Suggestion Saturday: May 30, 2015

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, rants, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Respect for Your Subjects in Street Photography via TraceTV. I really loved the message in this post.

How to Rescue a Boring Conversation via rbakercnn. There’s a lot of good information here.

The Five Paragraph Method. I once had a teacher who strongly believed in this writing style. It has always come across as a lazy, boring way to communicate ideas to me.

Fake 5 Tips for Making a Great List via AdamDreece. Hilarious.

Addy Walker, American Girl. Who else remembers this doll? This commentary on it is really interesting.

From If Vin Diesel Were Your Boyfriend:

If Vin Diesel were your boyfriend, he wouldn’t mind that you spend every Sunday alone with your friends. “You’re not just friends, you’re a family,” he’d say while you get ready for brunch.

From Teachings:

The man who died the night before is the same man I asked, “When is the last time you saw your kids?” while forgetting to change this language for a blind person. He thought it was funny, and he also thought it was funny when he told me that it’s hard to kill yourself in a hospital. I laughed too.

What have you been reading?

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The Search for Planets Beyond Our Solar System

I wish we could visit some of these planets. Don’t you?

I’ve enjoyed this week of light posting. Sometimes you need a break.

Suggestion Saturday will be up as normal on Saturday, and I will be back to my normal posting schedule after that. See you then!

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Spring 2015 Search Terms

Happy Memorial Day to my readers from the United States! I’m keeping this post short and sweet since I generally see a dip in traffic here on holidays.

A few times a year I like to respond to some of the more unusual search terms that have lead new readers to this blog. I’ve added punctuation marks in a few cases to make them easier to understand but have otherwise left the phrases or questions exactly as they appeared in my analytics.

Can’t forgive my friend for not telling me she was dying.

Some people are very private about medical matters. While I personally wouldn’t keep something that serious a secret, I can understand why someone would want to keep that sort of thing quiet.

Sickness and death are hard to deal with. You have to face your own grief before you can look at anyone else’s.

What should we do when our brother wants us to apologize when we are innocent.

Refuse to give in.

Why would you have a problem respecting elders?

I respect everyone equally. The idea of respecting someone more simply because they’ve lived longer than I have is extremely bizarre. By that logic, small children shouldn’t be respected at all.

I wish people that ever did me wrong would come and apologize so we can reconcile. 

I wish I knew why this person felt this way. I can forgive, but that doesn’t mean I’ll always also want reconciliation. Readers, what have been your experiences with this?

Forgiving your husband when he won’t stand up for what is right.

Do it from a distance. People who cave to that kind of pressure don’t change quickly. Often they won’t change at all.

 Cheating without an apology.

No, I do not recommend doing that at all.

How to forgive a bi-polar person without having a relationship.

Forgiveness can take a long time, and it isn’t something that can be rushed. In fact, rushing it makes it much less likely to ever happen. Be gentle with yourself. Anyone who doesn’t understand this can go kick rocks.

How to say or send a text to some one u offended. .e.g like your sister.

Keep it short and simple. Maybe you could say something like, “Happy Memorial Day!”

What is winter solstice and what affects you.

The winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year. It happens at the end of December.

How does it affect me? Well, I’m usually okay with the cold, dark days of winter by that point. I’m definitely not a fan of the commercialism or forced cheer of December, but I don’t mind the winter solstice itself.

It’s later on in January or February that I start really feeling restless and irritable.

C.G. Ayling – photo

C.G. is a friend of mine. He’s a good guy.

I feel like I might have borrowed one picture from his blog once to use here with his permission. It wasn’t a picture of him, though, and I don’t have the authority to give other people the right to use his stuff. You’ll have to contact him directly if you want to reprint his pictures.

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Suggestion Saturday: May 23, 2015

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Treebeard #5. No, there is nothing violent or disturbing in this link. The reason I’m not giving away  any hints about it that can’s already be deduced from the title is that I think my readers will enjoy it more this way.

Mommy Issues via StephNeighbour. My friend Stephanie always has something interesting to say on this blog, but I particularly enjoyed this recent post by her about some of her biggest struggles with Mother’s Day. It really made me empathize with her. That is a sign of good writing!

Anonymous via CocoJGingerSays.  This is the kind of poem that I’d love to sit down and talk about with the author.

What Was Gay? A long, but good, read about how gay culture is changing. Queer women seem to have it a (little) easier in this regard.

I Sold My Soul for a Snickers. My dad shared this link with me. I thought it was really funny.

Snoopy Peeps via LisetteBrodey. Lisette let her character, Molly Hacker, blog a while ago. The results were quite funny.

5 Scariest Things I Saw Working at a Health Food Store. Don’t read this if you have a sensitive stomach.

What have you been reading?

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Mailbag #15


Anonymous asks:

How can I get my writing skills as good as yours? English isn’t my mother-tongue although I mostly write my fictions using that language and almost all of my work turns out boring and just lacks creativity. I guess I have a trouble way of framing sentences in a suitable form.

This is a great question, anon. Thanks for asking it.

I’m incredibly impressed that you’re writing fiction in a language you didn’t grow up speaking. Learning a new language is challenging. Writing can be a challenge  as well. Doing both at the same time can’t be easy!

