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 from Michael Crummey… I’m not a fan of the way celebrated Newfoundland writer Michael Crummey plots his novels. Still, I really like the way he writes. I […]
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Reading time: About 2 minutes Charmaine Li says she likes to tell herself that she needs to write for only five minutes. Often, she ends up writing for longer than that, but the idea that she MUST write for only five minutes helps to persuade her to sit down… Charmaine Li grew up in Vancouver,
Reflections on writing with Charmaine Li Read More »
Reading time: About 5 minutes (faster if you scan) How to deal with overwhelm is a question that plagues many writers, especially academics. Here I offer 17 tips to help make your writing life much calmer. I’m generally a calm person, but I can remember a time when I felt truly overwhelmed. My children —
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Reading time: About 1 minute This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world for material to help other writers. Today I discuss a blog post about procrastinating, framed as a story about moving pianos… Many writers I work with tell me they don’t have enough TIME for writing.
Are you procrastinating by trying to move pianos? Read More »
Viewing time: 3 mins 58 secs The Write Question is a weekly video podcast about writing that I started in 2017 and that ran, more or less weekly, until April 2022. This is a republication of issue #156, which addresses how to choose between great ideas for writing. The post first ran on Sept. 25/20.
How do I choose between great ideas for writing? (video) Read More »
Reading time: About 2 minutes Madelaine Caritas Longman estimates that estimate that for most people, writing is at least 80% rewriting… Madelaine Caritas Longman is the author of the poetry collection The Danger Model (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019), which received the Quebec Writers Federation Concordia University First Book Prize. Her writing has appeared in PRISM
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Reading time: About 4 minutes Does a five-minute workday sound ludicrous to you? It shouldn’t. Not if you want to establish a sustainable writing habit… Have you spent days, weeks, months, perhaps even years failing to find enough time to write? Perhaps failing to find any time to write? I have three suggestions for you.
The five-minute workday 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 grammar myths… When I was in high school, I learned how to crank out essays that could
Grammar myths you can ignore Read More »
Viewing time: 4 mins. 47 secs. The Write Question is a weekly video podcast about writing that I started in 2017 and that ran, more or less weekly, until April 2022. This is a republication of issue #155, which addresses burnout and boredom in writing. The post first ran on Sept. 18/20. Transcript: How
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Reading time: Just over 2 minutes I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of similes from Claire Lombardo…. Claire Lombardo (pictured above), is a fiction writer, teacher, and 2017 graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her first novel, The Most Fun We
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