English Extension 2

A blog for general English Extension 2 advice, tips and motivation. Because 4U English doesn't have to be all suffering. Assessments | Asks

[kvothes]

more quotes from richard siken’s adroit interview

[english-ext-2]

Hey,

I have just begun the EE2 course and was wondering a few things. I am quite nervous that if I choose a topic that has been slightly explored in the past it will count as plagiarism – this is making me hesitant to read past major works in case I subconsciously remember them and unintentionally base my idea off of them. What do you think I should do about this? Is there a way to discover ideas without ‘copying’?

Also btw, this blog has been my go to for all things EE2, so thanks so much!

************

There’s a tumblr text post somewhere out in the blue wilds that says this much better than I ever could, but basically: nothing is original. Pretty much every text created is in conversation with another text (with a dozen other texts!) whether consciously or subconsciously. The simple fact of your humanity is that you exist in connection to other people, and they influence you just as you influence them. The only truly original thing is you. Because no other version of you is going to exist. What you think about something, and how you express that, is unique to you. You and a friend can read the same book but have different opinions. Even if you both enjoyed it, you likely enjoyed it in different ways. 

The thing about EE2 is that it’s a course where you’re encouraged to read widely, to take what’s been done before and synthesise something new and interesting from it - something that’s of you, from you. I absolutely encourage you to read past MWs to see what past students have explored, and how they explored them. Any risk of “copying” their work is outweighed by the knowledge you gain of what they’ve done. They could even inspire you; maybe there are gaps in the way someone addressed a topic, and you want to fill those gaps in. 

Plagiarism is very specifically taking someone else’s work and claiming it as your own, without attribution or credit to the original author(s). It’s a deliberate act born from desperation or malice. Given the fact of you expressing your concern, I don’t think you’re at risk of being accused of plagiarism. EE2 is very much about acknowledging your influences. As long as you do that, you’re set. 

For the final word on originality, I refer you to the NESA FAQs and their response to “What do the marking guidelines mean by ‘originality’? How does a student demonstrate original work?”

‘Originality’ refers to the insights and exploration of form presented in the work – for example, offering a fresh and engaging perspective on a concept or text that may have been previously explored by other composers in an appropriate medium for the intended audience and purpose.

When it comes to “discovering” ideas, I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to choose something you personally like. It doesn’t matter if you’ve heard the markers like or dislike certain topics. You’re going to be working on your MW for at least 9 months. It can’t be about something you barely tolerate, because you’ll lose steam quickly. You will 100% run into walls. When those moments come, you need that latent passion/interest to fall back on.

Tbh I think the best thing to do is actively consume. Read. Watch. Listen. Consume all the texts (fiction and non-fiction, books, magazines, websites, movies, short stories, podcasts, videos, academic articles, newspapers, essays etc. to the heat death of the universe) you can get your hands on. And when I say actively, I mean that you have your brain switched on. What did you like or dislike about a text? Why did it succeed or fail for you? What did the author do that was effective or ineffective? Maybe two authors wrote on the same topic but you liked only one version. Why is that? Compare and contrast. Students often get so caught up in the creating part that they leave the reading part by the wayside. To be a good author, you need to read. The more you read, the more informed a view you’re able to form, and the more nuanced and authentic your idea will be.

[english-ext-2]

Hi!! Now that the submission date for the majors is looming, I was wondering what your advice was for cutting words? I'm currently at around 8200 and need to cut to 6000, and am struggling sm 💔 Thank you sm for your help!!

Hello there! I don't know what your form is, but safe to assume it's a short story or critical essay? When cutting down word counts I like to make a copy of the document so I can cull without hesitation.

At the same time, you might not even need to go that far. I've found it can help to open a fresh document and re-type my work from memory, since by that stage I've worked on it so long that some sentences, phrasing and flow are all embedded in my mind. The temptation with tweaking what's in front of you is that you want to stick with the words on the page when there might be other, shorter and more succinct ways of saying it. Re-writing forces you to make sure you actually understand what you're trying to convey, which you often find you can do in fewer words.

If re-typing 6000 words is not your jam, you could try it on a smaller scale, like re-writing a targeted chapter, paragraph or section of your MW that you think needs to be cut down.

