Tag: books
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Goal: Improving my Book Openings
New year, new retrospective on my strengths and weaknesses as a writer! In 2024, I made progress with plot, character arcs and incorporating themes into them. I learnt to dial up the environment and characters, and how to merge scenes so that they serve multiple purposes. I focussed on the climactic sequence and the resolution,…
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Writing in the Trenches
I got another rejection yesterday! That’s 3 for this project so far, so they’re trickling in steadily. In the meantime, I’m working on my next book. The scene outlines are almost finished, and I hope to start the zero-draft next week. Yet I am plagued – plagued, I say! – by worries that this one…
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Bound to Succeed Eventually
So that post from last year was a bit of a downer, huh! I was feeling very doom and gloom, dragging my feet from rewrites to edits and staring at the words with empty eyes… Nothing was going to get better, I was never going to be good enough, why bother chasing my dreams? It’s…
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My Favourite Middle-grade Books of 2024
Hello! I meant to post a lot this year, but depression and anemia did a pincer movement and caught me out! So let’s look back at what I read in 2024! I read 8 middle-grade novels this year (so far), so let’s go through them! (No Spoilers.) Nura and the Immortal Palace by M.T. Khan…
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Doomed to Fail Over and Over
Hello there! After finishing the first draft of my current book project (Code Name: No Footings) at the end of March, I took a break of a month in order to reset, work on fun projects and get the story out of my head. Then I picked up the draft at the start of May,…
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My Favourite Book of 2023
(TL;DR: it’s What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama, translated into English by Alison Watts.) I keep a spreadsheet of the books I finish reading every year, with each entry scored out of twenty in a system-less vibe-based way. I also take extensive notes on things like plot, characterisation and…
Non Hughes 