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52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 31—What Matters In Storytelling As Demonstrated By Penguins

Let's talk about penguins. Specifically, let's talk about how penguins can help us learn about how to write good, compelling story structure.

Archaeology Featured

Adventures with Necromantic Skulls: Materiality, Texts, and Objects

During the ritual stage, the practitioner divides themselves between drawing, speaking with the dead person, and then ensuring they can get what they want out of the dead person.

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 30—My therapist told me to do this.

I'm writing this in bed, on a warm Friday afternoon, and I feel like bursting into tears. Maximum menstrual potential unfolding here. For a week I had a fever. As the fever died, the period struck. My cat and I have so far spent most of today in bed watching

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 29—How to make a necromantic skull

Introduction You know when you get that pre-cold feeling? Hmm, yeah. That's how I'm feeling today. It's been an incredible week with my family and friends. But graduation day is a strange thing. Six years of work preparing for the PhD and doing the PhD and then finishing, and it's

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 28—A word about pronouns

Intro Well, it's been a week. A real week. I've had so many different things going on, things I didn't really want to have to deal with the week before I graduate. I've been a tad stressed out, let's put it that way. I'm not comfortable explaining why because it's

Magic and Materiality Featured

Materiality and Magic: The role of physical materials in the magic of R F Kuang's Babel

💡Note: This is a blog post, not an extensive piece of academic research. Some areas are looser than others, but I hope you enjoy it as a way to think about magic and materiality in fiction. Introduction I wish to start with a statement of positionality. I'm a white person

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 27—Camp Nanowrimo Week 1

Introduction It's Camp Nanowrimo. Back in April, I did a whole 50k words, so I decided to set that as my goal for this summer camp. Except that once again, I've shifted gear and I'm writing the much earlier Amnar book. That'd be the one about Maali. This must be

Materiality and the Mandalorian Featured

Materiality and the Mandalorian: Beskar steel as a social agent

💡Note: This isn't finished academic work. Think of these as research notes from a material-focused anthropologist curious about Mandalorian culture. Have you ever thought about what must have been going on for people to discover how to work iron? All the experiments that people must have been carrying out to

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 26—Signs, silence, and letters to supernatural agents

Introduction Technically speaking, this is halfway through my "52 Weeks of Doing Something That Might Be Writing" project. It's also the end of June and tomorrow is the start of Camp Nanowrimo. Once again, I'm veering all over the place here. I am doing the summer Camp Nanowrimo, but I'm

Archaeology

Interlude: My dentist thinks aliens built the pyramids

OK, I know I was very clear and said I'd be doing Materiality and the Mandalorian today, and that it'd be all about beskar steel. I have most of the post written, but reality stepped in and set this week royally on fire. I could've finished what I'd written this

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 25—A pot is never "just" a pot

Last week, I decided I would change how I do these weekly reviews. Forget inspirational quotes and reports on monthly goals. Forget focus and how well it went. I'm sick of trying to fit myself into the grindset mentality as though that was the only thing that mattered. So here,

Materiality and the Mandalorian Featured

Materiality and the Mandalorian: The Armourer as an Assemblage

Introduction It's time we talked about metallurgy. Or, more precisely, the Armourer. I'm planning another post that'll deal with the role of materials, i.e., beskar steel, for next week. This week, I'm going to concentrate on the Armourer, like I promised. Because for once, I'm trying to set up

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 24—Life is more than this.

Confessional time. I need to hold my hands up and be honest. I haven't written any fiction in a month, maybe more. I'm struggling with it again. Some of this makes sense; the last month or so has been chaotic and crazy and it's hard to find the focus or

Materiality Featured

Materiality and the Mandalorian: Mando's Helmet is a Social Agent

Introduction Hello and welcome back to Materiality and the Mandalorian. This is part two of a series where I puzzle over how materials and objects function in the world of The Mandalorian. Or, at least, I watch The Mandalorian episodes and think about how the materials and objects function and

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 23—Marking zombie edition

Wow, what a week. I'm writing this a day late again because I had to recover from autistic burnout yesterday. I'll explain in the accomplishment section, but we're in the last days of marking season and I needed to get all my papers done for Friday. Well, all my papers

Materiality Featured

Materiality and the Mandalorian: Some thoughts about Mando's quest for ritual purification in the Living Waters of Mandalore

Introduction I'm going to start by saying that if you want to blame anybody for this, you can blame my partner. We decided, finally, to watch season three of The Mandalorian this week. Yeah, so we're behind everybody else and we're still only on the first episode. Part way through,

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 22—This is the week I got my PhD again

Okay, so that was a week. Again, I have to hold my hands up right at the outset and admit that I haven't done any fiction writing this week. In fact, I've barely done any writing, other than journaling. I've maintained my streak on 4theWords and that is IT. A

52 Weeks of Editing Featured

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 21—This is the week I got my second PhD

This has been an enormous week for me. A weekly review doesn't feel like enough, somehow, given that this was such an important moment in my life. I was awarded my PhD. I can't find the right words to describe it. Technically, I've been "recommended for the award of PhD"

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 20—Facing procrastination with the help of AI (part two)

Wow, where did that week go? Here we are again for another review, and finally I get to stick a bit of a word count goal up there because I actually did some writing. This post will therefore not be all about me whinging about health issues. I have new,

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 19—Facing Procrastination with the Help of AI (part one)

Because I'm still in the middle of a major health crisis, I need to lean on something highly controversial for help. My therapist knows I like to journal, so she recommended I try some AI prompts. The AI provides me with feedback on the answers I give, which I'll keep

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing: Week 18—It gets harder

Word count: 50–52k (10k to the mid-point break) Well, it's been a week. There's something about writing: it never happens in a vacuum. We have to write while we have kids or pets or colleagues or partners all around us. As much as you try to build a routine,

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Writing (!): Week 17—Writing even when it's hard

Camp Nanowrimo 2023/1: Week 4 Words: 45–50.8k I'm not normally a proponent of the idea of writing even when it's hard. In fact, I prefer the idea of not writing when it's extremely hard, but it depends what you mean by "hard". On the one hand, there's

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Editing (Writing?): Week 16—We need to talk about the perimenopause

I'm beginning to think I need to call this "52 Weeks of Writing" rather than editing. I couldn't find any way to do strikethrough text in the title (or anywhere else on Ghost), so if you could just imagine I managed a snazzy title up there, please. This is what

52 Weeks of Editing

52 Weeks of Editing: Week 15—When the Depression Monster Calls

I'm late! I'm late! Here I am, a day late, rushing in like the White Rabbit, all flustered and confused. Let me tell you, it's been a week. For reasons I'll explain below, I couldn't write the blog update yesterday. In fact, let's make this whole blog post about not