I’m gonna warn you, this is going to be a little cheesy and “inspirational” in nature. I graduated in May. I graduated, worked at my internship for several months, got a job and lost my passion. I am the cautionary tale. But I am the cautionary tale that we aren’t really talking about. So let’s talk. … More When you lose your passion
. . . Print’s long history is riddled with errors and strikethroughs and rewrites— a fact worth celebrating and in some ways emulating, actually. In the earliest days of the book, writers and readers gathered around mistakes as a means of discourse about the work. When books were new, people saw them as fluid, changeable. … More The mindset of mistakes and technology
I remember the lesson about passive voice from my first journalism class very clearly, and not just because my professor threw something at me to prove a point. Avoiding passive voice has been firmly cemented in my mind. At the Writing Center I worked at, I often found myself struggling with a future scientist trying … More Defending passive voice
If you write or even just enjoy Young Adult literature, you NEED to pick up a copy of the short story collection (The Curiosities) I just finished by YA writers Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton and Brenna Yovanoff. Even if YA isn’t your area and you appreciate the short story form, you should still pick it up. … More YA Writers Must Read: The Curiosities
Editors often talk about coming at a piece of text with “fresh eyes” in order to see things in a different way. What this means, and what Igarashi is playfully hinting at, is that we have to hack our brains in order to get past innate blind spots and re-orient towards spotting mistakes. — “Why good … More Copy editors found to be aliens, basically
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though. ― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye Have you … More On excitedly meeting authors (but not stalking them because that is bad)
Someone once said (the jury is out on who exactly said it first) that “Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.” Well excuse me if I think that is complete and utter crap. A lot of writers have explained how stories come to them. How words just show up waiting to be … More Forcing myself to write
When you are flipping through Facebook, do you ever feel like you don’t belong? Amidst the poorly spelled posts and the “Like for Justin Bieber Share for Justin Timberlake” style posts, nerds can feel a little lost in the world of social networking, especially if your friends with a lot of people on the “normal” end … More English nerds on Facebook
I’ve been feeling a little hopeless about my future career prospects lately. It’s a difficult life for us Englishy folks and sometimes it seems like success is impossible. Yesterday, however, I got my copy of Zarconian Island by Aja Hannah. Aja went to school with me… In fact, I sat next to her in my … More I’m friends with a published novelist: Q&A with Aja Hannah
So I’ve discovered the magic that is Google Poetics. Basically it’s when you use Google Autofill to create poetry. Some of it is nonsensical. Some of it is really interesting and even deep. Is this really writing poetry? Not really… but it reminds me of the found poetry we did in highschool. Even so, this … More Google writes poetry?
