Tag Archives: writing challenges

September 27, 2011 · 12:59 am

The Long Road Home

Leaving on a jet plane, a photo by Fields of View, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

Greetings, dear readers! My apologies for the long delay in posting, but it’s because I was packing and leaving Taipei. (cue sad music, movie credits, etc) However! All is not lost! Chin up, disconsolate selves who wish the girl would stay in Formosa (including me!), and consider this: I have much more to write about and reflect upon from my last few months. And then, once I get back to the States, the blog has many possible future lives in its, well, future…

All of these things to be determined and executed, but for now, I am spending a transitional month traveling in Japan and in California, as I finish up research on my grandfather Liao Wen-Yi’s life (15 years of which was in Japan, SCORE! and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution has a whole Taiwan KMT/independence archive– double SCORE!) and wind my way back towards home.

So I will try to stay connected to all of you via the blog, and continue to consider the nature of travel and transience and research and writing, and TAIWAN (as I get nostalgic for foods and drinks and places I will wax even more poetically about them, right?)….. but in the meantime, I turn my eyes to you, dear readers.

What else do you want to hear about Formosa? Please weigh in NOW, in the comments section, so I can make sure in upcoming posts that I answer your questions, tell you no lies, and strive to entertain and inform on this topic in this format, for just a tiny (or very long) bit longer.

So please please please tell me: What else do you want to hear about? Give me some topics and I will write a post inspired by YOU!!!

Some possible topics include but are not limited to: more food and travel around Taiwan posts/advice, on the traveling life, on writing, on research, Taiwanese history findings, how to travel to Tokyo on a shoestring, top 5 (or 10 or 100) things you should do in Taipei while you’re there, the unbearable lightness of being… (the feeling, not the book, ha), cooking in Taiwan, beaches, hikes, and so forth.

Also to everyone in New York, Cali, England (and elsewhere) and in Taiwan: I miss you. My heart is now being pulled towards the east and the west and every which way, so I hope I will see you all soon. And to some of you in the SF area, that soon is going to be now…. before you know it! Now please, help me out and ask some questions!

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August 5, 2011 · 10:34 am

On the Writing Life: Chip Cheek, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, and Grub Street

This is how my writing desk is.... in my head. Photo by EvilErin, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons license.

This week has turned into a week of writing about writing; how meta. Writing spaces, writing discipline, reactions to when writing gets read, reactions to when I’m bored with the sound of my own voice and it’s late at night and instead of analyzing my next stack of research I start reading funny blogs on the interwebs….

So now, to come full circle, here are some thoughts on the thoughts of some of my favorite Boston-based emerging writers, Chip Cheek and Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich. Chip is primarily a fiction writer, and Alexandria, nonfiction, and they were at times classmates, friends, and mentors of mine at Emerson College when I was doing my MFA in creative nonfiction writing.  Both of them published quite incisive articles recently on the Grub Street Blog, so here are excerpts and links, to share their thoughts on getting writing done, and prioritizing one’s choices when you’ve chosen to be a writer: Continue reading →

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August 3, 2011 · 1:13 am

It’s Hard to Stay Productive! Shout out to NailsBails

This is my new favorite blog this week, like SERIOUSLY:

http://nailsbails.com/

Each pithy post has an even spiffier accompanying cartoon, and this one is called, "One Hundred Hours of Solitude," and it's all about working from home, something I can relate to (and the reason I prefer to run off to Fantasy Treehouses to write). Also, today's is called "The Unbearable Lightness of Sleeping." <3. SWOON.

 

Dear Mr. NB, can we please collaborate on a post about writing/not working/going crazy? Maybe call it, “A Clockwork Orangutan?” Call me! I’m a big fan.

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August 1, 2011 · 8:20 am

A Writer’s Rx: Developing a Writing Practice

Photo by lowjumpingfrog, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons license. Rule number one of the timed exercise (freewrite): Don't let your hand stop moving!

If you want to write, I recommend that you first go buy a copy of Natalie Goldberg‘s book Writing Down the Bones. Just go to your local bookshop and have a look at the first few chapters (chapters are typically 1-2 pages long). If you are intrigued, pick it up, along with an empty notebook and a pen. Go home, and set a timer for ten minutes, and do some writing exercises. It will free your soul.*

I won’t belabor this story, but the first time I read Writing Down the Bones, it was the fall semester of my freshman year of college; I was 18 years old and it changed my life. Our freshman composition teacher had assigned it, along with a book of writing mechanics (punctuation, MLA citation rules, and so forth). So when I settled down to read a few chapters of Goldberg’s book, I had no idea what was about to happen. Continue reading →

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July 31, 2011 · 3:59 am

Getting “Freshly Pressed”: Reflections on Almost a Year of Blogging

This weekend, Girl Meets Formosa was Freshly Pressed. Now I’m steeped in juicy pulp. (Just kidding. I know, that was terrible.)

To explain “Freshly Pressed”: WordPress.com is the location and also the blogging software that I use to host this humble site. Word Press is a very popular blog interface, and needless to say, gets lots of traffic on its homepage. Each weekday, the content editors at Word Press choose 10 posts to feature in a special section on the wordpress.com homepage called “Freshly Pressed” (with a feed to which you can subscribe). This Friday, Girl Meets Formosa was featured in that section for my post “The Fantasy Treehouse.” Thus, my site traffic has increased by an embarrassingly large number of page views in the past two days.

So, Thank You, Word Press!  (Click here to learn more about how blogs are chosen for Freshly Pressed each weekday). And many thanks to you, dear readers, who have supported this blog from its beginning almost a year ago, and have followed my adventures on it!

And to my new readers and subscribers, WELCOME! Continue reading →

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July 29, 2011 · 2:04 am

The Fantasy Treehouse: Favorite Writing Spaces

Xinbeitou in all of its environmentally sustainable architecture glory, from Beitou Park.

So as I may or may not have mentioned, I have spent the month of July WRITING EVERY DAY…. just about. My initial goal was to write six days a week, and then take a break on either Saturday or Sunday, but then I started devoting my days off to blogging, and/or research interviews, etc, and then I found myself working every day and taking the occasional Wednesday-afternoon burnout break after like two weeks straight. In total in July so far, I have sat down for extended writing time on 24 out of 28 days. Written documentation of this is 2 full notebooks, and 2 more notebooks just begun.

Phew. Continue reading →

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