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 . . .
The Writing Room
I’m a writer who loves to talk about writing, so if you’re a writer or an aspiring writer I hope you'll stop by now and then and keep me company . . . You’ll find writing tips here as well as my thoughts on the writing life. Watch out, though. The Grammar Geek will be putting in her two cents from time to time.
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.
The Writing Room: Is Less More? Or Is More More?
What’s wrong with this sentence? “It was a letter from my lover; my heart thumped, my stomach sank, my breath stopped, and my hands shook as I opened it.”
The Writing Room: Two Must-Have Craft Journals for the Literary Writer
Of all the books and magazines that come my way each week, my favorites are the ones that talk about writing — like Poets & Writers and Writer’s Chronicle. Read more.
Writing Room: Ending Paragraphs and Sentences with a Bang
The most powerful place in a paragraph is its last sentence. More precisely, the most powerful place in a paragraph is the last few words of that sentence. Read more.