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The best writing reflects a deep commitment as well as the willingness to become vulnerable. How much is your writing costing you? Writing Tip for Today: What are some ways to write honest emotions? Refine Your Purpose Writing is meant for your readers. Even autobiographical material isn’t really about you. It’s about how your experiences […]
Writing about big events in your life—whether traumatic or just amazing can be powerful—if you allow enough time to pass first. Writing Tip for Today: Here are some tips for writing about consequential life events: Five Year Rule A famous writer once told me not to write about significant life events—especially traumatic ones—for five years. […]
Last night, my husband dragged me in front of the TV to watch the Memorial Day concert from the National Mall in DC. He’s a decorated Vietnam vet, so stuff like this is important to him. I thought I’d be bored silly (I was in sixth grade on his first tour of duty) but because […]
The title of today’s post could lure you in like the spam I get in my inbox. Stuff that promises to show me the “secrets of selling a jillion copies,” “getting an agent,” “ridding myself of ugly toenail fungus” or just about anything else. Free webinars, podcasts and booklets clamor for attention, all with promises […]
As writers, we all want to learn. We’re all looking to better our skills, to reach that next level, to conquer the challenge in front of us. This past week, I spoke with a writer who’d received critiques that had, as the critiquer promised, “ripped out [the writer’s] heart and stomped on it.” What did the […]
I teach two different essay writing classes. One is a general essay class, the other focuses on memoir or the personal essay. One question I hear often is, “How personal should the writer be in a personal essay?”Writing Tip for Today: The question then branches into one of two categories. In the first, the writer […]
When an essay is successful it resonates with the reader in a deep and profound way. Yet that essay rarely names or tells the reader what that profound thing is. Let’s take a look at how shape and meaning, or subtext, can bring a good essay up into the stratosphere.Writing Tip for Today: Good essays […]