Posts from December 2008.

Birth of a Pod Pilot: Amarr

Here we have the second part of my Birth of a Pod Pilot series. In this one, we take a look at seemingly the polar opposite of Gita, last week’s protagonist. Adimas is a holder’s son and has been brought up as a traditional Amarr. He has all the advantages Gita lacked. Now we look at how his path to being a pod pilot is both easier and more difficult than Gita’s.

Also, I will not be posting part three of this series (Birth of a Pod Pilot: Caldari) until the 9th of January. I am on vacation with the family for the holidays and won’t have time to do the writing justice.
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Birth of a Pod Pilot: Minmatar

This is the first in a four-part series touching on each of the four Empires. In each one, we take a look at the process one person goes through in becoming a pod pilot. In the first part, we look at the Minmatar Republic, and one girl’s path from orphan to future capsuleer.
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The Lost Tribe of Mishi

Based on a small section of the latest official CCP chronicle, I take a look at one of my favorite subjects: the Ni-Kunni and their subjugation at the hands of the Amarr Empire.

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The Sitter

Today, we take a look at one of the more interesting, unexplored aspects of EVE’s backstory. Zainou Biotech is a cutting edge research corp, but every company has its crap jobs. And this job is one of the crappiest.
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Proofread in an evening

Someone I know recently commented about a book that was particularly poorly proofread. The book in question had numerous spelling and grammar errors in it. Said person wondered why the author done the proofreading himself and asked how long it’d take a writer to do that, suggesting a time frame of an evening or two to accomplish such a task.

Do non-writers REALLY think the process is so simple? I’ve proofread things I’ve written dozens of times over, over the course of weeks, and still have other people point out errors I’ve made. Proofreading your own work is damn near impossible in the first place, because you know what you were SUPPOSED to have written and, even for someone as anal as myself, who generally spots spelling errors, your mind auto corrects the error. Especially when your word processor doesn’t show a little red line under it (or when it’s a name and it ALWAYS shows the red line under it, but this one time you spelled it Kiada instead of Kaida).

Of course, the true story is that the novel was proofread in under a day, by the person hired to do it by the publisher, and because they only had a single day to do it, tons of errors crept in.

Still, it makes me wonder what other misconceptions people have about the writing process.

Malki! sums up the writer’s struggle

The brilliant Wondermark webcomic frequently manages to be hilarious and intelligent at the same time. Today, the comic managed to nail about 50% of the writing process, especially for anyone who wants to actual be published as an author. Check it out here.