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: chivvied… I love encountering words for which I already know the meaning but have no idea about their history or etymology. Chivvied is
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Reading time: Fewer than 4 minutes If you want to learn how to be a successful freelancer, today’s post pulls together my experience from 40 years of being an editor… I was a teenage editor. I started by editing the essays of friends then advanced to the high school yearbook.
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For six years, I worked in a massive open-area office — a newsroom. More than a hundred people in one room with no privacy dividers. I shared a desk with four other people. The desk was large, mind you. But the person sitting directly across from me was only about three feet away. I heard […]
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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 similes and metaphors from Meredith Hall… I had never before heard of author Meredith Hall, a writer and professor emeritus at the University
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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: 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
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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
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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
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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
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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