I'm aware re-writing might actually add to your word count rather than remove. Another thing you could try is giving your MW to someone you trust and asking them where they think you could cut. Simple but efficient if you have the right person.

I also like reading my work aloud for the flow and rhythm. Sometimes this catches out superfluous words or makes me realise I could've said something in two sentences instead of five. Though without knowing what form your MW is, I can't give any more specific advice. Hope this helped though!

[anonymousalchemist]

ykno the thing about poetry is that 99% of it is bullshit and the other 1% will cut you like a material knife, and for every person that 1% is a different section of the whole. this is probably true about all art.

[english-ext-2]

Hey! I have been having THE WORST writer’s block with my mw and I don’t know what to do!!! :(

Everyone I know has finished a full draft by now and I’m nowhere near, I feel like the only one that’s struggling!! I’ve read my texts and done my research but every time I sit down to work on my mw, nothing I write feels good. Maybe me being a perfectionist, but I genuinely can’t seem to think of anything Also, I really want to rewrite what I have and change my ideas, but I’m not sure if it’s too late in the course to be doing that. 

Did you ever feel like this about your mw? And if so, what tips do you have for completing the mw and getting over your writer’s block?

************

Hey there, sorry to hear about your writer’s block. I remember finding it difficult to put something together in the summer holidays, but it eventually came together - over several weeks, mind - after speaking to my English teacher and others in the EE2 cohort. Obviously I don’t know your circumstances but I found it very helpful to bounce ideas off people who had relatively fresh eyes and ideas, and even if they didn’t have much to add it was still valuable to articulate what I was trying to do. If I couldn’t get them to grasp my concept then how was I going to be able to convey it in my major?  

I totally get the perfectionist streak, and as cliche as it sounds, you really just have to write through it. You can’t work with words in your head. The words have to be there on the screen in front of you if you’re to do anything with them. Doesn’t even matter if they’re not full legible sentences. Just get them into the world. At this stage of the EE2 course, I would recommend against wholesale changes. This doesn’t mean you can’t do a 180, but you would need to document your thinking in the MW journal and justify the decision, then conduct research into the new concept - all quite time consuming. An alternative approach might be to tweak your ideas a touch without abandoning the original concept altogether, so perhaps narrowing your parameters to make things more manageable, or choosing to focus on one character instead of two. I’m well aware that perfectionism can come from a surplus of ambition, which while admirable, can be very limiting.

Whatever you do, best of luck :)

[english-ext-2]

Hi, I found your blog a couple months ago when I started EE2 but I only recently felt that I needed advice from someone other than my teachers. Mainly because I feel that they'll immediately say no/shut me down.

I finished my first draft in the Christmas holidays, and it was terrible. I KNEW it was horrible - too much dialogue, over complicated plot, under developed characters. I lost sleep trying to finish it in time for submission. Anyway, I ended up getting pretty straightforward feedback, and my teachers still think it has potential.

Except I have lost all motivation to fix it. So then I was in the shower about 2-3 weeks ago and had a totally new idea. But to do it I would need to start from scratch. My friend already said I shouldn't, considering I have another major work to worry about and don't really have the time. I ignored her and continued anyway, without consulting my teachers. Now I have a google doc with 4000 words in it that I'm so much happier with. I'm just scared to explain everything to my teachers. I'm ranking first in the class so I guess I could just stick with my original idea. Another issue is that my new story isn't very traditional, and I'm concerned my teachers will think it doesn't make sense. But isn't that what the reflection statement is for? To justify your 'odd' stylistic choices?

Anyway, I understand you won't be able to help much without reading either of my drafts, but I still wanted to ask. Should I go with my gut and abandon my initial idea/story? Or is it too risky when I've already wasted half the allocated course time on the original?

Hello there! I'm reluctant to make a hard call on your question given I don't know the specifics of your situation or MW, but I would urge you to weigh up the risks and reflect on your capacity to meet the standards you have of yourself and your work.

