Writer, Dabbler In Things
I recently finished writing my first novel. I have a tendency, once I’ve finished the first draft of a large project, to shelve it for a bit before I look at it again to start editing or tweaking it. The idea behind that, which I learned decades ago, is to move onto other projects and … Read more
A needed background primer on me and clutter: I’ve long had a mixed relationship with housecleaning, in that I a) don’t do it remotely often or thoroughly enough, yet b) really appreciate when it’s done well. I find, and I know others do as well, that a cleaning so deep as to not merely dust … Read more
The shine of diving head and feet into new, unknown graphic novels wore off a fair bit this month when the handful of recent ones that I picked up at my local library turned out to be less interesting, or something I didn’t care to read just yet. One tightrope a graphic novel walks is … Read more
A busy month, reading-wise, though the vast bulk of it was graphic novels. I fell into something of a rabbit hole, just checking out the early (sometimes all) volumes of whatever series nearby libraries happened to have available. No premeditation, no putting anything on hold, just taking advantage of whatever I could get whenever wherever … Read more
I wrote last week about reading the first twenty pages of a graphic novel called Undiscovered Country that had a crazy amount of the same content as the thrust of my recently finished novel first draft. To the point where, if it continued, it would potentially mean drastically or entirely changing my novel before being … Read more
Well, crap. I mentioned at the top of the year that I had finished the first draft of my first novel. Cut to yesterday, when I started reading a graphic novel I’d grabbed at random during a recent visit to the library and it’s… well… it’s really, weirdly, painfully close to being the same story … Read more
I believe this is the first time I’ve doubled down on the work of one particular writer in my Read this book recommendations–I lauded her first book back in January–but man, is it deserved. A Closed and Common Orbit doesn’t follow the story established in the first book of the Wayfarer series in terms of … Read more
May ended up being an unexpected windfall of material to read, and as it was generally pretty quick to get through, I made good headway with it. I was in a library and wandered by the graphic novel section and came across the first three collected books of a series called Ascender. It took me … Read more
As of this weekend, I’ve broken 200 pages on my project of humourous stories and observations. That is, to be clear, 200 pages as they’d appear in a book, not 200 pages of solid prose writing. That’s crazy talk. This leads me to wonder when I should call it done as far as length goes. … Read more
When we did our recent reno, I donated a lot of books. Dozens of them, easily. Maybe hundreds. Swept off shelves by the armload, put into boxes as efficiently as possible, and hauled to the thrift store, again and again. Initially I balked at the idea. These were my books, after all, and book lovers … Read more