Reading time: Just over 4 minutes Do you ever despair that you’re just not creative enough? Understand that it’s not a special gift; you, too can learn to be more creative. I am friendly, quiet, highly-organized, very determined — even stubborn. I have never seen myself as the least bit creative. Nevertheless, I have always been drawn […]
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Today’s post is 15-minute video on how to use the “track changes” feature in Microsoft Word. If you ever edit the work of anyone else or if you ask someone else to edit your work, I strongly encourage you to use a feature known as “track changes.” The big benefit is that it never throws
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Reading time: Just over 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of similes and metaphors from Gene Fowler…. Gene Fowler was always eminently quotable. My favourite line of his is: “Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a
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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: mullein… In addition to being a best-selling writer, Barbara Kingsolver is also a biologist. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in the Congo in her
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Reading time: Less than 3 minutes Getting more information is not always wise. Don’t let yourself be tripped up by the perils of information bias… Do you often postpone or delay making decisions? Does researching sound more enticing to you than writing? Are you the type of person who adores spending time in the library
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If you are looking to be published, it’s important to consider how many words you’re going to write. Get that number wrong, and no one will publish you! Yes, I know your book may require 200,000 words. Yes, I know War and Peace was 587,287 words. Yes, I know it’s tedious to have to follow
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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 series of similes and metaphors from Francis Spufford…. I can no longer remember where I heard about the marvellous work by Francis Spufford, The Child That Books Built. Subtitled A
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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: scrofulous… The marvellous historical novel, Hamnet and Judith, by Maggie O’Farrell contains a veritable dictionary of interesting words. One of them is scrofulous, a word I’d heard
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Reading time: Just over 3 minutes Are you someone who believes you just don’t have enough time to do what you want? Here’s how to find more time for writing…. The hardest part of doing just about anything is getting started. For you, this principle might apply to reading, cleaning your garage, working on your
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I like to think of mindmapping as a Swiss army knife for writers. Perhaps the most useful way to use it is as a daily, inspirational tool. Let’s call that the large blade. Then, the second most useful way is as an occasional tool for organizing your writing. Very handy for any long-form projects, like
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