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: farrago… I thought I knew the word farrago but it turns out the only word I knew was fargo, as in the name of the 1996 comedy thriller […]
Reading time: Less than 5 minutes Do you have a good shutdown ritual? You should! Here’s how to implement one that will work for you… Writing — like cooking, cleaning and parenting — is a job that knows no beginning or ending. It’s something you do all the time, even in the middle of the night,
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Viewing time: 4 mins. and 52 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 #37, all about writing book introductions. The post first ran on Nov. 17/17. Transcript: Welcome to The
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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 similes and metaphors from American novelist Danzy Senna… I can’t remember who recommended the 2017 Danzy Senna novel, New People, to me. A ‘best book of the year’ from the New
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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: suzerainty… I knew of the late Clark Davey back in the 1980s when he must have been a ‘youngster’ of only 60 years old. At the time, I was
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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 blog post about Andrew Sean Greer…. Ultra successful novelist Andrew Sean Greer (he won the Pulitzer for Fiction in 2018
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Viewing time: 4 mins. 42 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 #36, about improving writing focus. The post first ran on Nov. 10/17. Transcript: Welcome to The Write Question,
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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 a series of metaphors, similes and images of personification from Katherena Vermette…. Katherena Vermette has written a gripping and gritty novel displaying the adversity facing Indigenous women in Canada. Her book,
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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: comity…. When I read the fascinating Danish novel — shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize — Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors, I was struck by the cool precision
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Reading time: Just over 2 minutes Are you ready for Christmas? Here are some suggestions for how to make Christmas a happier holiday for writers…. As wonderful as Christmas is, it’s a celebration that often creates stress for writers, freelancers and companies. Here is some advice on how to manage the biggest holiday of the
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