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: speculaas… I picked up the new novel Akin by Emma Donoghue with eager anticipation. I’d enjoyed her earlier book Room (although I hadn’t seen the movie) and […]
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Reading time: Less than 4 minutes I know this may sound crazy, but, for writers, the benefits of boredom outweigh its downsides…. I’m going to ask you to do something difficult. I’d like you to stop seeing boredom as automatically undesirable, bad or negative. Instead, I ask you to see it as neutral — and
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I’ve had sleep problems for most of my life even though I’m lucky enough to need fewer ZZZs than many people (seven hours is usually plenty for me). Back when I was in high school/university, and a chronic procrastinator, I’d use my relatively low sleep need to stay up half the night writing essays. I
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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: schist… My uncle was a geologist but I never even took a basic overview course while in school. (A die-hard ‘artsie,’ I avoided most science classes like
Reading time: About 4 minutes The tuxedos, the fancy ball gowns and the red carpet: what else could it be but the peak of the awards season, the Oscars? I’m not wearing Swarovski crystals to present these awards for the best articles or pots I read this month. But on the upside, there are only
PubCoach Top 10: February 2020 Read More »
I recently wrote a blog post about 10 books that changed my life. One work that didn’t make the list but that probably should have was James Clear’s very fine book Atomic Habits. (I didn’t include it because I’d already named two other books with the word ‘habit’ in the title, and because I thought
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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: tamasha…. I don’t typically read murder mysteries, particularly not ones in a series, which I often find a bit too predictable for my taste. Nevertheless, my neighbours
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Reading time: Less than 5 minutes Do you find music helps you to write or are the sounds of silence more golden to your ears? Here’s what science has to say about background music while writing…. When I was a child, my mother strictly limited our television viewing. In the days of those ugly black
Are the sounds of silence helpful or harmful to writers? Read More »
Do you spend too much time planning? Or not enough? It can be tricky to master the ‘planning-to-writing ratio’ so it works just right for you. Here’s how I tell the difference: Over-planners (and I sometimes consider myself to be one of these people) are usually aware of the problem in themselves. They are obsessed
What’s the right amount of time to spend planning? Read More »
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: shura… I enjoyed Amy Waldman’s remarkable first novel, Submission, so much that I asked for a copy of her second book, A Door in the Earth as
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