Erin McKean, dictionary editor and author of Weird and Wonderful Words, recommends these books:

Word Origins... and How We Know Them: Etymology for Everyone by Anatoly Liberman

The Warden of English: The Life of H.W. Fowler by Jenny McMorris

Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends by David Wilton

Lapsing Into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print--and How to Avoid Them by Bill Walsh

Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon by Michael Adams ("Just in case any of you thought I was joking, the essay on ephemeral language is worth reading even if you've never seen an episode of Buffy," says Erin)

In his blog Writing Fiction, author Crawford Killian tackles what he sees as the problem of autobiographical fiction: "If you're true to the events and people of your life, you're probably going to write poor fiction, because real life is messier and less organized than fiction. If you follow the requirements for good fiction, you're going to have to distort those real-life events and people... who were supposedly the inspiration for writing the novel in the first place." Click here to read the full entry.

Writing coaches always tell you to read other writers to unlock the secrets of their particular mojo. Author Marilyn Johnson found inspiration in an unlikely place: The obituary column. "Good obit writers can bring someone -- well, to life," she explains. "It's a demonstration of great writing and I was very interested in how they did it." She was so interested, in fact, she started writing obituaries herself -- and then wrote a book on the subject called The Dead Beat. We spoke to Marilyn about the obit genre:

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Check out these blogs on linguistics, language and, as one writer put it, "other geekery."

Tenser, said the Tensor

Language Geek

Lexical Matters

Café Mo

English has some peculiar ways of spelling words, but happily there is often a method to its madness. This month in the Lounge we explore, with the help of the Visual Thesaurus, some of the least among us, at least in so far as number of letters is concerned.  Continue reading...

Long before I ever wrote a word of Coupon Girl, I knew the title. I sold direct mail advertising to small business owners in Worcester. Buy one, get one, baby. Pizza guys, dry cleaners, wallpaper hangers, chiropractors--all of them were my customers. An old boss of mine said getting a mailing together was like ushering a herd of cows through a doorway. At ten in the morning, I might have been helping a pet store guy clip a parrot's toenails. By eleven I might have been shivering in the bowels of a car wash, taking a look at a defective pump, and by two, giving a formal sales presentation in a stockbrokers' boardroom. Don't wear your bathrobe under your coat is my best advice.

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