3 Books For a Desert Island – Blog Hop

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…)

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A Month in a Writer’s Life – May 2017

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…)

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The Title Terror

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…)

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A Month in a Writer’s Life – April 2017

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…)

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13 Facts About My WIP

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…)

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Writing Is Much Like Learning To Drive

I never had the need of learning to drive. Poznań, my hometown in Poland, has an excellent public transport network, and when I moved over to Ireland, I couldn’t afford a car. Also, with the narrow and always jammed streets of Dublin, it seemed better to just search for an apartment near my workplace and walk to work. But moving over to the USA and living at the very edge of the town meant I would finally have start driving.

After waiting for my residency to be sorted out, I got my driver’s permit, and started getting familiar with the “controls” of the new game called “driving,” but it wasn’t until later I found similarities between learning to drive and writing. (more…)

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What’s Your Writing Superpower?

Some days ago I came across a meme I’ve seen around several times already. It said “Reading is my superpower. What’s yours?” and it got me thinking about a Superhero Writers group. Classy outfits like old jeans and t-shirt, hipster vintage clothing, or good ol’ pajamas aside, superheroes had to have some sort of superpowers. We all read, so unless we’re going to compete in the amount of books read or reading speed, we need a different kind of superpowers: the writerly one. (more…)

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Gaming Writer’s Saturday: Stardew Valley

Gaming Writer's SaturdayEven though my favorite video games are the ones offering rich stories and immersive worlds, I also like to play managerial games from time to time as they provide unique challenges, encourage planning and problem-solving. So every once a while a managerial game sucks me in for long hours, and this time it was Stardew Valley’s turn. (more…)

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