Writerland

Last Monday’s post on “that” vs. “which” and “I” vs. “me” led to some interesting comments about other words people often confuse. Here is the list with a few more added. They’re in no particular order.
1. Irregardless—this is not a word! It’s regardless, regardless of how much emphasis you want to [...]

After gathering this list of craft books from my writing friends, I decided to revisit some of my favorites to see which bits of advice have had the greatest impact on my writing habits.
This passage from Annie Lamott’s Bird by Bird

I am reluctant to get too much into copyediting because I am a stickler for grammatical and other errors, and I hate to get too caught up in that and lose sight of the more important things in a story like plot, dialogue, characters, etc. But here we go. A lot of common mistakes I [...]

I asked some writer friends what craft of writing books they recommend, and here is the list in no particular order (although Bird by Bird was by far the most recommended). I’ve read only 13 of them, so I can’t vouch for all of them. Here they are:
1. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
2. On [...]

Now for our editing hour. Here are a few basics:
For beginning writers setting out write a short story, novel or memoir, there are quite a few enduring writing rules that can transform a mediocre piece of work into one that’s readable—in other words, a piece of crap into something kinda good. Here are just a [...]