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: tenebrous… Loyal reader John Friesen likes to send me words he collects in his reading. The latest? Tenebrous. It comes from the book The Making of Home by […]
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Reading time: About 3.5 minutes Here’s some practical advice on how to write better English if it’s not your native language… I was briefly fluent in French when I was 20. I knew this for two reasons: First, I’d gone to visit a friend in Quebec City and ended up getting so sick with a
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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 an article about reading focusing on Wislawa Szymborska….. I read a lot. More than 52 books each year as well as
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Do you need to sell someone with your writing? Here’s how a Venn diagram can help you… I was working with a client this morning who needs to make a big “ask” of some potential funders. For reasons of client confidentiality I can’t give you the details, but I can
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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 simile from Colm Toibin… I almost didn’t read the novel Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin (pictured above). I’d seen the Academy-Award-nominated movie and found it a bit dull. “Meh, that was just okay,” I thought.
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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: petard. You’ve probably heard the expression “to be hoisted by your own petard” on many occasions. It means to be injured by the device that you used in
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Reading time: Just over 1 minute Have you ever struggled with how to handle criticism of your writing? It’s really not that tough if you can build up a thickened skin… This week I had to write a difficult, sensitive letter to a professional colleague. Of course I didn’t send it without having it checked
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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 brilliant similes and metaphors from Helen Macdonald…. I wrote yesterday about a new word I learned from Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk. More remarkable than her vocabulary, however,
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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: brumous… My husband is extraordinarily interested in birds. I am not, although I don’t mind the creatures. But on his request I gave him the book H is
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Reading time: Less than 3 minutes Do you want to learn how to cure procrastination? Try lying to yourself… I used to hate writing. Twenty years ago, if you’d told me that I could tell myself a simple lie and — suddenly, magically — it would make writing easier and more pleasant, I would have
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