Today, Dan shared this post from Writer’s Write, the entirety of which was this image. It’s a list of 115 ways to say “walk.” I’m all for synonyms and lists of synonyms. Especially for my crutch words (variations of look, for example), sign me the frick up for synonym lists. My characters can only do…
The past couple of days, I’ve been with my sons at their Taekwondo tournament. Athletes from all over the world gathered to compete in an array of events, including board breaking, traditional and creative forms (see the first video – my son is the one on the right), and team events. First thing on…
Have you noticed this trend, especially in sci-fi or superhero movies? I think I first noticed it with Ronan in Guardians of the Galaxy. But after that, I started noticing it other places. How about Darth Vader? Or even the “queen” dragon in How to Train Your Dragon. I’m not talking about motivations, or back…
Can a writer plagiarize their own work? Because I kinda managed to do that. It wasn’t a whole story or a premise or a character. It was a short setting description. I knew the moment I wrote it in my current work-in-progress that I’d written it before. It was a favorite line. Seeing as I…
My birthday is in a few days, and I only want one thing. Seeing as it conveniently overlaps with everyone’s reflecting on the past year, this should be easy. Here goes. If you read a book you loved this year, go to its Amazon and/or Goodreads page and write a review for it. That’s it.…
Sixteen days ago, I went out to dinner with some friends. One of them told me about a TED talk she’d seen about how long it takes to learn a skill. We were talking about the 10,000 hours to achieve mastery statistic, I think, and my friend disagreed. “Twenty hours to proficiency,” she said. Yeah,…
I participate in a Twitter chat called #TweepWriter. It’s a community where writers answer a different question every day throughout the month. Today was day 20, so this was the question: What was the first thing (poem, short story, book, blog post, etc) you ever wrote about? I think I misunderstood the question because I…
Consider this a humorous travel guide.
I’m writing this from a hotel room. The last hotel room in an unexpected ten-day adventure, in fact. Tomorrow, we’ll be home. Back to our non-humid, cat-filled normal lives. We were supposed to be home last Friday. Flashback to two Fridays ago. My family and I are waiting in our local airport for our flight…
If you’ve been on the internet for more than five minutes, you’ve likely seen the myriad of extrovert/introvert jokes flying around. I found a bunch when I was helping a friend find some for a blog post. It took approximately 2.3 seconds. Okay, most of the jokes are about introverts. We’re in the minority, you…
Allison Maruska 