​AUDREY CHIN 

I was reading in Myanmar. It was my time, my panel appearance at the Irrawaddy Literary Festival with Canadian literary prodigy Karen Connelly. We were to be speaking about my novel As the Heart Bones Break. We ended up speaking about Myanmar. Not of course in so many words… But as I learnt last week in Mandalay, there’s text and then there’s sub-text. As the Heart Bones Break is a novel about Vietnam but it’s also about division, isolation and transition. It’s about layers o

Here’s National Critics Choice’s video of the book chat about As the Heart Bones Break at Select Books https://oddznns.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/talking-about-heart-bones-on-national-critics-choice/ #writing #AstheHeartBonesBreak #WritersResources #Vietnam #acitizenofmyworld

I’m exhausted from the week that was but thought I should check in with everyone just to let you know how everything’s been. It was seven days of both sweet and bitter. Sunday November 2nd –  I attended my first literary festival event as a panelist. I was euphoric seated between two world famous award winning writers. I came back to earth with a bump at the book signing later, when my line emptied in about six minutes and theirs stretched for a good twenty minutes more. Mond

Our writing-dieting selves like to think we’re all frontal lobe, all about visioning, reasoning, planning and problem solving. But hidden deep in the centre of the head are our reptilian brains – the amygdala associated with memory, emotion and fear, and the  hypothalamus which controls thirst, hunger, sleep and sex. These are the hunting gathering parts of the brain that refuse to let us starve to death or to think too much before acting.  They’re why, despite dieting, we ca

If you critique other writers work, your own writing improves. Everyone knows that. But can critiquing make you a better person? In my experience, it can. See my guest post at Joe Bunting, The Write Practice. This is a great community for anyone who’s serious about practicing their craft in a safe community. I’m proud to be part of it. Do hop over there to see what we’re up to. #Critique #ChatsandForums #writing #UnitedStates #Writer #Organizations #KarenConnelly #WritersReso

How words helped two women find common ground despite distance and a 12 hour time lag. Late last year I joined Jeff Goin’s on-line platform building course at www.tribewriters.com. In one of the practice modules, I found a post by Kathleen Caron that was very critical of Americans and how Americans had grown cold and uncaring in their affluence and independence.  By way of contrast, the writer spoke about how some Vietnamese women helped her load her groceries at Costco, a un

It’s February already and I haven’t thanked you all enough for your support of Oddznns –  for dropping by and commenting, for your ‘likes’ and your ‘rants’. Your involvement helped me to grow in my writer’s journey and to discover that words do help. Writing has allowed me to reach out to you with my thoughts and musings. I’ve been enriched by your sharing both on the blog and off the blog. We’ve connected. In celebration of the magical ability of words to help build bridges

Monique Truong – An award winning American writer and you’re discovering something new about how an American woman of Vietnamese descent might be perceived in this Little Red Dot you’re visiting for the first time. In the first of this series on Vietnamese Artists in Singapore I interview Monique Truong, the award-winning author of The Book of Salt and Bitter in the Mouth who was in Singapore for the 2012 Singapore Writers Festival. The Book of Salt has been nominated for the

We all need mirrors to see ourselves. Without reflection, we are just unconsidered action and reaction.  It’s only when we sit and stare, that we see what we’re made of, how we’ve made ourselves. Writing is a great mirror for reflection. Words staring us in the face bring us face to face with what we’ve done, what we are thinking, what we hope will happen. Photo Credit: Dreamstime.com When we write four things can happen: –        We recover our origins.  Writing about our fa

Life gives us enough rejections. No point getting more than our fair share of hurt. Why go looking for grief? Photo Credit: Dreamtimes If you do, you might be pleasantly surprised, Jacqueline Boone tells us in her wonderful blog on Rejection Therapy at http://6monthstolive.me/rejection-therapy/ If we don’t ask, we don’t get. Because we fear rejection, we don’t ask enough … of our friends, of the god, the world. And so, we get less than we deserve. The core of rejection ther

Credit: Photo by Forest and Kim http://www.desert-tropicals.com Including me! One of my readers, Joe Bunting asked me to do a guest post on writing poetry. I could only respond in the same way my Peranakan auntie did when I asked her how she concocted her heavenly sambal udang belimbing –  she made me watch while she cooked; I watched myself as I began to string the words together. You can read about the process today at www.thewritepractice.com.  It’s titled “Anyone can be p