Word count: 204 Reading time: Less than a minute Every Friday I present a sentence of the week I’ve discovered in my reading. Reading closely will help you become a better writer. I must fall into the 1% of the population that has never seen the James Cameron movie, The Titanic. This wasn’t so much […]
How to craft a Titanic sentence Read More »
Word count: 218 Reading time: Less than a minute Today I discuss how a small, easy to use digital recorder might be able to help your writing. If you’re a writer, you need some way of recording your voice while you walk. I now use my iPhone, which makes recording delightfully easy, but I realize
Could you use a digital recorder while you walk? Read More »
Word count: 261 words Reading time: About a minute If you increase your vocabulary you’ll not only help your reading, you’ll also make your writing more precise. Here is my word of the week, emended. I speak a tiny bit of French, badly, so I always admire people who are able to use more than
Word count: 641 words Reading time: About 2.5 minutes You probably know the Aesop tale about the tortoise and the hare. I think it offers an important tip about why you shouldn’t write too much at once…. Do you ever set aside an entire afternoon for writing? Or, better yet, what about a whole weekend?
Why you shouldn’t write too much at once Read More »
Word count: 221 words Reading time: Less than 1 minute If I hadn’t earned a degree in political science when I went to university, I would have chosen to study psychology. The subject fascinates me — as it should any writer or entrepreneur. If you want to write effectively, you need to think about what
The power of psychology for writers Read More »
Word count: 287 words Reading time: Just over 1 minute In searching for my sentence-of-the week, I consider a variety of attributes. Today’s example might strike you as banal or dull but I like it because it perfectly illustrates perfectly how that difficult piece of punctuation, the semi-colon, should be used. In fact, the semi-colon
How to use a semi-colon Read More »
Word count: 390 words Reading time: About 1.5 minutes You may remember me having written about using the pomodoro. This fantastic time management technique, which requires you to focus your attention on a task for 25 minutes, calls for having a noisy timer ticking in the background. When I started doing pomodoros, I disdained the
How I use time management to enforce my actions Read More »
Word count: 237 words Reading time: about 1 minute Easter offers a four-day long weekend in Canada. That’s why, on Monday, my husband and I could be found taking a 90-minute walk along the beaches of Boundary Bay. This spectacular area, only a 30-minute drive from where we live, offers water, wide open spaces and
Word count: 733 words Reading time: Less than 3 minutes Do you know how to stop procrastinating about your writing? Let me give you five suggestions that should help… A friend of mine emailed me last week, despairing over her very bright teenager’s inability to finish an essay. The essay was already late and the
How to stop procrastinating about writing Read More »
Word count: 300 words Reading time: Just over 1 minute I don’t know about you but I cannot write when I have a messy desk. Even if I take all my papers — without any sorting at all — and dump them into my inbox so the rest of my desk is clear, I am
Do you want to become an unclutterer? Read More »
