Alex's Epics of India Blog

I really liked the "Advice to Writers" page. There was a lot of short, quippy, useful tips for me as a writer, and I hope to reference this page more in the future. I really liked the advice "Stop Dancing and Just Go for a Walk." This post mostly talked about eliminating fluff from stylistic parts of my writing, mostly with commas (which I use a lot). I liked the way that this little post presented the information. It described exactly the problem it was hoping to help fix -- a problem I have in my writing -- with it being too flowery a lot of the time. I tend to add a Falkneresque of Woolf-like feeling to the style of my writing, and I allow sentences to go on and on and on without forseeable end. A more Hemingway kind of sparsity of targeted language might be better, and I think that is what the post means by 'walking.' (Though I'm sure that Hemingway would argue that his writing definitely dances, just in its own way). How I feel when...

My favorite story from the Part A collection of Aryasura's The Gatakamala , or collection of translated Jataka tales, is "The Story of the Small Portion of Gruel." This story stood out to me the most when looking at the titles of the Jatakas in this section, because it seemed to me that this was a very realistic problem that could arouse disagreement and lead to a sort of moral lesson, instead of the fantastic or anthropomorphized stories which often make up Jataka tales. The story begins by extolling the virtues of the Buddha, which lay the groundwork for his motivations and actions later in the story -- the Buddha is pure and only can be pure, so that the misdeeds of others in the story are contrasted against the restraint of the Buddha. He begins the story as a king of Kosala. His wife asks him why he keeps reciting an odd phrase about gruel, which has made everyone around the town uncomfortable, so the king tells her that he, in a previous life, lived in the tow...