Who is she: The first and only female Zhuang yuan (the one with the highest score who sat the examination for scholars to become government officials) in ancient China Notable Life Events: Born in 1833 in Nanjing to a scholarly family, which quickly fell into poverty after both of her parents died when she wasContinue reading “Remarkable Women in Ancient China (7)- Fu Shan Xiang”
Category Archives: Writer’s Craft
A New Writing Routine
In October I implemented a new writing routine. Each of my writing days were composed of the following 6 tasks: A) Reading either published English fiction or non-fiction on writing B) Analysis of a fictional work that touched me and trying to get behind how it triggers my emotions (5 chapters) C) The self-learning writingContinue reading “A New Writing Routine”
Self-Learning Side Project
Lately I’ve been thinking up time use again and about side projects and self learning. If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know that my writer self is whimsical by nature. So all of what I’ve been thinking about combined themselves and now I have got a new side project (to replaceContinue reading “Self-Learning Side Project”
Ancient Chinese naming practice
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”
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 Fiction Space 