From memory, MWs are due around mid-August to early September (though this may vary from school to school). In the best case, you have around three months to develop not just a cohesive major, but a journey for the major. Regardless of how well you justify your stylistic choices, the course still requires you to demonstrate evidence of a process. You need to show you have researched your form and concept and built a solid understanding of both. You need to show you have iteratively developed your major through constructive feedback and ongoing research.

While I'm hesitant to say this is outright impossible, you'd need to manage your time extremely well and be willing to put in the effort to do the research and documentation that a band 6 score demands. If you do commit to the new concept, there's likely no looking back. You simply won't have the time and your MW would come off as half-baked to an external marker.

If it's possible, you could find a middle ground between the old and new concepts. That way you can document a more natural evolution of your former concept to your new one, and in the process possibly assuage the concerns of your teachers. Basically, you could pitch it as a soft transition rather than a sharp pivot. (Only if it's within the realm of reason. There are some linkages that would strain credulity)

[soracities]

what are your suggestions for starter poetry for people who dont have strong reading/analysis backgrounds

I've answered this a few times so I'm going to compile and expand them all into one post here.

I think if you haven't read much poetry before or aren't sure of your own tastes yet, then poetry anthologies are a great place to start: many of them will have a unifying theme so you can hone in based on a subject that interests you, or pick your way through something more general. I haven't read all of the ones below, but I have read most of them; the rest I came across in my own readings and added to my list either because I like the concept or am familiar with the editor(s) / their work:

Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times (ed. Nick Astley) & Being Alive: The Sequel to Staying Alive (there's two more books in this series, but I'm recommending these two just because it's where I started)

The Rattlebag (ed. Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes)

The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (ed. Ilya Kaminsky & Susan Harris)

The Essential Haiku, Versions of Basho, Buson and Issa (ed. Robert Hass)

A Book of Luminous Things (ed. Czesław Miłosz )

Now and Then: The Poet's Choice Columns by Robert Hass (this may be a good place to start if you're also looking for commentary on the poems themselves)

Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World(ed. Pádraig Ó'Tuama)

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (ed. Kevin Young)

The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (ed. Kevin Young)

Lifelines: Letters from Famous People about their Favourite Poems

The following lists are authors I love in one regard or another and is a small mix of different styles / time periods which I think are still fairly accessible regardless of what your reading background is! It's be no means exhaustice but hopefully it gives you even just a small glimpse of the range that's available so you can branch off and explore for yourself if any particular work speaks to you.

But in any case, for individual collections, I would try:

anything by Sara Teasdale

Devotions / Wild Geese / Felicity by Mary Oliver

Selected Poems and Prose by Christina Rossetti

Collected Poems by Langston Hughes

Where the Sidewalk Endsby Shel Silverstein

Morning Haiku by Sonia Sanchez

Revolutionary Letters, Diane di Prima

Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved by Gregory Orr

Rose: Poems by Li-Young Lee

A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor / Barefoot Souls by Maram al-Masri

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

Tell Me: Poems / What is This Thing Called Love? by Kim Addonizio

The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins (Billy Collins is THE go-to for accessible / beginner poetry in my view so I think any of his collections would probably do)

Crush by Richard Siken

Rapture / The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy

The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail

Selected Poems by Walt Whitman

View with a Grain of Sand by Wislawa Szymborska

Collected Poems by Vasko Popa

Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas (this is a play, but Thomas is a poet and the language & structure is definitely poetic to me)

Bright Dead Things: Poems by Ada Limón

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire,

Nostalgia, My Enemy: Selected Poems by Saadi Youssef

As for individual poems:

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

[Dear The Vatican] erasure poem by Pádraig Ó'Tuama // "The Pedagogy of Conflict"

"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith

"The Author Writes the First Draft of His Weddings Vows (An erasure of Virginia Woolf's suicide letter to her husband, Leonard)" by Hanif Abdurraqib

"I Can Tell You a Story" by Chuck Carlise

"The Sciences Sing a Lullabye" by Albert Goldbarth

"One Last Poem for Richard" by Sandra Cisneros

"We Lived Happily During the War" by Ilya Kaminsky

“I’m Explaining a Few Things”by Pablo Neruda

"Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" //"Nothing Gold Can Stay"//"Out, Out--" by Robert Frost

