Reading time: Just over 4 minutes Has your productivity taken a nose-dive during the pandemic? Mine sure has! Here’s why we should all STOP trying to be productive during the pandemic… Before you read today’s post, can I ask you to take 30 seconds to complete a one-question survey? I’m […]
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Whenever I teach an in-person writing workshop, I almost always ask participants to calculate how they divide up their writing time. I ask them to imagine writing as something that takes place in three stages: Step 1: Preparing to write – and by this, I mean interviewing, researching, mindmapping and planning. Step 2: Writing –
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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 Mark Haddon…. When I read the remarkable 2003 book The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-Time —
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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: nictitating… My reading last week once again proved the limits of a liberal-arts-oriented education. I encountered the fascinating word nictitating in the
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Reading time: 11 minutes (but easily skimmable) When I was a child I learned that I could make time pass more quickly by reading. Here are more than 52 novels to read during the pandemic… I’ve kept a book diary for the last 25 years. The list comes in handy
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Just about everyone in the world is working from home (except for health care workers, grocery clerks and cleaners) right now. As a result, more people than ever before are wondering how to make themselves more effective. Particularly when their attention is pulled in a multitude of directions (kids, household chores, job-related work and monitoring
How NOT to stretch a little bit of work so it takes up the whole day Read More »
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 Kristen Arnett… When I heard that the main character in a first novel by Kristen Arnett (pictured above) was
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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: spraddling…. Something about the pandemic is causing me to read more murder mysteries than usual. I’m not sure why except perhaps that
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Reading time: Just over 6 minutes Here are my 10 favourite articles or posts from last month, focusing on the most useful, helpful and healthful pieces for writers. We live in the time of coronavirus, worried about the world’s health, scared about our financial security and bored from being stuck
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Is worry about Covid 19 making it difficult for you to write? (Or has there been any other disruption to your regular schedule?) Here are eight tips that will help you maintain your writing habit even during these extraordinarily difficult times: Keep a regular routine: If you normally get up at 7 am every day
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