Reading time: About 3 minutes Do you hem and haw? Feel jittery? Wring your hands? Or do you already know how to make good writing decisions? When I was in my mid-30s, I sat down to make a decision that would change the course of my life.I had given birth to triplets in 1994 and had recently […]
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Reading time: About 1 minute This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world for material to help other writers. Today I discuss why you might want to become a monkey bar blogger… Do you want to be a full-time blogger who makes good money at the job? Understand,
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Viewing time: 5 minutes The Write Question is a weekly video podcast about writing that I started in 2017 and that ran, more or less weekly, until April 2022. This is a republication of issue #57, with advice on how to stop verbal tics. The post first ran on May 25/18. Transcript: Welcome to The
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Reading time: About 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about similes and metaphors from Emma Donoghue… Emma Donoghue is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Booker Prize and an international best-seller. She adapted it
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Reading time: Less than one 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: fubsy…. I was reading the Delia Owens’ novel Where the Crawdads Sing when the word fubsy jumped off the page and gave my eyeballs a good shake.
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Reading time: About 4 minutes Is distraction free writing something that eludes you? Read on to learn about five practical tips for achieving it… Here is a scary number: The average person is distracted every 40 seconds when working at their computer.Isn’t that mind-boggling? We can’t work for even a literal minute without being interrupted or interrupting ourselves.And worse, it takes
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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 a blog post about how to restart a stalled book… Is your writing project: sitting in the deep-freeze? Taking a vacation? In
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Viewing time: 4 min. 40 sec. The Write Question is a weekly video podcast about writing that I started in 2017 and that ran, more or less weekly, until April 2022. This is a republication of issue #56, with advice on how to capture your family history. The post first ran on May 11/18. Transcript:
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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 telling images from Joanna Quinn… The English writer Joanna Quinn is marvellously imaginative. Although The Whalebone Theatre is her first novel, she writes with the assurance of a much
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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: fumarole…. I live on the Pacific West Coast, in an earthquake zone. Perhaps that’s why I’m familiar with seismological terms — and mostly unfamiliar with ones related
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