Remember as a kid when you were excited to get mail? Today’s mail: $200 electric bill, health benefits guide, credit card offer, & car title — Anastasia Taber (@anastasiataber) September 22, 2015 To kick off this new blog category “How To Adult,” I will start with budgeting. My expertise in this subject comes mainly from growing up with my dad who has been a financial adviser for many many years, runs his own investment advisory…
I am writing this 65 minutes after the email was sent and 10 minutes after I read it to find out that I received another Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future contest. Writers of the Future is the largest and highest paying free entry science fiction contest and has involved several prominent science fiction authors (among them are Orson Scott Card and Dave Wolverton/Farland). The contest offers unpublished writers an amazing opportunity to have…
Hi all – I have revamped my website in an attempt to motivate myself to write more blog posts and have a more consistent web presence (shout out to my brother Ted for his excellent tech support). Along with this revamping came another smaller metaphysical revamping (i.e. existential crisis) of who I would strive to be online and what I would want to say. Many websites and online personas come up with a super laser focus…
When I was young, fed by my mother on a steady diet of Jane Austen and rom-coms, I used to lie in bed and stare up at the ceiling at my glow in the dark stars and wonder who my soulmate would be. I was worried. What if my soulmate lived on the other side of the planet? What if my husband-to-be lived in India in a random village where I would never meet him…
This is an ode to all of my fellow novelists out there who get to answer this question almost daily, as well as to the people who ask this question. “Writing a novel is difficult” is the understatement of the year. Each genre has a different word count range. Young Adult (YA) runs from 55,000 – 70,000 words. For adult novels, between 80,000 and 90,000 is a good range. For science fiction/fantasy, over 100,000 words…
When I tell people I wrote a novel, the most common responses I receive fall into two categories: 1) I could never do that and 2) I’ve wanted to do that (but haven’t). When I hear that someone has always wanted to write, but hasn’t, my first thought is “Well, what is stopping you?” Some people like the idea of writing but not the practice of it. These people are focused on the ends rather…
This post might seem random at first, but the more I write about my musings, the more coherent this blog will seem (I think? IT’S A PERSONAL WEBSITE I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT). Also, I miss writing a snarky dating column for The Hoya. This will have to do. I once went on a date with a guy that dry heaved at the sight of a woman’s hairy legs. It sort of made me…
Point of view, POV, is one of those things that you might not even think about until you sit down to write. Then it’s, “Do I begin the story with ‘I’ or ‘She/he’?” The reason why POV is so important is because it is an element that will define your story; what you reveal and how you reveal it. It is something that must remain consistent or you will have trouble publishing. Here are some explanations and examples…
My website is taking a new direction as both my blog and I transition from college and study abroad adventures to my professional writing career. On the technical side, I switched servers to my brother’s, so let me know if you experience any issues while visiting my website. I respond to all comments on posts and messages through the Contact Me form. Now that disclaimer is out of the way, I’d like to pick up…
Here is the short film I made in February of 2013. I wrote the story, workshopped it in my film class, edited the script, carried the equipment, filmed in four different locations over the course of two days, edited the rough cut and this final cut. It is my first short film that I wrote, directed, produced, cast, and acted in, so I’m pretty proud of the final product. In April, I submitted the film to…