Posts
Utah's Banned Books
Utah’s book ban applies not just to what’s stocked in school libraries, but also any book brought onto school grounds. Even for parents.
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Posts
Baubles #3
In which hieroglyphics haunt our alphabet, Victorians slake their thirst, and I’m reminded to find the honorable parts of things.
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Posts
Baubles #2 (and an AI rant)
In which ancient Sumerians blow my mind, I affirm that some people do naturally look like Cora, and I fantasize about painting you with dappled shadows.
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Posts
Baubles #1
This is the first in a series of posts I’m calling “Baubles”, shiny things I’ve found in my research or internet-dwelling that I write here for my benefit as much as yours.
The Historical Thesaurus of English I just learned about this today from a boundary-pushing History Today article about the evolution of swearing in the 1600s. The Historical Thesaurus of English looks a lot more complicated than a typical thesaurus.
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Posts
Why Do We Love "Modiste" So Much?
I have a theory. Sometimes we fall in love with certain inaccurate ideas of how life used to be in a certain time and place. And then if we see a more accurate depiction, it feels wrong. I’ll give three examples.
Example 1: Modiste Like lots of people, I’ve been enjoying Bridgerton. And from Bridgerton I learned the word “modiste”. And I was close to using it in my story, but decided to do a little googling first to make sure I used it correctly.
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Posts
The OG Mary Sue Rant
First, the Background One of the pleasures of blithely diving in as a first time novelist is learning the lingo and hangups of writers themselves. That happened to me a few weeks back while reading a Reddit thread where people were saying this or that character is “such a Mary Sue” and I had no idea what the hell they meant.
So I googled. And here’s what Wikipedia had to say:
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Feedback
I’ve been enlisting more people to give feedback on my writing lately, as well as giving feedback to more writers myself, and realized that the feedback I was giving was kind of scattershot. This post is a reminder to myself on how I want to give feedback, as well as the topics I want to give (or get) feedback on.
How to Give Feedback Use Cause-and-Effect Statements Feedback is easier both to give and to receive when you phrase it as a cause-and-effect statement, like this:
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Posts
Checking in with Samuel and Lethetani
Two new chapters are up! Chapter 7 and chapter 9 feature Lethetani and Samuel, and are interleaved between Cora chapters already released.
If you go into the book PDF reader page, there’s also now a chapter selector at the bottom that will make it easier to jump to what’s new.
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Posts
Let's Garden Party!
There’s more story up! And some updates to old things. Details:
There’s a whole new second half that’s been added to chapter 7. Cora attends a garden party in the new chapter 8. (But be aware, I’m thinking of slipping some non-Cora chapters in between 6-7 and 7-8, so this numbering is likely to change. A bunch of the quotes at the start of the chapters have been rearranged or swapped out.
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Posts
Samuel Has Breakfast, and Cora Rides in the Carriage
Two new chapters are up! The title of this post is taken from their shorthand working titles. When I outline I use those before I know the exact ordering or numbering for them. The result is that my Notion spreadsheet reads like a series of “I Can Read!” books:
Of the two newest chapters, one’s a little long, the other’s pretty short, but they have both been the funnest ones to write so far.
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