The first thing I’d recommend is to read a lot of books from the genre that you want to write about. Pay close attention to the authors you really admire. If they write amazingly realistic dialogue, for example, try to figure out what it is about their dialogue that is different from how you’d write that scene. Do they chop up their sentences into fragments? Do they use much more (or less) slang than you’d normally write? If you can figure out what they’re doing differently, you may be able to apply it to your own work.

My second suggestion is to start writing down things that you find interesting. Before I owned a cell phone, I used to carry a little notebook around with me everywhere. I’d write down story ideas, funny things other people said, or how I felt when I saw something strange or beautiful in my daily life. Some of these ideas sat in that notebook for years before they were finally used, and a few of them are still waiting!

You also need to practice quite a bit. I’ve gotten out of the habit of it lately, but I usually write something every single day. First drafts are almost never any good, but you can find parts of them that are worth exploring in the next draft. Never compare your first draft to someone else’s finished product. I’ve done that in the past, and it simply isn’t fair or reasonable.

If you have the time, I also recommend writing reviews of books in your genre. There are a lot of review sites out there looking for volunteer reviewers, but you could also simply leave reviews on Amazon.com or Goodreads.com. This has really helped me to figure out what I consider to be a good, unique story. It might also give you an idea of what topics haven’t been covered much recently in your genre. I know I love it when science fiction authors write about aliens who want to help humanity or when mystery writers have their detectives take on cases that don’t involve pretty, young women being violently murdered.

I hope my advice was helpful for you. Let me know how it goes!

Do you have a question for me? Submit it through the contact form, in the comment section, or by emailing postmaster AT on-the-other-hand DOT com. 

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How to Build a Cat

Click here to find out how engineers do it.

Writers would build a cat by making dozens of prototypes, many of which involve minute changes and/or allowing the prototype to sit in the corner until it decided it was ready to be used. In the meantime, they’d talk to it and expect it to talk back to them. Everyone else on earth would be confused by why a creator would talk to his or her creation or how on earth such a thing was even physically possible. Authors wouldn’t, though. We’re used to that sort of magic. 😉

How would you profession build a cat?

 

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Happy Victoria Day

Princess_Victoria_aged_FourI’m taking a break from writing to celebrate the long weekend. Sometimes you need a refresher.

Happy Victoria Day to all of my Canadian readers.

This is what Queen Victoria looked like when she was four years old.

I wonder if we’ll still celebrate her birthday every year once our current queen dies? Or will Queen Victoria Day be replaced by Queen Elizabeth Day?

These are the thoughts I’ve been mulling over during my time off. 🙂

Happy International Museum day to everyone else. Yes, that really is a thing! Doesn’t it make you want to visit a museum this week?

I’ll be back with something more substantial on Wednesday.

Cheers!

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Suggestion Saturday: May 16, 2015

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, short stories, essays, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Awash via DBofB. I have similar thoughts every time I do a load of laundry.

Rivers. This is what Huckleberry Finn might have been like if the story was told from Jim’s perspective.

The World’s Quickest Advice Column: Hack Your Life. To be honest, this entire blog is worth checking out if you have any interest at all in geeky things, fitness, and/or healthy eating. Start with this post, though. It’s a good one.

An Open Letter To The Person Who Robbed My Family via Manda_like_wine. This broke my heart. I wish there was something we could do to help this family.

Tree Climbing Goats of Morocco. Wouldn’t this be a cool thing to see in person? I’ve seen goats running around before, but I don’t ever remember seeing them in trees.

Bloom Where You Are Planted via ElaineMansfiel7. What a nice way of approaching hard circumstances. The other reason why this post appealed to me is that my mom used to have a clay disk with the Green Man’s face on it hanging on the wooden fence in our backyard near her garden. I think it was considered a little risqué in our church at the time, but she loved the friendly expression on his face. So did I.

From Why Protestors Turn Violent:

When you saw “The Hunger Games,” who did you root for? Katniss and her beleaguered community? Or people in the Capitol wearing pink eyelashes and obliviously eating until they vomited while the people in other districts starved?

What have you been reading?

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One-Word Sentences

I’ve been thinking about one word sentences.

It isn’t (always) grammatically correct, but sometimes an entire response can be pared down to a single word:

No.

Why?

Yes.

Maybe.

Meh.

Extra words aren’t always necessary. In fact, sometimes it’s better not to use them at all.

What are some of your favourite one-word sentences?

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Fears

Those of you who read this blog regularly have no doubt picked up on my obsession with short, dialogue-free films. They are such a fascinating phenomenon.

This one is about fear. It can overwhelm us. It can lie to us. It can also help us. The trick is to figure out which fears are reasonable and which ones are not. Go take two minutes out of your day and watch it. It’s well worth your time.

I tend to worry about things more than I should. It’s actually something that a lot of people in my extended family do as well.  Is it due to genes or learned patterns of behaviour? I’d guess it was a little of both.

I’m very slowly learning when to listen to the little, black creature on my shoulder and when to ignore it.

How about you? Do you worry about things too much? If not, what other habits are you trying to break?

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