About the Writer

Hi, I’m Min. I live and write in Seattle. And yes, it’s wet and gray 75% of the year. But the sun makes me uncomfortable, so I rather enjoy living like a mole person. My hobbies include turtles, eating naan, dancing thrashing to music when no one is looking, and more normal things like reading and knitting.

Oh, and I pay the bills as a writer, editor, and content strategist specializing in e-commerce. I work with words and content for a living! You can read more about online business writing and content strategy over at my professional writer’s site.

About the Blog

I started Mikania.com when I was in college to host writing exercises based on my day-to-day life. But then I started posting things that skewed towards rants. And then I graduated from the UW and was looking for a job, but my name was all over the site and there were some rather angry and/or depressed posts. So I removed my name from the site and stopped writing, causing Mikania.com to languish for almost 4 years without any updates.

In November 2011, I resuscitated this site and changed the focus from personal postings to informative and in-depth pieces about crafting good stories as examined through writing and other media like movies and video games. You can still find the old posts from 2003-2007 under the Old School category if you’re curious, but newer posts dissect various movies and stories or discuss storytelling techniques.

You’ll find a lot on this site about word choice or voice, but my primary goal is to show how one can improve overall story and characters in creative formats. I love books and writing fiction, but I strongly believe that every media we consume benefits from a good story. It’s in our very marrow as humans to crave stories, and we search for the qualities that make a good story in everything from music to advertising.