How Playing a Pirate Queen Helped Me Reclaim My Confidence as a Writer
Shi Min Xie The year was 2019. The pandemic was much more than the world could handle, and my editor had just screamed at me for writing a shitty sequel. I’d had an…
writing
The Blog is Back
Hello! I received some good news lately, and I thought it’d be a wise move to update the blog again, you know, get back to it, posting and suchlike. 2023…
The Corporate Adventures of the Eighth Dragon Princess of the South Seas
Ever since the Heavens, Hell, and Earth rolled into one, the Dragon Princess of the South Seas had to take her degree at Singapore Management University and graduate with a…
Writing the sequel to Dragonhearted
When I typed the last few words of Dragonhearted, I knew that there was going to be a sequel. It came as a surprise because I did not plan for…
Memorising ‘good phrases’ isn’t really the way to teach kids how to write
I get slightly exasperated when students’ parents ask me if there is a list of phrases that their child can memorise to get ready for their composition examinations. I don’t…
Inadvertently ignorant things people say to writers
I thought for a long while about doing this entry, even though my blog is supposed to be a force for good and also mostly for me to review books…
What Writing Is
Writing is freedom. You may not realise it, but it is. Writing is casting magic spells and slaying the dragons. It is being your own hero and showing yourself that…
You don’t need to train as a “journalist” to be a writer
I wish I had known that when I was younger. Some of my readers and friends may know that I used to be a so-called digital journalist, but I don’t…
I’m not doing Nanowrimo this year.
Nanowrimo. The very competition that got me into writing my first full length novel. And it was full of rubbish. Not Nanowrimo. My novel, I mean. Back in 2006, when…
I Don’t Like Giving Bad Book Reviews
As someone who has always been an avid reader of books, I dislike it when I come across a book that I don’t like, or that a book I have…