Category: Guides & Advice
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Why It’s Important to Schedule Blog Posts
The sooner you get started on things, the sooner they’ll be done. That’s a saying I recall hearing across my childhood, and when applied to the world of blogging, it essentially means you should always endeavour to work as quickly and as far ahead as you possibly can. Downtime for writers and creators is important,…
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The Pros and Cons of Novellas
If you look around the posts on this website, you’ll notice I’m quite the fan of shorter fiction. For me, novellas hit a sweet spot between length, depth, creativity, and value for money. But, much like any other form of fiction, novellas have their pros and cons. Some people really dislike them, and others (like…
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Don’t Scrap Your Post Ideas
Over the last year, I have written a lot of unfinished or unpublished posts for this website. However, as of late, I’ve realised that the posts — or their topic(s) — were fairly interesting and have plucked a lot of them out of my drafts and finally put them on the website. One such example…
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Blogging: A Venture in Constant Improvement
Perhaps this website seems like the epitome of ‘newbie’ to you, but I assure you that it was once a lot more messy, directionless, and unprofessional. In my year or so of blogging, whether it be before the existence of this website or now during it, I have never stopped improving. This site, for better…
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My Most Used Reading White Noise Videos
If you’re like me, then it doesn’t take much to agitate you when reading. A slight murmur of someone in the other room, the muffled noise of the television downstairs, your phone going off, or even just the neighbour’s yappy dog – it’ll drag your mind away from the book before you. In many cases,…
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Five Great Japanese Books Under 200 Pages
I love to read books by Japanese authors, particularly those on the shorter side. Something about the way the Japanese write, regardless of whether the work was translated or simply wrote in English to begin with, doesn’t shake the way these authors can so easily convey a scene, an emotion, or their (usually) odd sense…
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Re-Read Your Childhood Favourites
Readers are creatures of habit, ones forged during our formative years. Anyone with an affinity for books in their matured years will, in most cases, have grown up with reading. Whilst many children were encouraged or ‘forced’ to read during the primary/elementary school days, it is unlikely that many of them ever carried on reading…
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It’s Fine to Give Up on a Book
Reading is something we do for many reasons, but the key motives behind reading (especially fiction) are mental stimulation and entertainment value. And when such things are lacking, that’s when you know it’s fine to give up on a book and never finish it. To keep it simple: reading is supposed to be a fun…
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Distraction-Free Writing Software
Some people work better with less, often holding a preference for minimalist setups and software with discrete user interfaces. For those types of people, namely writers, here are some pieces of software I personally recommend. FocusWriter FocusWriter is a nifty little program that allows for plenty of customisation. Many actions, such as text justification, heading/text…
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Tips for Writing a Book Review
Offering tips for writing a book review is hard. Advice can vary not only based on the book in question, but the style of review, the depth of analysis, and how much of the book will be directly summarised and mentioned within the review. All of these introduce or invert the dos and do nots…