All You Chauvinistic Misogynists Out There...

Hey readers, I promised myself that I wouldn't use my blog as a soapbox, but something caught my attention tonight and it absolutely pissed me off. So here's the scene, I'm sitting in my dorm room, doing Latin homework when one of my roommates shoves her laptop at me and tells me to read an article. I read this article titled "50 Ways To Be the Perfect College Girlfriend" and I have never read a more misogynistic, boorish, underdeveloped, Cro-Magnon article in my life.

A Writer's Power

Hi readers, today I meant to write up an explanation for my lyric, Footprints, that I posted on Tuesday. I was in the middle of writing out how writing can be powerful when concise when a headline on Yahoo! news caught my eye. It was about the four men who had raped a woman on a bus in India and left her for dead on the street. I had heard about this event for awhile, but I had always discounted it and just shook my head in disgust. But upon reading the article that the four men accused of gang rape were sentenced to death, I felt awful for not having paid more attention. It is really easy for someone who lives in a country like the United States to be blissfully unaware of the brutalities and hardships that face others in less fortunate countries. So today, I wanted to talk about the power that everyone has: their voice.

Footprints

Hi all :) I know I'm getting lazy with updates, but page views are going down and demands of college are going up, I have two tests this week, so I'm going to keep this short. As a writer, don't be fooled into thinking that your writing has to be long for it to be good. Below, I've enclosed a lyric, called Footprints, which is only three lines, but I hope you find it illustrates my point about how sometimes writing short can be better than a long-winded composition. Today is the example and tomorrow is the explanation! Enjoy!

Repetition in Poetry

Hi guys, I know I've been lecturing for awhile on all sorts of things to include in your poetry and stories. But I realized an important component of teaching lies in demonstration. So I'll do my best to give you some examples of the ideas that I've been explaining. This is a short little poem that utilizes repetition, what do you think? Emphatic or monotonic?

Knowing When to Stop

Hi all! :) If you read my post on editing, you might have noticed that I made a big mistake. I talked about methods of self-editing, but I completely neglected one very important factor when it comes to editing. This important little element is a huge part of editing and if ignored, your writing will become an endless cycle of writing, editing, re-writing, editing and on and on. Guessed it? It's knowing when to stop. You can write and re-write all you want, your writing will never be perfectly perfect. You'll always want to change something, so here's a "Knowing When to Stop 101 class" :)

Research

Hi all :) I remember I was once reading a book and they talked about what a beautiful island Waikiki, Hawaii is. Now as a proud local islander (and no, not a Hawaiian), I can't quite express how blasphemous this statement is. For one, Waikiki is not an island, it's a tourist metropolis that is constantly clogged with an onrush of tourists from morning till night. Anyway, I feel like this egregious error could have been prevented with something we learned in college: research. All you had to do was pull up a google search box and type in Waikiki. Relatively simple and you would know very quickly that Waikiki is not one of Hawaii's eight islands. Anyway, I digress, research is something very important when you're writing a book.

Finding Time Part II

Hi all :) I know I kind of digressed yesterday in terms of what I normally write about on this blog, so I'm sorry for that! I just really liked the story about the philosophy professor. Anyway, back to other matters. Sometimes in our hectic world. it's hard to find time to do a lot of things that we want to. Sometimes a lot of important things fall through the cracks, so this post is about several tried and true methods of making time to find several little windows of opportunity to keep those creative juices flowing. So let's go :)

Finding Time

Hi guys! Are you one of those people who just cannot find enough time in one day to do everything that needs to be done? I was talking to a friend over dinner and she said "don't you wish you never had to sleep so you could do more things?" Now personally, I love sleeping much too much to ever wish that I didn't have to sleep, but her question piqued my mind a little. In our fast-paced world it is often difficult to find enough time to do everything that we want to. As Americans (maybe even humans) we like things fast: faster technology, fast-food, faster check out at stores and on and on. The reason a lot of people eat unhealthier and don't exercise is because they don't have time. This will be a two part post, so here's part one:

Taboos

Hey guys :) Have you ever read Lolita? Did you just cringe a little bit? Thought so, Lolita is infamous for its story line. To put this in a nutshell, Lolita involves pedophilia, shudder-inducing hungers and the whole shebang.This post is a little controversial, a little funky and a lot of fun. This post is about taboos in writing and the right way to use them.