How to improve writing (no. 43)
The work I did to improve two sentences in a recent post.
William Zinsser, listening
“People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.”
Draft, draft, draft, draft
John McPhee on revision.
Fran Lebowitz on voice
“Even on the phone there’s a difference between a female voice and a male voice.”
Recently updated
An outliner gets Dropbox syncing.
Little Outliner
“I never make outlines, but I do ask students to map paragraphs using the Christensen method, and Little Outliner is perfect for doing that work on the big screen.”
About machine-scoring
“It is worth asking: is this scheme meant to “free” professors for other tasks, or for unemployment?”
William Maxwell on sentences
“If a good sentence occurs in an otherwise boring paragraph, I cut it out, rubber-cement it to a sheet of typewriter paper, and put it in a folder. It’s just like catching a fish in a creek.”
Browser notepad
Type this text into your browser’s address bar to create a temporary notepad.
Willa Cather’s letters
For the first time.
Facebook CEO likes paper, pens
She confesses to the New York Times.
DSONGS
This fragment lives on my desk, a scrap of fambly papyrus.
Marianne Moore on writing
“A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.”
How to improve writing (no. 42)
“The study of law is something new and unfamiliar to most of you — unlike any other schooling that you have ever known before.”
How to improve writing (no. 41)
This post is the first to improve my writing.
Garner covers 2012
Bryan Garner collects some news of the year in language and writing.
Followers
“To write, though, is not to sniff for what’s popular but to keep one’s nose to the ground — and to follow wherever it leads.”
Note-taking at Harvard
From Harvard University’s museums and libraries, a virtual exhibition about note-taking.
“I remember”
The artist and writer Joe Brainard (1942–1994) gave the world a deceptively simple writing prompt: “I remember,” two words to begin a sentence or a paragraph.
From The Waste Books
“I forget most of what I have read, just as I do most of what I have eaten, but I know that both contribute no less to the conservation of my mind and my body on that account.”
“The Writing Revolution”
In the October 2012 Atlantic, Peg Tyre reports on an effort to reimagine the teaching of writing at one Staten Island high school.
Nicholson Baker, re: Maeve Brennan
Maeve Brennan mentioned in a New York Times Q. and A. with Nicholson Baker.
How to improve writing (no. 40)
From a box of Twinings teabags.
How to improve writing (no. 39)
More and more often, I am happy getting it, whatever it is, from the library.
William Kennick on writing
“I want you to be writers of prose, not processors of words.”
A Plain Text Primer
At A Better Mess, Michael Schechter is writing about the benefits of working with plain text files.
Matthew Crawford on problems
A philosopher and mechanic on finding problems.
Recently updated
This American Life has posted video of “Stiff as a Board, Light as a Feather.”
David Rakoff (1964–2012)
I’m listening again to “Stiff as a Board, Light as a Feather.”
The sound of one door slamming
From a Salinger story: “a striking and handsome supply of good, sharp pencils and plenty of paper.”