I haven’t been playing many new games lately, and the one I seem to be coming back a lot is Banished. The game was recommended to me by my ex-coworker, and even though I got it a long time ago, it took me some time to get into this entertaining and demanding sandbox-type game. (more…)
Another month went by, marking the half of the year gone. As usual, I had big plans and ambitious goals, but at the same time I took into consideration the approaching summer. Last year, the heat I’m not used to anymore, thwarted most of my productivity, and I feared this might be the case. Thankfully, June turned out better than expected. (more…)
Some time ago, I read a book series. I think I was already reading a third or fourth book in the series, when I some point I fell the pace slowing down and losing my attention. I checked what page I was at, and I immediately thought: “Oh, it’s page X. It means that there will be the big reveal or the main battle in about ten pages.” That gave me a stumbling pause, killing all my reading pleasure as I realized all the author’s books are exactly the same in their structure, and therefore very predictable regardless of the story that author is telling. In the end, reading the series became boring and lost most of its appeal. (more…)
In the past, I wrote on the importance of researching facts for your stories (if you missed it, you can read my Research Matters: Why I Don’t Read Novels Set in Ireland post), but the process itself can be time-consuming, tedious, and sometimes disheartening, if despite our efforts, we still can’t find the answers we need.
Research can also become a black hole of information, dragging the poor, unsuspecting writer deeper and deeper.
Sounds like a hassle, doesn’t it? Something to be put away until absolutely necessary or done as little as possible. But there’s also a lot of fun in doing research! Here are my three reasons. (more…)
Yesterday, as I lie in our Evil Bed (named this way because it’s so villainously comfortable that you don’t want to get up), I looked at what I’d consider rather a meager but nonetheless special bookshelf. Back in Ireland, and before that in Poland, I owned many more books, but my moving over to the USA forced me to be very picky of what I’d be taking with me (and believe me, I spent a lot of money to get those books over the pond), and what I might need to buy again in the future.
This got me thinking of the memory game from my youth, “What would you take if you were to go to a desert island?” in which one person mentions an item, and the next person has to repeat that item, then add another one to the list. After a while, the list would be quite long, and the loser would be the person who failed to list all the items in the right order.
As I looked at my precious books, I couldn’t help wondering: if I was to spend a year on a desert island, which three I’d pick? I was limited only to paperbacks and hardcovers, as an e-book reader would be useless without electricity, and to my surprise, instead of pondering the choices for hours, my list presented itself in an instant. (more…)
After a little glitch and my website being down for a while, I’m back and fashionably late (at least that’s what I’m telling myself!) with another Writer’s Life report. May turned out a strange month for me. It seemed it just started, and before I realized, most of it was already gone in some unexplainable way. I sure hope that “runaway time” is not going to be a theme for the rest of the year… (more…)
It seems that the shorter the work, the harder it is. Sure, a novel takes longer to write, and requires a good deal of perseverance, but writing a captivating novel is easier than writing a captivating short story as the volume of the former will allow for some mistakes to be excused. Then, writing a short story seems easier than writing a synopsis, and synopsis can be much easier than a pitch in for the query letter. This makes coming up with titles the most challenging part of writing… Well, at least it does for me. (more…)
The Flame in the Flood was one of the games I found through GOG.com. The graphics looked interesting, and so did the game play featured in the trailer: sail your raft, craft all the necessary items, and survive the wilderness. How could I resist this game for long? (more…)
Where did a whole month go? I could swear it was the beginning of April yesterday, and today it’s May already. April can be quite a busy month, with Camp NaNoWriMo, A to Z Challenge, and other online challenges (like the Twitter game #WIPJoy), and of course, I felt tempted to take part in all of them. But my voice of reason have been already whispering that I had added too many things to my daily schedule already, so with a heavy heart, I decided to cut on anything I could. (more…)
Back in December I took part in a fun Twitter game which required posting a graphic saying “1 Like = 1 WIP Fact”, and as you can guess, as the likes for the tweet appeared, its author was supposed to post facts about their work-in-progress. I had fun, and got 13 likes, a result I was quite happy with: it gave me enough space to shares some interesting bits of my fantasy novel “By the Pact”, but at the same time it didn’t require me to reveal any plot twists or character secrets.
And today, looking back at it, I thought it would be nice to consolidate all those facts into one post. Since I’m not limited by one tweet anymore, I also elaborated a bit on them. I hope you’ll enjoy. (more…)