"Tablets: I // II // III"by Dunya Mikhail

"What Were They Like?" by Denise Levertov

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden,

"The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider

“I, too” // "The Negro Speaks of Rivers” // "Harlem” // “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes

“The Mower” // "The Trees" // "High Windows" by Philip Larkin

“The Leash” // “Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance” // "Downhearted" by Ada Limón

“The Flea” by John Donne

"The Last Rose of Summer" by Thomas Moore

"Beauty" // "Please don't" // "How it Adds Up" by Tony Hoagland

“My Friend Yeshi” by Alice Walker

"De Humanis Corporis Fabrica"byJohn Burnside

“What Do Women Want?” // “For Desire” // "Stolen Moments" // "The Numbers" by Kim Addonizio

“Hummingbird” // "For Tess" by Raymond Carver

"The Two-Headed Calf" by Laura Gilpin

“Bleecker Street, Summer” by Derek Walcott

“Dirge Without Music” // "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Digging” // “Mid-Term Break” // “The Rain Stick” // "Blackberry Picking" // "Twice Shy" by Seamus Heaney

“Dulce Et Decorum Est”by Wilfred Owen

“Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition”by Wislawa Szymborska

"Hour" //"Medusa" byCarol Ann Duffy

“The More Loving One” // “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden

“Small Kindnesses” // "Feeding the Worms" by Danusha Laméris

"Down by the Salley Gardens” // “The Stolen Child” by W.B. Yeats

"The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass

"The Last Love Letter from an Entymologist" by Jared Singer

"[i like my body when it is with your]" by e.e. cummings

"Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski

"The Cinnamon Peeler" by Michael Ondaatje

"Last Night I Dreamed I Made Myself" by Paige Lewis

"A Dream Within a Dream" // "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (highly recommend reading the last one out loud or listening to it recited)

"Ars Poetica?" // "Encounter" // "A Song on the End of the World"by Czeslaw Milosz

"Wandering Around an Albequerque Airport Terminal” // "Two Countries” // "Kindness” by Naoimi Shihab Nye

"Slow Dance” by Matthew Dickman

"The Archipelago of Kisses" // "The Quiet World" by Jeffrey McDaniel

"Mimesis" by Fady Joudah

"The Great Fires" // "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart" // "Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert

"The Mermaid" // "Virtuosi" by Lisel Mueller

"Macrophobia (Fear of Waiting)" by Jamaal May

"Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong" by Ocean Vuong

"Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou

I would also recommend spending some times with essays, interviews, or other non-fiction, creative or otherwise (especially by other poets) if you want to broaden and improve how you read poetry; they can help give you a wider idea of the landscape behind and beyond the actual poems themselves, or even just let you acquaint yourself with how particular writers see and describe things in the world around them. The following are some of my favourites:

Upstream: Essays by Mary Oliver

"Theory and Play of the Duende" by Federico García Lorca

"The White Bird" and "Some Notes on Song" by John Berger

In That Great River: A Notebook by Anna Kamienska

A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

"Of Strangeness That Wakes Us" and "Still Dancing: An Interview with Ilya Kaminsky" by Ilya Kaminsky

"The Sentence is a Lonely Place" by Garielle Lutz

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty

Paris, When It's Naked by Etel Adnan

[english-ext-2]

thank u for responding to my ask! here’s the thing - i’m almost done with my first mw draft and i’m a bit stuck and my literature review is due next wednesday and i do need my teacher to at least LOOK at my mw before i hand the lit review in… and he said “i’m not reading that for you”, which i thought was absolutely weird. i’m not going to lie, i’m not doing as well as i thought in this course. i didn’t get the mark i expected for viva voce despite following all the criteria and trying really hard and when i asked my teacher why i’ve gotten the mark and what i can do to improve next time, he blubbered on for ten minutes without coming up with a coherent response. i’m a bit worried, but i don’t want to drop the course just because my teacher isn’t treating me fairly. what should i do?

(also, if i’m being honest, i am a talented writer. i’ve received multiple awards and consistent FULL MARKS in all my previous assessments, both external and internal. my grades dropped by almost 200% when i’ve encountered this teacher. am i really capable for ext2 leveled writing? or has my previous achievements been an illusion to my capability all along?)

