Reading time: About 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of metaphors from crime writer Tana French…. I’ve become a recent fan of the Irish crime writer Tana French. I like the way she uses such sophisticated language to tell […]
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: katabatic… I had heard of the book The Golden Spruce, by John Vaillant, more than 10 years ago but for reasons I don’t understand, had never persuaded myself
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Reading time: About 8 minutes (you can scan much faster, though) This list of the 50 best memoirs I’ve read over the last several decades might help you become a fan of the interesting and often sophisticated genre. My reading tends to fall upon fairly predictable lines: literary fiction (with the occasional mystery or thriller) and
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Reading time: About 1 minute This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the internet to help other writers. Today I discuss a post about using too many big words… Every once in awhile, I will admire a big or unusual word. But far more often, I’m suspicious of it.
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Reading time: About 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of images from Etgar Keret… Etgar Keret is an Israeli writer known for his short stories, graphic novels, and scriptwriting for film and television. I was completely unfamiliar with him until a
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: ossified…. I finished a book that made many top 10 reading lists and was a New York Times bestseller: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. The story of three
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Reading time: About 4 minutes Want to become a better, more relaxed, more skillful writer? Learn how to improve self-awareness…. I was a 29-year old, standing in the middle of the newsroom where I worked. My six-foot-two-inch boss was looming above me, yelling at the top of his (very large) lungs. Thank goodness I had
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help other writers. Today I discuss a blog post on how to reach Millennials with your writing… I was born in August 1957 which puts me in
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Reading time: About 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of similes from Deborah Copaken…. Deborah Copaken is a photojournalist, Emmy-Award-winning news producer and and New York Times bestselling author of several books, including her seventh one, Ladyparts. I bought
The figurative language of Deborah Copaken…. Read More »
Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: irenic…. I feel especially happy whenever I discover a word I’ve never seen before. What can it possibly mean, I wonder? And what are the origins of
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