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: meniscus…. I am obsessed with food memoirs. So obsessed that I’m writing one myself. And part of my research is reading even more of these books. I’m […]
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Reading time: Less than 3 minutes Does the act of writing have its own rules? Yes! In fact, I think there are three laws of physics for writing… Do you remember Sir Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion? If a body is at rest it remains at rest or if it is in motion it remains
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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 suggested reading list from David Bowie… As a teenager in the early 1970s, I remember hearing — and buying — the
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Reading time: About 2 minutes No one wants to communicate bad news. But what happens when your leader gets sick?… When Toronto mayor Rob Ford recently revealed he had cancer, he did more than change the face of the upcoming Oct. 27/14 Toronto mayoral race. He also changed the rules for politicians and company leaders reporting their own illness. Now, everyone
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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 some similes from Phyllis Rose. I am a profligate reader. I told you earlier that a friend of mine had given me a copy of The Shelf: Adventures in Extreme Reading by Phyllis Rose. Today,
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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 (well, really, it’s a phrase): screaming meemies. I adore reduplications and I use them whenever I can. What are they? They occur whenever the root or stem or a
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Reading time: Just over 2 minutes Do you have an idea for a book — but no idea how to get started? Here’s a new program on how to write a book or a thesis… I finished writing the first draft of my next book this summer. While I didn’t toast myself with champagne, I was pretty
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 Slate article on fingerprint words… Have you ever heard the term “fingerprint word?” It refers to a slightly unusual word that
Do you use fingerprint words? Read More »
Reading time: Less than 1 minute In my ongoing quest to find better signage, I’ve finally uncovered a winner in the most unlikely of places… Like most people, I adore the taste of bacon. I say “most people” because many vegetarians I know speak wistfully of it. In fact, I even knew a vegan whose guilty
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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 a simile from Yiyun Li. I first heard about Chinese-American writer Yiyun Li and her book Kinder Than Solitude when I heard her interviewed on the CBC radio program, Writers and Company. Intrigued by the novel’s
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