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 (well, really, it’s a phrase): screaming meemies. I adore reduplications and I use them whenever I can. What are they? They occur whenever the root or stem or a […]
What are the screaming meemies? Read More »
Reading time: Just over 2 minutes Do you have an idea for a book — but no idea how to get started? Here’s a new program on how to write a book or a thesis… I finished writing the first draft of my next book this summer. While I didn’t toast myself with champagne, I was pretty
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 Slate article on fingerprint words… Have you ever heard the term “fingerprint word?” It refers to a slightly unusual word that
Do you use fingerprint words? Read More »
Reading time: Less than 1 minute In my ongoing quest to find better signage, I’ve finally uncovered a winner in the most unlikely of places… Like most people, I adore the taste of bacon. I say “most people” because many vegetarians I know speak wistfully of it. In fact, I even knew a vegan whose guilty
Turning plants into bacon… Read More »
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 Yiyun Li. I first heard about Chinese-American writer Yiyun Li and her book Kinder Than Solitude when I heard her interviewed on the CBC radio program, Writers and Company. Intrigued by the novel’s
The figurative language of Yiyun Li… Read More »
Reading time: Less than 3 minutes Have you ever faced the challenge of serving different audiences with your writing? Here’s how I handle that… When our children were about five years old, we started priming them for a key duty. We wanted them to throw us a party for our 25th wedding anniversary in 2014. We
How to give readers their just desserts Read More »
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 an infographic about how long it takes you to read a variety of popular books….. My husband recently suggested I had the “super-power”
How long does it take you to read… Read More »
Reading time: About 1 minute If you were asked to come up with a creative way of communicating about a deadly virus would the idea of an ebola song ever have occurred to you? The hottest pop song in Liberia right now goes by the title “Ebola is Real.” Not surprising, perhaps, given the devastating impact of that
Ebola song is real… Read More »
Reading time: About 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about two similes from Lizzie Widdicombe… Call me naive, but I had never before heard of what’s called a Tough Mudder, which is a 10-to-12-mile obstacle race including fire pits, tightly enclosed spaces, mud baths and
The figurative language of Lizzie Widdicombe… Read More »
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: quisling. I’m a trailing edge baby-boomer, born in the late 1950s. My parents, both Canadians, were deeply marked by the Second World War. My father was enlisted in the Air Force
What’s a quisling? Read More »
