Reading time: Less than 4 minutes Do you routinely take way longer than you thought possible to finish your writing work? That’s likely a result of the planning fallacy… We were standing on the waterfront in Sydney, Australia, waiting for our tour of the Sydney Opera House to begin. It was Spring 2019 — well […]
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Most mindmaps are what I call inspirational. They are not intended to be outlines that capture everything you want to say. Nor are they intended to identify the order in which you want to address points Instead, their purpose is to inspire you to write. See video on how to do that type of mindmap, here.
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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 metaphors from novelist Yaa Gyasi… Although she was born only in 1989, Yaa Gyasi is a Ghanaian-American novelist who already has an armful of awards. Her debut novel,
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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: tantara…. When I encountered the word tantara in the remarkable novel This Is Happiness by Niall Williams (one of my favourite books of 2020), I immediately thought
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Reading time: Less than 3 minutes What’s your policy on New Year’s resolutions? Me? I don’t like them much and I don’t think they’re helpful for most writers…. Do you make New Year’s resolutions? If you do, odds are high that you’ve already failed to keep them because today is Jan. 5. And odds will
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Some 35 years ago, I took a course in speed reading – although not for the reason you might suspect. I wasn’t actually interested in learning to read faster (I was happy enough with my reading speed thank-you-very-much). Instead, my purpose in taking the course was to satisfy my boss, a senior editor. He wanted
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Despite the pandemic, I hope you’re able to take some time off for yourself, even if you’re unable to see many family members or friends. Last night my family went for a walk in a light-filled neighbourhood across town. We all wore masks and friends walked us by several blocks of homes with the most
Reading time: Just over 5 minutes Here are my 10 favourite articles or posts from last month, focusing on the most useful, helpful and healthful pieces for writers. Little Jack Horner Sat in the corner, Eating his Christmas pie; He put in his thumb, And pulled out 10 plums, And said, “What good blogs have
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Viewing time: 19 mins 52 secs Here is the original text from a PhD dissertation for which I did a substantive edit in the video shown above. In a change of policy — and in order to keep my videos to a more reasonable length — I did the edit before filming the video this
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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 from Vicki Laveau-Havie…. Family trauma doesn’t sound like a happy theme for a memoir but in the hands of Vicki Laveau-Harvie, the subject becomes raw material for
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