Reading time: About 1 minute I like to share interesting figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a piece of personification by novelist Ian McEwan I’ve recently become intrigued by the trick of personification. Why does giving a human characteristic to an inanimate object, such as a street lamp, make it so […]
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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: bildungsroman. My son is studying to become an opera singer so we hear lots of languages in our house — Italian, German, Spanish and French among others. When
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Word count: 757 words Reading time: About 3 minutes Is there anyone — apart from school students — who doesn’t enjoy taking an easy, self-revealing test? Today, I’m giving you the chance to take a quick quiz for writers. Sharpen your pencils! If you want to be a better writer, it’s important to know what
Test: are you a born editor or a born writer? Read More »
Word count: 239 words 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 writers. Today I discuss a post on punctuation that appeared in the Mental Floss blog. I hadn’t heard of French author Hervé Bazin,
Bring on the certitude point… Read More »
Word count: 320 words Reading time: Just over 1 minute A great way to improve your writing is to emulate the work of others. That’s why, every week, I present a sentence that I’d happily imitate. I comment today on one written by Collum McCann. I tried reading the novel Let the Great World Spin
And then my soul in a sling… Read More »
Word count: 232 words 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: balustrade. I’ve known for years — decades, even — that the group of spindles underneath the railing in a set of stairs was
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Word count: 626 words Reading time: About 2 and a half minutes Do you avoid your work because you fear a link between negative emotions and writing? If so, you’re likely losing the chance to achieve something really meaningful. I recently spent five days camping in the San Juan Islands in Washington State. It’s a
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Word count: 481 words Reading time: Less than 2 minutes This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help writers. Today I discuss an article written by journalist Roy Peter Clark. I’ve long admired the writing of Roy Peter Clark. A
The short sentence as gospel truth Read More »
Word count: 274 words Reading time: About 1 minute A great way to improve your writing is to emulate the work of others. That’s why, every week, I present a sentence that I’d happily imitate. I comment today on a sentence written by Ian McEwan. I’m a big fan of novelist Ian McEwan. Atonement is
Beyond the tinnitus hiss of silence… Read More »
Word count: 318 words Reading time: Just over 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a trio of effective metaphors from novelist Tan Twan Eng. Malaysian writer Tan Twan Eng had his first novel, The Gift of Rain, long-listed for the Man Booker prize.
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