Reading time: Just over 2 minutes The Hemingway App promises to make your writing bold and clear. How does it do that? Most writers today strive to avoid the passive voice. Do you know what I mean by passive? Don’t be too quick to say yes! It may be easy to identify the blatantly obvious […]
Come to Papa with the Hemingway app 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 article by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein in the New York Times… When heard about Klout this week — a social media scoring
Do you have Klout? Does it matter? Read More »
Reading time: Less than 1 minute When you’re training people make sure they have the basics — including enough food to make their brains work properly…. Does your company ever provide continuing education to employees? If so, congratulations! It helps employees become more productive and it makes them happier, feeling as though their company really
The calories of continuing education… 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 a simile from David Leavitt. I read my first David Leavitt novel, The Lost Language of Cranes, more than 20 years ago and I can still remember being terribly impressed with his
The figurative language of David Leavitt… Read More »
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: ineluctably. As a longtime fan of the book The War of Art, I was delighted to discover that author Steven Pressfield has a delightful and active blog. And
What does ineluctably mean? Read More »
Reading time: About 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 written for the New York Times by Danny Heitman… The debate over ‘writing short’ versus ‘writing long’ has been around since Johannes
Refining a draft is a process of elimination Read More »
Reading time: About 1.5 minutes Are you someone who has a hard time with deadlines? Here’s an example of how a fake deadline can help… Many people have difficulty with deadlines. They do high-reward tasks, first, (such as answering their email) and procrastinate on the important but difficult-to-do jobs (such as planning for a sales
How do you manage your deadlines? 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 a metaphor from author Elizabeth Bard. I was standing at the public library, idly flipping through books on the shelves when my fingers exerted their willpower and extracted the book Lunch in Paris.
The figurative language of Elizabeth Bard… Read More »
Reading time: About 3 minutes Please don’t think me a zealot but today I’m going to tell you why writers should meditate… You may wonder why, shortly after waking up every morning, I head upstairs to my office and lie down on the floor and cover myself with a blanket. You’d think, after seven hours of sleep, I wouldn’t
Why I’m meditating again Read More »
Reading time: About 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 written by Charlie Brooker… I hadn’t heard of Charlie Brooker until I received an email from my reader Bernadett Rosch-Tam.