I think in the case of your lit review, it's worth asking another English teacher (if you trust them) to look it over. Going forward, you may need to speak to your grade advisor / counsellor / a trusted teacher for advice tailored to your situation. Admittedly I have not been a high school student in almost a decade and welfare support can vary wildly between schools, but there should be at least one point of contact who can speak to academic matters. In my school our careers advisor used to give advice on subject and university selection, and was very seasoned at navigating the perennial landmine of advising students on picking up and dropping HSC subjects (especially in relation to the impact on their ATAR).

My own instinct as regards your situation is to agree; dropping a course you enjoy and have a talent for just because you are being snubbed by one teacher is likely to be detrimental to your mental health. I don't think his indifference/apathy/outright hostility to your MW is a reflection on your level of ability or talent. Evidently, other teachers - internal and external - think highly of you, and I would take the opinion of the majority over this one teacher. My position is that even if he personally disliked your work, his role requires that he teach rather than punish, and offer constructive criticism at the very least.

I really hope you're able to get the advice you need and make the rest of your EE2 experience a positive one :)

[beguines]

Kate Cayley, from "Lent"

[poetsandwriters]

Maggie Millner, author of Couplets (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), in this week’s installment of “Ten Questions.”

[english-ext-2]

hey, i was just wondering how much feedback did u get from your teachers when you were doing ur mw? my teacher has had a prejudice against my chosen form since day 1 and he refuses to give me any feedback... no matter how i ask him. he said that "that's just the ext2 process and you have to do things yourself instead of chasing after the teachers" and yeah, i did the damn thing myself, i'm just requesting for some professional feedback... am i being too unreasonable when i ask for help?

Hey there, from the sounds of things your teacher is not doing his job if he is refusing to give you feedback. The point of EE2 is not creation in a vacuum (quite the opposite), and iterating your MW through feedback is an explicit and encouraged part of the unit. Like literally, the NESA description for the EE2 revising stage reads:

evaluate the effectiveness of their composition through the processes of peer and teacher conferencing and critical feedback that may include questions or comments about style, cohesion, clarity and originality. (Emphasis mine)

I received a great deal of support from my English teacher throughout the EE2 journey. While they did not frequently review the entirety of my MW (there were formal assessments where this happened), I was able to regularly check in and bounce ideas off them, and they also provided emotional support when the going got rough.

At a bare minimum, I expect EE2 teachers to hear you out and point you to resources if they are limited in what they can or want to do. That's literally their job and it's not at all unreasonable to ask for their professional opinion. But if your teacher is not up to it, you'll likely have to look elsewhere for feedback such as others in the EE2 cohort, your friends, or even other English teachers.

I ended up leaning a lot on my EE2 friends, who were very gracious with their time and feedback, though I know it isn't always an option for those who might be the only one in their cohort.

[jayahult]

Not to get too intense about it, but I really do love a good retelling, but my criteria for good retellings are... not high, but perhaps more specific than they are for most people. If I had to make a list

A good retelling must understand the original text and its context. If one is retelling a Greek myth, you must understand not only the plot of the myth, but the author should also at least understand the intent behind the myth, both in charitable and uncharitable interpretations.

A good retelling must add something new by telling this story again. You can't just say that this is the same story... but in space! You have to know that the creation of a different context for a story fundamentally creates different themes and understandings, and take advantage of that. To go back to Greek myth, Hadestown is fundamentally a retelling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. However, instead of solely focusing on Hades as a figure representing Death, Hadestown focuses on Hades as a patron of the wealthy, the lord of all wealth hidden beneath the earth as much as the bones that also lay there. The story is then reframed as not just the story of Orpheus and Eurydice but also of the story of an early 1900s company town wherein Hades is the exploitative boss. Orpheus is voice of the downtrodden, traveling to this place of the downtrodden and trying, in his own way, to affect some tiny bit of change. In what I'd consider one of the seminal songs in the musical, "If It's True," where his simple action of singing this question about whether this is the only way things have to be awakes the deadened workers and their collective force makes Hades respond.

