The Spotlight

In a funny coincidence, I spoke last month at the HippoCamp Creative Nonfiction conference, and both another speaker and myself accidentally quoted the exact same passage from the exact same book.

Who was this popular author? Toni Morrison? Trevor Noah? Nora Roberts?

Nope. Verlyn Klinkenborg:

Know what each sentence says,
What it doesn’t say,
And what it implies.
Of these, the hardest is knowing what each sentence actually says.
Continue reading “The Spotlight”

Time To Write

Awhile back, at a writers’ conference, a young woman raised her hand during a panel and asked, “I just recently graduated from college and it’s hard for me to find time to write now. How can we be paid for our writing?”

One of the panelists made a noise that sounded like a cross between a bus door opening and a dog coughing. “No one is going to give you money to write,” they said. “I mean, get a job.”
Continue reading “Time To Write”

Tagging Dialogue

Recently, a scourge that occasionally plagues the writing community is flaring up again. It’s seductive, and infectious, and once it worms its way into a writer’s prose, it lames it, leaving it to lurch around on the page. For awhile, we thought it eradicated. But a few poorly researched articles popped up online, which got picked up by some seriously misguided souls, and together, they’re sowing confusion. Now, an outbreak of epidemic proportions looms.

The scourge’s name? “Said is Dead.”

Never heard of it? Good. Clearly you’re making solid life choices. Continue reading “Tagging Dialogue”