Word count: 274 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: urtext. Jeffrey MacDonald was convicted in 1979 for the 1970 murders of his pregnant wife and two daughters. At the time of the murders, MacDonald was a Special […]
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Word count: 717 words Reading time: Less than 3 minutes Do you frequently find yourself asking, “why is writing so hard?” (with or without an expletive!) I wrote today’s column expressly for you… Twenty years ago, if you’d ask me to describe the single task I found most difficult, I wouldn’t have hesitated a nanosecond.
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Word count: 220 words Reading time: Less than 1 minute Here 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 focus on a website that reveals the kind of writer you are. My friend Sue recently made an interesting
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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. Here is a sentence I read recently that I’d happily imitate. It shows how writers can have fun with numbers…. I’m pretty much allergic to math. I passed Math 12
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute I read widely, watch movies and listen to the radio. Here, catch an interesting piece of figurative language I’ve encountered recently in the novel The Grief of Others. It took writing this blog to teach me something important about myself. Every Thursday I produce a little meditation on a
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Word count: 206 words Reading time: Less than 1 minute If you increase your vocabulary you’ll not only help your reading, you’ll also make your writing more precise. Here is my word of the week, tenebrous. I’ve already told you about reading a profile of Christopher Kimball in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. I’ve
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Word count: 745 words Reading time: About 3 minutes This will sound counterintuitive, but, in order to improve your writing, sometimes you may need to stop writing. Just as making great music isn’t always about being pitch perfect (think of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), writing isn’t always about, well, writing. In order to write, your
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Word count: 285 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 discuss an article by political speechwriter Robert Lehrman. I’ve written lots of speeches in my life, but none for politicians.
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Word count: 194 words Reading time: Less than 1 minute A great way to improve your writing is to emulate the work of others. Here is a sentence I read recently that I’d happily imitate. This one offers a how-to lesson on dealing with cliches. I always enjoying seeing cliches exploded — either by being
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Reading time: About 2 minutes I read widely, watch movies and listen to the radio. Here, catch an interesting piece of figurative language I’ve encountered recently. Today’s choice comes from the Obama 2012 speech that wrapped up the election. I had no vote in this week’s US presidential election. I’m a Canadian. But I’m a
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