Reading time: Just over 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 about Ernest Hemingway’s protégé Arnold Samuelson…. Arnold Samuelson was a 22-year-old aspiring writer during the Great Depression when he had […]
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Reading time: About 2 minutes I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of metaphors from Hana Yanagihara… There is nothing “little” about the book A little Life by Hana Yanagihara. Clocking in at 832 pages and weighing 1.1 pounds the book also carries the weight of
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Reading time: Less than 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: saturnine… I chose to read John Lahr’s profile of the actress Viola Davis (pictured above) — in the Dec. 19 & 26/16 New Yorker — because I think she’s
What does ‘saturnine’ mean? Read More »
SeReading time: Just over 3 minutes If you were educated following Western norms, your many years of schooling may have made you wonderfully analytic but otherwise unoriginal or uninspired. Here’s how to improve your creativity… Are you already a creative person? Or are you the kind of writer who desperately wants to become more creative? Our
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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 Steve McCurry book of photographs of people reading….. When I was eight-years-old I used to sit at the breakfast table and
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Reading time: Less than 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 Paul Theroux… I have not read a great deal of Paul Theroux. When younger, I devoured his very funny non-fiction book The Kingdom By The Sea, the story of
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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: flibbertigibbet… Here is a novel about four college classmates — an artist, an architect, a lawyer and an actor —who move to New York and support and torment each other for
What’s a ‘flibbertigibbet’? Read More »
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 an article about grammar barbarians written by Jay Thorwaldsen… I was lucky enough to grow up with parents who corrected my
A battle with grammar barbarians… Read More »
Reading time: Less than 1 minute Being prepared is better than being scared when it comes to responding to the media… I was leading a workshop recently, on the topic of how to respond to the media, when I had a question I really hadn’t expected. “Is it an obligation to do an interview with
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Reading time: Less than 2 minutes 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 Colson Whitehead… I had heard many laudatory reviews of the novel The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. A National Book Award Winner and a #1 New York Times bestseller, the book also drew
The figurative language of Colson Whitehead… Read More »
