Writing analysis: Blue Roses, by Francis Hwang

Review of “Blue Roses” by Francis Hwang Published in “The New Yorker” November 1, 2010. SUMMARY: Chinese mother feels that her children don’t appreciate her and take from her without giving in return. She becomes angry with her closest daughter when the daughter is unwilling to invite the mother’s widowed friend to Christmas dinner. The mother refuses to go to the dinner, causing a crisis in the family. She admits […]

Analyzing writing

I was a music composition major in university and one of the things that my composition teacher required was score reading. Score reading means to take a bit of a string quartet or orchestral work and be able to play a reduction of it at the piano regardless whether you are a pianist or not. And in theory classes we analyzed music looking at the formal structure, root elements such […]

NaNoWriMo reflections

I want to take a few moments to reflect on this year’s NaNoWriMo event before I put it to bed for a while. I plan to come back and revise and edit, but I want some distance before I try. btw, the opening is published on Smashwords if you’re interested. This was much more difficult and time consuming than the first novel. I think that is a function of a […]