Today I want to discuss ancient Chinese naming practice since I have a personal fascination with names both in terms of their meaning and how they sound to the ears. This tends to apply to a lesser degree to English than my native language of Chinese but I still tend to grope for the rightContinue reading “Ancient Chinese naming practice”
Category Archives: Writer’s Craft
Moonlake’s writing updates- August 2020
I’m now officially into draft 0.8 as I planned but well… things again weren’t proceeding quite as I expected. I am still more in the outlining realm compared to drafting. There’s simply too much gray area for me to fill in for a scene to actually really settle down to real drafting. Having said that,Continue reading “Moonlake’s writing updates- August 2020”
Remarkable Women in Ancient China (6)- Liu Ru Shi
Who is she: One of the Eight Beauties of Qin Huai, essentially eight prominent prostitutes of the late Ming era (Qin Huai is the name of a river in Nanjing, it was a red light district back then with brothels operating on boats) famed for poetry, painting and beauty A highly patriotic woman Notable LifeContinue reading “Remarkable Women in Ancient China (6)- Liu Ru Shi”
Tales of Inspiration (3)
Today I’m going to talk about the inspiration underlying my current WIP. I’ve alluded to this before: for many years, I was an active member at a website where you can submit what I call articles in prose on world meta: all the different aspects that make up a world. It was there that IContinue reading “Tales of Inspiration (3)”
Chinese Superstition- Physical Oddities and Polycoria
Following on the last post about Chinese number superstition, I decided to do another on a related topic. So ancient Chinese had various fortune telling methods, one of which was looking at people’s facial features. For example, long ears or a long gap between the nose and the upper lip were considered a sign ofContinue reading “Chinese Superstition- Physical Oddities and Polycoria”
World Building: Resources
Perhaps it is my economics background but I like to think about resources and how that has a range of flow-on effects. To that end, I was a little intrigued by the sci-fi book Dune but one of my friends persuaded me to try something lighter instead so I still haven’t ventured into sci-fi yet.Continue reading “World Building: Resources”
Beliefs about Numbers in Ancient China
I decided to write a post about a Chinese fun fact today and having no ideas, I Goggled it. What caught my eyes was number superstition. So today I am going to trace back the beliefs about numbers (or rather single digits since I want to limit the scope of this post) in ancient China:Continue reading “Beliefs about Numbers in Ancient China”
Moonlake’s writing updates- June 2020
I’ve recently discovered that the story in my WIP is actually larger than it currently is. Furthermore, I feel like my handle on the key structural elements of my story is not yet solid. So what this means is that I’m starting to feel that it might be awhile before I can actually finish thisContinue reading “Moonlake’s writing updates- June 2020”
Evolution of Moonlake’s Writing Pile
This post is prompted by my whimsical exploration of the statistics to do with this blog. Specifically, I was looking at which of my posts had been shared and one of the top ones was Moonlake’s Work Pile (3) back in 2015. So in that post I had talked of 4 different writing projects andContinue reading “Evolution of Moonlake’s Writing Pile”
Remarkable Women in Ancient China (5)- Fu Hao
Who is she: A woman whose surname or first name was Hao (Fu is some kind of prestigious title) who was one of the sixty-odd wives to Wu Ding, the Emperor of the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC) The first known female military commander in Chinese history, also a politician and overseer of rites/fortune telling ceremoniesContinue reading “Remarkable Women in Ancient China (5)- Fu Hao”
Moonlake's Fiction Space 