This is a general update blog post, so it’s going to be a bit random and short. Yay? My friend Katherine came for a visit! We had many adventures, including but not limited to: Catching a train only because the staff held their car door open for us, performing period dances on the lawn at Chatsworth (Pemberley), exploring a plague village, and a bit of waltzing in the Assembly Rooms! (Katherine is my dance buddy and we took full advantage of this.) I have been editing like a mad person. This will probably result in some revision-themed posts soon. I...
Originally recorded on August 4, transcribed below. (Note: The recording cuts off because a lady came by walking her dog so I had to stop talking to myself.) https://alyssahollingsworth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/4-August.m4a Where do I begin? How do I begin here, at your beginning? Your country is beautiful. I’m watching it now—green and lush. The sun is setting, the grass golden and the flowers are white in the field. Crows and pigeons call to each other and fly from tree to tree. The cows graze. The whole neighborhood smells of manure, homely and thick. This is your country, and it’s beautiful. Is this...
Some of you may be aware that Letter to an Unknown Soldier made it on Buzzfeed. I thought I might take a stab at my own sort of Buzzfeed-style feature. You can read it below the cut. (more…)
I worked with Letter to an Unknown Soldier to create a digital memorial for WWI by asking people to write letters to the unknown soldier in Paddington Station. We had an astounding result–over 21,000 letters. And several of those were by my classmates, friends and family! Similar to the daily featured letters on the website, I’ve gathered these letters together so that you can read them side by side. One of the fabulous things about this project is how the letters talk to each other—how they enter a dialogue together. I hope that by reading the very different entries below, you’ll be encourage to think...
I have been working since the end of June with Letter to an Unknown Soldier, a project which created a digital memorial for WWI by asking people to write letters to the unknown soldier in Paddington Station. We had an astounding result–over 21,000 letters. They came from the UK, from New Zealand, from Egypt, from Iceland. They were written by prisoners, school children, mothers, and politicians (including a prime minister). At times they were sweet, at times funny, at times heartbreaking. It’s been an amazing project. This is my last week working for it. We closed our submissions on Tuesday, and...
(Originally written on June 12th.) If you don’t know what Claridge’s is, that’s cool—I didn’t either a few weeks ago. But turns out it’s a super fancy hotel in London. When one of my mom’s friends had a conference coming, she invited me to stay with her. I said yes, but I didn’t know what I was getting into! A man in a top hat and uniform stepped up to the cab to let us out. A bellhop took our luggage. We pushed through the spinny door (love me some spinny doors) and entered a huge, gorgeous room filled with...
Since my WIP, Illuminate, is also the thesis project for my graduate program, I don’t have as much time as I’m used to for fiddling around and rewriting stuff. The logical response? Go absolutely crazy. Step 1: Make Character Arcs for Everyone. The Interwebs contain lots of great information about character arcs, so in brief: In the course of a story, characters will respond to conflict on an external and internal level, and by the conclusion characters will undergo some sort of change. This creates story arcs. Every book has at least one major arc. I personally like Doug Tennapel’s...
This may seem counter to all my [insanely structure-based] tips earlier, but sometimes you just need to… Blow your schedule out the window. (more…)
The third part of my secret to survive college with three jobs and a full load of courses? Use your time intentionally. (more…)
The second part of my tips for surviving college with the Power of Being Intentional and Organized. Again, my methods probably won’t work for everyone, but I hope they can be adapted to help you not be that kid who spends college running after the deadlines that got away. Get a note-taking device JUST for lists. (more…)
