Updike on the Aging Writer
In the work John Updike was editing before he died, he muses about the "advantages, for a writer, of youth and obscurity." You a...
Showing posts with the label Writing
The Perfect Office
My inner introvert is drooling over this dream space, a perfect private library. The architect had three simple requests from his clie...
A PhD Flashback: "Revision"
The day I submitted what I thought was the final form of a chapter, and @DrJasonKLee was all like:
Writing One True Sentence
Hemingway's recipe for overcoming writer's block: Write one true sentence. Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could n...
Don't Fritter . . .
A bit of productivity advice D. A. Carson gives in a recent interview : Don’t fritter. When you work, work hard; when you are not working,...
Being Wrong When you Write
When you write you have to be willing to be wrong. –Grant Osbourne, as quoted by Stanley E. Porter and Eckhard J. Schnabel in the foreword ...
The Complexity of Unalloyed Dialogue
Updike on Hemingway: It was he who showed us all how much tension and complexity unalloyed dialogue can convey, and how much poetry lurks...
John Piper Writing Desiring God (circa 1986)
In a recent interview , Piper describes some of his writing process. But he fails to discuss his writing processor: That machine drips with...
Writing with a loaded gun
I like Ben Meyers' incisive and entertaining list of " 13 Theses on Writing ." One of my favorites is #2: Writing and editi...
The Writer as a Shepherd
I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the reader will most ce...
"Taking Notes" on the Vanity of Human Life and Learning
Any scholar or serious reader worth his or her salt takes notes. Right? In the latest issue of London Review of Books , historian Keith T...
Writer's Block
Writer's block is the ultimate nightmare of anyone who lives by his pen. — Terry Teachout, " When Artists Dry Up: What makes great ...
Knowing my Limits
At the beginning of this semester, my thesis for a research project I'm working on included this statement: "This research paper w...
Beware the Post-Apocalyptic Misplaced Modifier
Typos have an uncanny ability to survive readings and re-readings. If there is anything that could survive a nuclear attack, it is probably ...
Pine Log Politics: What I learned about Journalism from my Undergraduate Newspaper
My recent experience with "WIRED" magazine reminded me of the last time I wrote a letter to the editor, with much poorer results....
Writing Advice: Save the Bewildered Reader!
In introducing William Strunk's "little book" on style and grammar, E.B. White writes, All through The Elements of Style one ...
It might be wrong, but I tend to hold books designed to enhance writing and research to a higher standard of grammatical integrity
From p. 192 of The Craft of Research , 3rd edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
Load More
No More Posts!
