Nora N. Khan

Nora N. Khan

Writer

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Category Archives: Reflection

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Rough Trade

June 6, 2014 by cillian19

Perfectionism is a massive hurdle to creative work. The same impulse that is essential to editing, that moves you to check each line, fix up your prose, cut out every junky, nonsensical, messy bit, is the same drive that erases everything thorny and difficult. In the impulse to perfect, smooth out and tidy up is a very seductive illusion of control. It’s an illusion, that you can control how anyone might read your work, how they might perceive you, or what […]

Categories: Creativity, Process, Reflection, Writing

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Nostalgia Mining

June 3, 2014 by cillian19

Certain songs take on colossal, completely disproportionate significance for me, giving me an inordinate amount of happiness no matter how many times played, no matter the time of day. The Borderlands opening theme song, “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked,” is one of them. I’m playing it right now. It isn’t a particularly great song, not one I’d glom onto if I heard it at random on the radio. The song is important for me because it is associated with an experience, […]

Categories: Affect, Creativity, Game Reviews, Games, Nostalgia, Process, Reflection, Time, Writing

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Imagining the Pain You Cause

November 24, 2013 by cillian19

It’s rare I get a couple of hours to do some pleasure reading outside of class, work and my own writing. But today I found and read “The Cheater’s Guide to Love,” by Junot Díaz, published in The New Yorker in July of 2012. I loved The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and remember, vividly, feeling my heart contract and expand through its last fifty pages, and thinking, this, this is what writing can do. I know plenty have their opinions […]

Categories: Creativity, Reflection, Self-Examination, Writing

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Greatest Changes, Invisible

September 8, 2013 by cillian19

I had a short but remarkable conversation recently with a lady I haven’t spoken to in a few years. We had only met once or twice before, in Iowa City. I remembered our conversations were unlike any I had ever had before. She is a writer and actress and she is full of life. We got right to the heart of it each time. We talked about the kinds of stories we wanted to write, and, naturally, the kind of women […]

Categories: Creativity, Reflection, Self-Examination, Writing

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