A good retelling must stand on its own even if the audience is unfamiliar with other tellings. Knowing the original should enhance the experience, but it should not be necessary. Sorry to keep using musical examples, but The Tain by The Decemberists is still a great song with solid lyrics, even if they're abstracted from the original story of The Cattle Raid of Cooley. They change the lyrics to more modern ideas, with references to Charlemagne, cars, and so on, but the through-line of the story is very clearly there. The story even ends with a direct question to Medb - was all that really worth it?

I dunno where I was going with the rest of this, but those are my thoughts on the matter.

[makomoriz]

DAVE K!!!!!!!!!

[transmasc-wizard]

i'm AWARE this is a stupid hill to die on, but like. trope vs theme vs cliché vs motif vs archetype MATTERS. it matters to Me and i will die on this hill no matter how much others decide it's pointless. words mean things

[transmasc-wizard]

trope: 1) the use of figurative language for artistic effect; includes allegories, analogies, hyperbole, & metaphors, among others. 2) commonly reoccurring literary devices, motifs, or clichés. Includes things like the medieval fantasy setting, the Dark Lord, enemies-to-lovers, and the Chosen One.

theme: the reoccurring idea or subject in a work of art. Death, life, rebirth, change, love, what it means to be human, the definition of family, the effects of war, etc.

cliché: an element of an artistic work that has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even becoming annoying or irritating. (Most clichés are tropes but not all tropes are clichés.)

motif: a distinctive repeating feature or idea, such as the green light in The Great Gatsby. May overlap with tropes and is often used to further explore the theme.

archetype: a constantly-recurring symbol or motif; it refers to the recurrence of characters or ideas sharing similar traits throughout various, seemingly unrelated cases in classic storytelling. E.g. rags to riches, the wise old mentor. Again may overlap with tropes, clichés, and motifs, but they're not the exact same thing.

[theliteraryarchitect]

this might be weird to ask, but how do I critically look at another person's writing and implement what I like in their writing in my own writing? I've been having trouble improving in my writing, and frankly Im not sure how to go about doing that, even. It's easy to see what I like about another person's writing, but hard to pinpoint exactly why...

THIS IS NOT WEIRD TO ASK. It is, in fact, the most important question EVER.

How to Read Like a Writer

Re-read. If you get halfway into a chapter and think, Wow this chapter is super creepy–I wonder how they did that. Or get to the end of a book and think, I feel the poignancy of the fragility of human life in an inherently volatile economic system–I wonder how the writer made me feel that way… Go back and re-read that shit.

Read slowly. When you read like a reader, you read pretty fast. When you go in for your second, or third, or fourth re-read of a passage, chapter, or book that you want to know more about, read it slowly. Really. Slowly.

Read for technique, not content. Readers read for content (”In this paragraph, Damien gave Harold a classified envelope.”). Writers read for technique. (”In this paragraph, the writer made me feel curious about the contents of the envelope by giving sensory details about its appearance and weight.”)

Ask the right questions. They usually start with HOW: How did the writer make me feel? How did they accomplish that?

Read small. Did a chapter make you feel sad? Find out WHERE EXACTLY. What paragraph, sentence, or WORD did it for you? Was it a physical detail? A line of dialogue? A well-placed piece of punctuation? Stories are made of words and sentences. Narrow it down.

Practice. Reading like a writer is a skill that takes time to develop. Over time, you’ll get better at it!

How about y’all? Anything to add to this list? I made it off the top of my head so I’m sure I’m forgetting something. What have been your experiences with learning to read like a writer?

Hope this helps!

//////////////

The Literary Architect is a writing advice blog run by me, Bucket Siler. For more writing help, check out my Free Resource Library or get The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. xoxo

[mckitterick]

this is SO IMPORTANT for creatives! understand WHY you love things, why they move you, how the writer (or artist or whomever) did the thing that made you laugh or cry or see the world through a fresh perspective

I like to mark passages that really work for me, that reveal some insight into the human experience or deliver a beautiful image that lingers in my mind or a powerful scene our great dialogue or whatever. by marking it, one can go back later for inspiration or insight, especially when stuck in a revision or feeling uninspired

[orpheuslament]

x

[s-n-arly]

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free