Reading time: About 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: shillelagh…. As soon as I read the exotic-looking word, shillelagh, I knew I had heard it before. I just couldn’t put my finger on the meaning. The word […]
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Having backups of your writing is incredibly important. Many years ago, I heard a radio interview with a fiction author. I’m sorry I can’t remember her name, but I will never forget her story. Just before she was about to turn in a manuscript to her publisher, her house burned down. Really! She lost her
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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 and metaphors from Raven Leilani… A 2020 debut novel by writer Raven Leilani, Luster, received significant attention at its publishing. It earned praise in the New York Times,
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Reading time: About one 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: embrassure… While I’m as interested in castles as the next person, I’ve never made a study of the architecture of such buildings. Perhaps that’s why I was unfamiliar
What’s an embrassure? Read More »
Reading time: Fewer than 3 minutes Our perception of how we’re doing — whether in writing or something else — can sometimes be wrong. This error is known as progress bias…. I spent 30 minutes yesterday doing my least-favourite task in the entire world: rounding up and categorizing invoices and receipts for my bookkeeper. I
What is progress bias and how do writers fall victim to it? Read More »
Are you comfortable with numbers? More importantly, are your readers? Numeracy is a big problem in our society. I know because I have a mild version of dyscalculia (kind of like dyslexia for numbers.) But there are many other people who don’t have dyscalculia but who are also uncomfortable with numbers. Have you ever noticed how many
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Reading time: Just over 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 Tana French… I don’t usually read mysteries. But if more people wrote like Tana French, I would. Sometimes described as, “the First Lady of Irish Crime,”
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Reading time: About 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: apoptosis… The Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk won won the Man Booker International Prize for her 2018 novel Flights and the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. I know her, however, as the
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Reading time: Less than 5 minutes Here are my 10 favourite articles or posts from last month, focusing on the most useful, helpful and entertaining pieces for writers. The days are getting longer in the Northern hemisphere and I’m usually surprised by how quickly it happens. One evening I’m reading a book at 8 pm
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Most writing coaches or teachers will tell you to avoid clichés — those hackneyed expressions like “tall, dark and handsome” or “as red as a rose” that seem to tumble from our lips as carelessly as a soother falls out of an exhausted baby’s mouth. Now, readers and clients have occasionally told me they find
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