I’ve been seeing a lot of “which quarantine house would you choose?” memes. So, on this night plagued by insomnia, I decided to take one such meme and make up a flash fiction about each house on one such meme.
Blog
The TLTLBU Sequel Woes
I’ve had a number of people approach me about when I’ll be releasing the sequel to TLTLBU. The truth is…I have no idea. I’m in a PhD program right now, nothing to do with fiction writing, and that really should take precedence. That said, I’m a firm believer that nothing should be prioritized above personal…
The World Wide Web (No, the Other One)
The other day, my sister and I were having lunch and talking. I used the word “Iranian”, pronouncing it “I-ray-nian.” “I-rah-nian,” my sister corrected. I stared at her. She stared back with a slight smile, which turned to a frown as I just continued to stare. “What?” she asked. “You correct my English.” I do….
Hello, Blog Readers…
Hello, there. How are you? It’s been forever since I blogged.
A Quick Guide for Writing Diverse Characters (Whose Backgrounds You Don’t Share)
It’s recently come to my attention that I take for granted that a lot of aspects of this subject—writing characters with backgrounds other than your own—are “common sense.”
My bad.
Isobel’s Quandary
My mother and I used to read a lot of Eva Ibbotson romances. And by “a lot,” I mean “all of them.” It was my mother who started giving me straight-up romances, instead of my usual fantasy or mystery novels with romantic subplots. She tried this several times—I don’t know if it’s because she liked…
The Irresistible Lure of Failure
Have you ever heard of the secretive, bizarre 60-hour over-100-mile race that has only been completed by 15 runners since it began 30 years ago? If you answered no, we’re in the same boat. I’d never heard of the Barkley Marathons until this week. When I’m tired, I often watch the Today I Found Out…
The Different and the Same
“No one is born with prejudice,” I often hear. And while that is true, it does come with some caveats. No one is born racist, but most small children do grow accustomed to a certain set of physical characteristics that they frequently see, and can become alarmed upon meeting someone with different characteristics. For me…
Counterbalancing (a Tiny Bit of) Our Biases
Apparently yesterday’s (by an hour) post was more personal than I was quite ready for… Let’s detox with something less personal! Counterbalancing a Tiny Bit of Our Biases An Unofficial Crash Course in Cognitive Science for Writers: Pt. 1 Have you ever reflected on a memory, and brought it up with a family member or…
Variable Comforts
A Talk about “Writing Diverse Characters” I gave a talk at the Japan Writers Conference about writing diverse characters. Like I said in my post leading up to the conference, I chose to go in with practically no preparation. I ended up so tense that I foolishly rehearsed talking about certain things—and those things were,…