising: what order is best?
The four faces of revising. Yesterday, I completed a first draft of rewrites to my novel manuscript. It's been three months since I began, thirteen chapters of new material, and copious reworking of the existing. It's a celebration, to be sure, and I'm content to bask in the glory of a milestone passed for a... Continue Reading →
Past or Present: why tense matters in our writing, and how to use it well
Nine months ago, I began translating my novel from past to present tense. At the time, before a bunch of ruthless cuts, it was about 160,000 words long, and changing the tense of every verb--it took a while. It was grueling. It set my brain reeling into the depths of grammatical subtlety. It also taught... Continue Reading →