Reading time: Less than two minutes Training dollars are rare with most companies. So here’s some important advice on how to get more value from your training… My husband recently took a four-day training course. He loved it although he found it exhausting. (And he had an awful pile of work to return to after have […]
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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 some splendid personification from William Boyd… I picked up the novel Brazzaville Beach, by William Boyd, at my local library entirely because it carried a handwritten note from one of the librarians,
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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: fandangle… Occasionally, in my search for a word-of-the-week, I look not for unusual words, whose definitions lie just outside my grasp. Instead, I search for showy terms. Interesting
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Reading time: Less than 3 minutes Side projects are things we do that aren’t our main jobs. Does that thought invigorate you or make your heart sink? I’m firmly in the former camp… This blog/newsletter started as a side project. Back in 2006, I had a writing/editing contract with a big corporation that paid the bills. But I
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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 book written by Bárdur Oskarsson… Even though I’m a fully grown adult, I love children’s literature. Young adult novels, such as
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute The next time a boss or client tells you not to worry about whether your writing includes enough stories, I suggest you get him or her a copy of the book Significant Objects. Here’s why. Back in 2009, American authors Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn bought a series of random objects thrift stores,
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Reading time: Less than 1 minutes I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of metaphors and personification from novelist Sarah Waters. I’ve now read three Sarah Waters novels. The Paying Guests was not my favourite — not by a longshot. (Fingersmith earned that distinction.)
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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: hermeneutical. I love few things more than reading about food, when two of my most intensely held pleasures combine into one glorious mouthful. When I read the New Yorker article
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Reading time: Less than 3 minutes Communicators need to use writing transitions — or bridges — from one sentence to the next. In that sense, we’re a little bit like ironworkers… Bridges, connectors or transitions are the words, phrases and stylistic devices that help direct readers through our writing. Sometimes I even like to imagine them as
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Reading time: About 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 useful blog post by Susan Weinschenk. I’m a big fan of Susan Weinschenk AKA the Brain Lady, a PhD psychologist who writes about how to
Four magic questions… Read More »
