Noted music writer Michael Lydon explains how to apply the rule "Let the little come out of the big" to the art of writing.

Several years ago I wrote a short book about guitar playing, Let the Little Come Out of the Big, my approach to the ancient and beautiful instrument.  Continue reading...

The essence of writing's value to humanity is this: the art can convey thought from one human to another. As in gift giving, in writing it's the thought that counts.  Continue reading...

Last fall, Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer wrote here and in his New York Times column about writers who use a we voice when truly they are I's writing personal opinions. In a few cases, Zimmer wrote, he'd accept using the plural pronoun for the singular, officially called nosism, from nos, we in Latin, but in general he deplored the practice. Using we for I opens writers up to "charges of gutlessness and self-importance," Zimmer wrote; "the we disease...continues to infect many written genres."  Continue reading...

To open a writing class at a recent conference of New York City high school newspaper kids, I wrote this sentence on the board:

The woman stood on the hillside and looked down at the valley below.

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Writing offers many advantages as a medium for thought. Writing can be accurate: true in detail to fact and nuance; versatile: no subject is beyond its grasp; imperishable: first editions return in time to dust, but texts can be reprinted; economical: a slim volume can hold a treasury of ideas.  Continue reading...

Recently I wrote here about trivial purposeful falsity, TPF for short, a major cause of writing death. Here’s another: narcissism.  Continue reading...

In our first writing class every September, I tell my students to print in their notebooks, big capital letters, please, that to tell a story, a writer must:

GET A PERSON IN A PLACE

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