Reading time: Less than 1 minute Sometimes writing seems hard and complicated and thankless. But when such feelings seek to overwhelm you, remember the advice of Neil Gaiman and simply make good art… As we approach another season of university commencements I’m drawn again to the very wise words of author Neil Gaiman (pictured above.) Addressing […]
Reading time: Less than 1 minute When I’m editing material for clients, here’s the most common mistake I see: they haven’t set a consistent style for headlines and subheads. If your headline doesn’t follow a proper style, your publication won’t look professionally edited. What do I mean by that? Well, there are two fundamental type of heads
The secret to a professional-looking headline 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 simile from Ben McGrath… I was serious about canoeing as a young person. The high point of my life, when I was 16 years old, was an 80-mile canoe trip around the Bowron
A monologue as unstoppable as a river… 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: coruscating… I briefly worked for Conrad Black. Not face-to-face (thank goodness); he owned the newspaper chain where I was an editor. Black once controlled Hollinger International, which published The Daily Telegraph (UK), Chicago Sun-Times (U.S.), The
What does ‘coruscating’ mean? Read More »
Reading time: About 3 minutes When you write, do you begin by taking an inventory of all the stories you have at your disposal? Here’s why you should try to collect as many as you possibly can… Let me begin by telling you a story. It dates back to the 2008 Summer Olympics, when Michael
How to find stories for your writing Read More »
Reading time: Less than 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 the late author John D. MacDonald… John D. MacDonald (1916 to 1986) was prolific author of crime and
Writing advice from John D. MacDonald Read More »
Reading time: Less than 1 minute The worst thing about taking the bus should be having to sit next to someone you don’t like. But in a recent bus imbroglio, two teenagers learned things can get much worse than that… Public relations is harder for companies than used to be. The Internet has changed the
Greyhound caught in bus imbroglio 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 couple of similes and metaphors from New Yorker writer Carolyn Korman… Can a restaurant for the rich benefit the poor? That was the opening question in a very fine piece of writing by
The figurative language of Carolyn Korman 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: splenetic… When my reader, John Friesen, emailed me the word splenetic I had to confess I hadn’t encountered it before. He discovered it in the March 19/16 Washington
What does ‘splenetic’ mean? Read More »
Reading time: Less than 3 minutes Do you know how to write freely? Here’s a metaphor that might help. Pretend you’re a jazz musician who’s improvising… When I moved away from home at the age of 21, I started pondering how to take music lessons. I’d always wanted to learn the piano but quickly realized
Why you should write like a jazz musician plays Read More »
