Word count: 271 words Reading time: About 1 minute A great way to improve your writing skills is to emulate the work of others. That’s why, every week, I present a sentence that I’d happily imitate. Today’s comes from Herman Koch. The novel, The Dinner, by Herman Koch (pictured here) earns 3.5 stars on Amazon. […]
You have voids and then you have voids… Read More »
Reading time: About 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. Today’s comes from Walter Kirn in the New Yorker. I cannot remember where I first read about “Clark Rockefeller”. Perhaps it was in Vanity Fair. That seems the right place to have learned about a villain
The figurative language of Walker Kirn… Read More »
Word count: 228 words 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: importunate. I’d never have predicted I’d discover a story on mushrooms — used as a packing material, replacing Styrofoam of all things —
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Word count: 754 words Reading time: About 3 minutes Ambiguous writing is generally a bad thing. But there are times when a writer ought to welcome a healthy does of ambiguity. Here’s why… When I learned I was pregnant with triplets, 20 years ago, I was desperate to know their gender. Did I, God-forbid, have
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Word count: 250 words Reading time: 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 writers. Today’s article comes from Sarah Jio. I don’t read murder mysteries and I dislike horror movies. When it comes right down to it,
Word count: 278 words Reading time: Just over 1 minute A great way to improve your writing skills is to emulate the work of others. That’s why, every week, I present a sentence that I’d happily imitate. Today’s comes from Jill Lepore in a story about Robert Ripley. Somehow, the name Robert Ripley — associated
He looked remarkably like a vampire… Read More »
Reading time: About 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. Today’s comes from David Sedaris. I’ve written about David Sedaris, before today. Just hearing the man’s name makes me smile. He’s so funny! But he’s also a deeply sophisticated writer who uses figurative language with the
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Word count: 221 words 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: punim. I hope to spare you the misery of watching the HBO special Behind the Candelabra — a cinebiography of entertainer Liberace (see
Word count: 667 words Reading time: About 2.5 minutes Have you ever struggled with how to improve your writing? Here are five ideas so simple you may kick yourself for not having used them before now…. When I was a senior editor at a daily newspaper, I occasionally used to edit a journalist who had
5 stupidly simple ways to improve your writing Read More »
Word count: 328 words 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 writers. Today, I look at a piece about dictionaries. I once interviewed a man who owned hundreds of dictionaries. He collected them,
There is much more to know about a word… Read More »
