Are you afraid to write? Or just afraid to share what you do write? Afraid someone will laugh at you? Or, worse, sue you?
We all have these fears. And more. When I write my creative nonfiction stories, mostly family stories, I worry that someone in...
You know that subjects and verbs must agree in number. Thus, this is correct:
The president is heading to Camp David for the weekend.
The singular subject, president, agrees in number with the singular verb is. That’s simple enough, but confusion may arise if too...
A perennial problem for writers is how to handle the third person singular pronoun when gender is unknown. An example is:
When emailing an editor, you can usually address him by his first name.
The trouble with that sentence is that it excludes female editors....
One of the most difficult questions for beginning writers is “What am I going to write about?” Seasoned writers, however, possess tons of ideas. (Their problem is finding the time to write about all the ideas they have.)
So how can you take this giant step...
If you are a postgraduate student at a university or college, you will most definitely be required, at some stage or other, to provide at least one, if not more, lengthy piece(s) of work reporting on your research that you have had to undertake in...
By definition, your book’s title is what potential readers usually see first. (A possible exception is your cover, but even there, the title is an essential part of the cover.)
So how do you create a title that will grab a potential buyer’s attention? Here are...
Transitions words and phrases allow you—and your reader— to move smoothly from one thought to another. Without them, writing sounds stilted and unnatural, such as this:
"Jones, a junior psychology major, made the All-American team last year. He carries a 3.5 grade point average."
Clearly,...
Start with easier questions, then move to most difficult ones
Don’t start by asking the WW II vet how he felt about his friends dying. Start with less-emotionally laden ones and move on to more difficult ones. Then end with easier questions so your source...
All writers, whether nonfiction or fiction, need to research their subject. Although online research is valuable, the best research is done by interviewing people.
Yet the thought of conducting an interview makes many writers shake like a leaf in a hurricane. As a word of encouragement,...
One of my editors recently wrote to me suggesting I refrain from using the passive voice. “You use passive too often,” she claimed. I hadn’t realized I was such a ‘passive’ writer, but, taking another look at the novel she had finished editing for me, I...
