Reading time: About 3 minutes Do you wince when you hear about the success of other writers? It’s likely you’re just suffering from availability bias… You’ve probably never heard of the availability bias. But it’s been running most of our writing lives for years. Here’s how it works: When we try to judge how common […]
Availability bias is lying to you about your writing Read More »
Reading time: About 2 minutes I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about similes and metaphors from Niall Williams… The novel This is Happiness by Niall Williams sat at the top of my list of recommended books for 2020. Now, I can just as highly
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Reading time: About 2 minutes Sarah Nakawatse says that writing is not so much about reaching the endpoint, but instead about all the experiences you have along the way… Sarah Nakawatase is the author of the romantic suspense novel Double-Crossing the Border and co-author of the science fiction novel Dormant Diversion. Her paranormal romance novel,
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Reading time: About 3 minutes Do you trash talk yourself, or do you know how to get your inner voice to talk better to you? If you write, you’ve heard it. That voice. The one that shows up around paragraph three to announce that the whole thing is terrible and you should probably give up
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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 typographical manual you can find on Project Gutenberg… I learned to type on a typesetting machine. My parents owned a
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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 Patrick Bringley…. Two friends and a distant family member had recommended a new book by Patrick Bringley, All the Beauty in the World. I found the memoir
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Reading time: About 2 minutes S.M Stevens tries NEVER to make writing a chore. “Otherwise, what’s the point of this labor of love?” she asks. S.M. Stevens has written the friendship/social justice novel Beautiful and Terrible Things, which won seven awards including Best Literary Book of 2024 from Indies Today; Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, and
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Reading time: About 3 minutes If strange words and counter-intuitive ideas appeal to you, read on to learn how jootsing can improve your writing… The word looks ridiculous on the page: Jootsing. And it sounds worse out loud. Try saying, “I jootsed today” with a straight face. Still, the idea behind it is incredibly useful.
How to climb out of the writing box you didn’t know you were in Read More »
Reading time: Less than 2 minutes 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 advocating using fiction techniques in memoir… I recently stumbled across a terrific blog post on Joanna Penn’s site
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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 metaphors from Canadian writer Patricia Finn…. Patricia Finn is a North Vancouver–based writer, ghostwriter, editor, and consultant whose career has spanned decades. Educated in both Canada and New Zealand, she completed post-graduate
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