Word count: 217 words Reading time: Less than 1 minute A great way to improve your writing skills is to emulate the work of others. That’s why, every week, I present a sentence that I’d happily imitate. Today’s comes from Anakana Schofield. It’s hard to believe that Malarky is a first novel. Funny, and written in an […]
Under the rubble that’s himself… Read More »
Reading time: Less than 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. Today’s comes from Johanna Schneller in the Globe & Mail. I remember seeing a photo of Robert Redford about 10 years ago and being shocked by how much he’d aged. I was too young, then,
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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: carmine. I’ve known for decades that the word carmine means “red.” But I didn’t know any more than that. So, I decided to investigate when I encountered
What, exactly, is carmine? Read More »
Word count: 730 words Reading time: About 3 minutes How do you work when you really, really don’t want to? Take my advice on how to overcome adversity in your writing… I’m blaming it on a hard-boiled egg. I had food poisoning last week. I’m guessing the egg, although refrigerated, had been cooked too long beforehand.
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Word count: 250 words 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 writers. Today I examine a mini-profile of William Zinsser. William Zinsser is the author of one of my favourite writing guides, On Writing
Clutter is the disease of American writing Read More »
Word count: 247 words Reading time: About 1 minute A great way to improve your writing skills is to emulate the work of others. That’s why, every week, I present a sentence that I’d happily imitate. Today’s comes from Adam Gopnik. I’ve written before about Adam Gopnik. My admiration for the man’s writing knows no
Before they were unmoored from their spines… Read More »
Reading time: Just over 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. Today’s comes from novelist Nicole Bokat. If you read my blog regularly, you may recall my recent post about a sentence by Nicole Bokat. That sentence had originally appeared in a column she wrote, about
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Word count: 272 words Reading time: Just over 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: recrudescence. In 2010, I read the marvellous novel Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. It won the Pulitzer in 2009 and I found it
What does recrudescence mean? Read More »
Word count: 632 words Reading time: About 2.5 minutes Our need to learn doesn’t stop when we graduate from college. So why do so many of us act as though it does?…. I am 55 years old. I have an honours degree in political science. I’ve written professionally for 33 years and was a senior
5 reasons you might want to learn more Read More »
Word count: 297 words Reading time: Just over 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 look at a piece from Mashable on the Boston Marathon bombing. I was speaking with a colleague about media coverage
Have you verified that? Read More »
