My daughter Christina discovered the art of rhetoric when she was being weaned from baby bottle to plastic cup. She’d say, “I want milk and I don’t want it in a cup” — an elegant illocutionary statement that usually got her what she wanted, her bottle.
On Writing & Reading
Here you'll find author profiles as well as mini – and not-so-mini – book reviews. I’m a writer who loves to talk about writing, so if you like to write I hope you’ll stop by now and then for some writing tips and to chat about the writing life.
A Case of the Human Condition: Jane Johnston Schoolcraft and the Indian I Wanted to Be
Growing up in Michigan, I read “Hiawatha,” but I was never exposed to the poems and stories of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, a nineteenth-century Ojibway Indian from the Upper Peninsula. I was culturally deprived.
The Writing Room: Writer’s Block and the Toxic Reader
Writer’s block? Not my problem. At least, that’s what I thought until I read Jane Anne Staw’s book, “Unstuck.” Read more.
The Writing Room: Writing About Your Mother? — Words of Caution from Lori Gottlieb
Planning to write about your mother? You might reconsider after reading Lori Gottlieb’s essay in today’s New York Times. Or are you a mother writing about your kids . . .
GodsBigBlog: Kids and Money — Saving It, Spending It, Sharing It
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Three Cups, by Mark St. Germain, is illustrated by April Willy.[/caption]
Three Cups, by Mark St. Germain, is illustrated by April Willy.[/caption]
Looking for a way to teach generosity and life-long charitable giving to the children in your family? Author Mark St.Germain and artist April Willy have a suggestion: Give them each three cups. Read more.
The Writing Room: To Niche or Not to Niche?
Where’s my niche – spiritually, philosophically, politically? As a writer? For a writer, nichelessness can be a problem. I’m a hopelessly open-minded, doubting, wondering, yearning skeptic who senses the Holy at work in all sorts of people — Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, atheists.
Writing Room: The Punch Line Always Goes Last
Everyone knows that the punch line goes at the end of a joke, not the beginning. A mystery writer knows to set the story up and get all the necessary events and clues in place before revealing that the pizza delivery guy did it. The same is true of a paragraph and a sentence.