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: auscultation… Many friends and colleagues had recommended the 2011 novel The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht to me but I never picked […]
What does ‘auscultation’ mean? Read More »
Reading time: About 3 minutes Are you ever filled with regret after reading what you’ve written? I bet you’re suffering from a case of writer’s remorse…. When my husband and I bought our house some 30 years ago, we were unspeakably excited. We’d spent eight months looking — had toured
Do you suffer from writer’s remorse? Read More »
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 other writers. Today I discuss writing advice from Kurt Vonnegut… I must begin with a confession: I have never read a single
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Viewing time: 3 mins. 48 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 #29, describing reverse engineering for writers. The post first ran on Aug. 25/17.
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Reading time: About 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about similes from the journalist Carl Bernstein…. The American investigative journalist and author Carl Bernstein was a hero when I was growing up. When he was a young
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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: rime… I had never read anything written by the darkly comic Danish author Dorothe Nors. But when her 2017 novel Mirror, Shoulder,
Reading time: About 4 minutes Some people find it painful to respond to edits from others. But learning how to use track changes can make the whole editing process so much easier… Do bosses, editors or cowriters ever want to change your text? If so, it’s important to be agile
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Reading time: About 1 minute This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find material to help other writers. Today I discuss some advice on how to improve Zoom calls… Two-and-a-half years into the COVID pandemic (remember the early days of it?),
How to improve Zoom calls – some slick tricks Read More »
Viewing time: 3 mins. 37 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 #28, defining the term free writing and describing why you should stay away
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Reading time: About 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of images from Leah McLaren… Memoir is my favourite genre. Nevertheless, I knew I was taking something of a risk this summer when I picked
The figurative language of Leah McLaren… Read More »
