Bad Book Review Prerequisite

   "Um, excuse me?"
   "Yeah? How can I help you?"
   "I'm here to learn how to review a bad book."
   "Ah, yes. You. Well?"
   "Right. Um, I guess my question is this: if I call a book bad, does that reflect on the author negatively?"
   

Writing in Community

   Writing. It's nasty. It's annoying. It's hard.

   Why did I want to be a writer?

   

5 Tips for Editing a Story

   I have discovered that I learn more about writing by reading bad books than I do by reading good ones. This kind of makes sense, because when I read a good book I'm so drawn into the story that I don't care much about how it was composed. However, when reading a bad book I'm wondering why it is bad and once I've figured out why it is bad I can understand how to fix it. So that's what this blog post is about: a few tips that I've discovered on how to edit a story.

Thor and Self-Sacrifice

   Since this post goes out on Good Friday, I was wondering how to make it topical. As I was thinking this, I thought over some of the ideas I had in my head for posts I would like to do in the future. One of them was a post on the film Thor. As I thought more about it, I actually realized that Thor has a lot to do with Good Friday and Easter. Why is that? Because Thor is about self sacrifice.
   

Song Review: I Need You, I Love You, I Want You by Tenth Avenue North

   I've been listening to some music lately. Mostly the Les Miserables soundtrack, but also some Tenth Avenue North. One song in particular has been stuck in my head. Which one? (Hint: it's the title of this music review.)
   The lyrics themselves are pretty simple: it's mostly 'I need you, I love you, I want you' over and over again, with a few others thrown in for good measure. The other words help add to the idea of the song, but those three base phrases are really interesting. I think they show an interesting progression of how people react to God.
   

Idea Protectors

   Recently, I've been working around some loud machinery. Around that loud machinery, I wear ear protectors. This is a necessary thing, so I'm not deafened, but it made me think of an allegory to how I am and should live my life. Allow me to elaborate.
   

Reading in Community

   Two things have been on my mind lately. One of them is that I just recently listened to The Bible as Literature podcast episode Broken Records. In this episode, Father Marc Boulos stated that if the reading the entire Bible is too daunting, read one book over, over, and over again in order to really understand it. Then, once that is done, find someone else who has done the same with a different book and learn from each other. If this is done with enough people, then one can learn the entire Bible through the experience of community.