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Posts tagged ‘Dan Brown’

Apr 3

Gabriel Garcia Marquez with “One Hundred Years of Solitude” on his head
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Found in Translation

Literature in translation is meat and if you are not reading them, you are missing out on a whole new world. Around 60% of all translations are from books originally published in English, but only 3% of books in a foreign language are translated into English. A glaring disparity without a doubt and one that smacks of arrogance? Or is it that translated works do not sell? Murakami, Paulo Coelho, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, T Steig Larsson are writers whose books sell in their millions. When I buy a book, the thought that never crosses my mind is whether it is a work of translation.

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Dec 15

black and white writer
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9 Gifts for the Struggling Writer

The struggling writer is the worst off of all. He stares at a dark future, fumbling for a sliver of light in a dark tunnel of words, and not sure of what the uncertain future held for him. He is alone in his struggle, writing from his heart, not knowing whether his work will be appreciated one day, or whether he will be stuck in the doldrums forever. In this holiday season, what could be the best gift for him? Here is my list.

1. A critique of his work, preferably free (for they are expensive), which tells him what he is doing right, and where he needs to park his words or where his plot is going all awry. It will push him in the right direction…

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Jun 4

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Getting over Writer’s Block?

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say? – Kurt Vonnegut

Most writers will have trouble writing at some point in their careers, the cause of which they will attribute to writer’s block. Neurologist Alice Flaherty, author of The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain (2004) argued that ‘literary creativity is a function of specific areas of the brain, and that writer’s block may be the result of brain activity being disrupted in those areas.’ Victoria Nelson, author of On Writer’s Block(1993) writes that ‘although it can be triggered by any number of…

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May 28

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The Maths of Writing

How much should you write everyday? Have you ever written with the reassurance of maths behind you? Have you ever thought, if I can write x thousand words a day, and a standard-length novel is y thousand words long, then I finish mine in z weeks. Supposing you aim to write a novel about 80,000 words long, and you think you can manage 500 words between your job and walking the dog, it would take you 25 weeks to complete a first draft unless you are Isaac Asimov. This then is a measure of your daily creative output measured by numbers.

Stephen King in On Writing says he writes ten pages a day without fail…

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Jan 1

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Top 100 books of all time

The Guardian has published a list of the Top 100 books of all time based on data provided by Nielsen BookScan. Nielsen BookScan collects the retail sales information from more than 33,500 bookshops around the world, spanning four continents and nine countries. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is the most popular book and the top twelve has only three authors: Dan Brown, J K Rowling and Stephenie Meyer.

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Jul 2

writer
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21 Most Prolific Writers in Literary History

How prolific can a writer be? How many books do you think you will finally publish? I have been doing a bit of armchair research on the internet and came up with some rather startling figures about how much a person can write over his or her lifetime. Here are the writers who apparently had done nothing else, but written all their lives, and written well. Read on for the complete list…

1. Corin Tellado (1927-2009) 4000+ books*
Spanish writer María del Socorro Tellado López, known as Corin Tellado, was a prolific writer of romantic novels. She published more than 4,000 novels and sold more than 400 million books…

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