Wishing everyone a very draconic 2015!
31 Wednesday Dec 2014
Posted 2015, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Dragon-watching, Dragons, Holidays
in30 Tuesday Dec 2014
Tags
Books, Dictionaries, Editing, Editor's Corner, Words, Writing
Know your words and use them wisely.
The Precision of Words
Written by Shawn MacKenzie
“I do love perusing the dictionary to find how many words I don’t use – words that have specific, sharp, focused meaning.” … Geoffrey Rush
It has been a Mad-Mouse sort of week, jostling me between work well done and pounding my head against an impenetrable stone wall, so I hope you bear with me if I am briefer than usual.
Today, as I was typing away at my keyboard (and deleting and typing anew), I began to think about our writer’s tools. The fact is, as a profession, writing is extremely light when it comes to essential implements. Pen and paper, they’re the basics. Of course, it’s the 21st century, and most of us have exchanged blank bond for a computer screen – to the eternal gratitude of many a pulpwood forest and their denizens. Much as I have come…
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24 Wednesday Dec 2014
24 Wednesday Dec 2014
23 Tuesday Dec 2014
Posted Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Editing, Editor's Corner, Fiction, Writing
inTags
Editor’s Corner -catching up gain – courtesy of The Secret Keeper
Written by Shawn MacKenzie
A Propensity for Prologues
In search of inspiration for this week’s Editor’s Corner, I returned to the brackish well of Amazon e-books and discovered a curious trend, particularly among new authors: prologues.
Prologues, prefaces, introductions….in whatever guise, they abound behind the covers of genre tomes and would-be literary masterpieces. The question is: are they really necessary? Or are they simply catchalls for back story we just can’t bring ourselves to leave behind? If you have chosen to begin your novel other than with the first line of Chapter I, ask yourself “Why?”
Now, I admit I’ve written my share of forwards and introductions, prefaces and preludes over the years. However, as a matter of editorial preference, I find them decidedly annoying in most novels. Nine times out of ten, a prologue serves as a historical exercise, giving background to characters and places, giving hints of what…
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23 Tuesday Dec 2014
Posted Books, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Editing, Editor's Corner, Fiction, Senses, Writing
inEditor’s Corner Redux. Thank you Secret Keeper.
Written by Shawn MacKenzie
Post Tuesday 16th December 2014
In the Realm of the Senses
“Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert.” …. Sir William Osler, M.D., C.M.
Last night I was watching the cats play with the chinchillas (a special birthday treat for the kittens). Claws sheathed, eyes wide, ears forward, whiskers twitching, and mouths open to taste the air, they were totally in the now, absorbing the experience with every sense at their disposal. The chins, too.
Oh, the lessons we learn from our companion critters everyday!
Try though we might to place ourselves on a separate, gilded rung of the evolutionary ladder, we human beings are still animals. Like other furred, feathered, or scaled creatures, we still count on our senses to guide us…
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22 Monday Dec 2014
Posted Chanukah, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Dragons, Holidays, Religion
in21 Sunday Dec 2014
Posted Chanukah, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Dragons for Beginners, Holidays
in20 Saturday Dec 2014
19 Friday Dec 2014
Posted Chanukah, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Dragons, Holidays
in