Writing Weaknesses: Do You Know Yours?
Nobody is perfect. That’s one of those golden rules when it comes to personalities and professions. Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes trivial and sometimes terrible. As a writer, it can be difficult to see where your weaknesses are. Anyone who writes is intimately connected to his or her work, and maintaining separation can sometimes be nearly […]
Random, But Useful Advice For Writing Essays
Cite your sources correctly from the start. Having recently gone through the experience of digging up the correct sources and fixing all my slightly-off citations, I can tell you that doing it right the first time is a time saver, especially if you don’t return to the essay in question until some many months later, […]
A Collective Chillpill For RaceFail, GenderFail, et al.
Disclaimer: Nothing in this post should be misunderstood to imply that I am inherently racist, anti-equality, or anything of that nature. I am not and never will be against any notion of quality, only against unrealistic expectations and demands. Neither am I against open and civil discussion of issues of discrimination, whether it be in […]
Reader Question: The Alien Exit
Mercy from Young Writers Online had this interesting question to ask: Why does everyone resort to aliens in recent sci-fi/gov/end of the world movies? Because aliens are easy. People do not question aliens as the villains, because, despite all our efforts to acknowledge our difficulty in understanding and dealing with the human/Other dichotomy, we are […]
Fantasy is Colonial, Modern Science Fiction is Postcolonial?
Examining trends in genre fiction is an impossible task. Fantasy and science fiction are constantly moving, the latter more so than the former, and yet I have been noticing something within both genres (a shifting theme for the latter, and a staple for the former) that I want to examine and understand. Readers are welcome […]
Reader Question: English, the Ultimate Tongue
Bowie from Young Writers Online recently asked the following: Why do all aliens speak some form of English? Well, the truth is that aliens exist within a strange temporal distortion in which they are exposed to English before human beings even exist, so when they come knocking, they are not only fluent in the language, […]