When people ask me the one thing they can do to improve their writing and I tell them to read more, I often receive shocked looks in return. Is it really that simple?

Well, no, of course it isn't. But reading -- and reading well -- can make a huge difference to your writing life. Here are seven tips to ensure you're doing it right.  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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Back when I was entertainment editor at a metropolitan daily, my phone used to ring several times an hour with calls from publicists. I anticipated these calls with about as much enthusiasm as a cat displays for a vet.  Continue reading...

We writers about writing mostly write about "good" writing; we give our readers helpful hints on how to write well and point them to masters like Homer and Dickens to show them how it's done.

Good writing, however, does not form the bulk of writing. Like islands lost in the vast Pacific, writing's great works rise as rare peaks above endless oceans of bad writing, books and journals in which the writing is so poor or feeble or dull or trivial or trite or pompous or false or malicious or stupid that it lives for a day and dies away.  Continue reading...

I was born organized. In fact, I'm the kind of nut-bar who writes a family meal plan once a week. As a child, I longed to sort our family's books by size and color (no one would let me!). Now that I'm the mom, my spice drawer is alphabetized.  Continue reading...

Have you used any of these words in your writing?

• Low-hanging fruit
• Learnings
• Efforting

They are buzzwords, popular industry words that people use to impress others.  Continue reading...