How to improve writing (no. 63)
From The New Yorker website, a sentence that needs rethinking.
Editing Donald Trump
From The New Yorker.
Orderly, dark and deep
Verlyn Klinkenborg (born in Colorado, living in upstate New York) recounts waking up with “a deep taxonomic yearning” to identify the trees around him.
The Lettermate
For anyone who has trouble writing in a straight line.
Verlyn Klinkenborg on writing
Verlyn Klinkenborg on what writing does.
Verlyn Klinkenborg: “old world,” “cold week”
My enthusiasm for Several Short Sentences about Writing prompted me to pick up The Rural Life.
Recently updated
“The Power of the Printed Word,” now with Garrison Keillor’s advice on how to write a personal letter.
How to improve writing (no. 62)
From the bag holding a baguette.
William Maxwell on his habit of work
æI like to work in my bathrobe and pajamas, after breakfast, until I suddenly perceive, from what’s on the page in the typewriter, that I’ve lost my judgment.”
The pompous style in Nancy
“So accustomed are we to the pompous style as the voice of authority that students can’t be blamed for thinking it the way they should write in school.”
A wrongheaded “dead words” movement
Dressing up in an awkward costume doesn’t make a writer look smart. It makes a writer look awkward — and dumb. Did I peruse the tome? No, I read the book.
William Maxwell: “the greatest pleasure there is”
It’s generosity.
Undergrads and creative writing
Pyramid (as in scheme ) is a metaphor often applied to creative-writing programs.
A plumbing tale
“Don’t use hydrochloric acid. It eats hell out of pipes.”
notepad.cc
A piece of paper in the cloud.
How to improve writing (no. 61)
Omit needless words, Mark Trail.
“[I]n the middle of his own consciousness”
A passage from Death Comes for the Archbishop.
Willa Cather on writing
“The only reason I write is that it interests me more than any other activity I’ve ever found.”
Bryan Garner on “The fallacy of intelligibility”
A short piece about the idea that it doesn’t matter how you write it as long as they understand what you mean.
Zinsser, the Pro’s Choice
When we needed a can of primer last week, I noticed the Zinsser brand in our Ace Hardware.
How to improve writing (no. 60)
A sentence from Reuters.
From Moby-Dick
“Nothing exists in itself.”
From Robert Walser
“Sunday is something that only ever existed at home, where you were a child.”
Dead Writers Perfume®
“The Dead Writers Perfume® blend evokes the feeling of sitting in an old library chair paging through yellowed copies of Hemingway, Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, Poe, and more.”
How to improve writing (no. 59)
“Luckily, the situation could have been far worse.”
How to improve writing (no. 58)
“The current investigation is ongoing.”
Joseph Mitchell and small words
“I’ll search endlessly for the right small words of a few syllables that hold something up.”
One more piece of paper
The PocketMod.
William Shawn, paper and pencil
The everyday carry.
Joseph Mitchell, paper and pencil
The everyday carry.