There are some errors that drive me crazy, not because they’re so terrible — anything can be corrected — but because they appear so frequently, and they’re really so simple that it’s hard to imagine how people make them. “Lightening” for “lightning.” People who should know better make this mistake all the time. Even some […]
Castles: A Fictional Memoir of a Girl with Scissors by Benjamin X. Wretlind My rating: 5 of 5 stars Often, you can tell on the first page whether a writer knows what he or she is doing. There’s a flow, a grace to the way these writers construct their sentences that makes reading a joy. […]
Photo by: Scott Kleinberg, Creative Commons Writers are always teaching me, whether they know it or not. I’ve been editing and beta-reading manuscripts for a number of people this summer, and their words make me re-evaluate some ideas I held firmly for some time. And I keep coming to the same dilemma: at what point […]
Writers are inspired and informed by authors they’ve read. I asked some best-selling authors what they like to read most. This week, I’ve asked two very different authors for their opinions. Best-selling Toby Neal is author of the Lei Crime series, set in her home state of Hawai’i; Russell Blake writes thrillers from his home […]
Ben Wretlind has broken new ground as an author with his novels Castles: A fictional Memoir of a Girl with Scissors and Sketches from the Spanish Mustang, and with his collection of short stories (which he wrote over several years), Regarding Dead Things on the Side of the Road.All his writing displays a distinctive, poetic […]
Commas are probably the most abused punctuation mark in English today, and probably the most overused, too. Here are a few tips to make them easier to use correctly. Commas separate parts of a sentence: Don’t leave out commas from your writing. They represent the pauses in speech, and give readers a chance to take […]
In my pursuit of the meaning and importance of writing style, this week I am turning to veteran Christine Nolfi, best-selling author of Second-Chance Grill, The Tree of Everlasting Knowledge and Treasure Me. Christine is also a founder of BestSelling Reads, a cooperative promotional group of writers of “new fiction.”Christine has definite views on the […]