It's time once again for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). As the website explains, it's "for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved." Visit the NaNoWriMo website to learn more.

Last night, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses held its annual Spelling Bee in New York, supporting the work of independent literary publishers, and once again the Visual Thesaurus was proud to play a part. For the sixth consecutive year, the VT supplied the words that challenged the literary contestants. This year, the British novelist Patrick McGrath emerged victorious.  Continue reading...

Browsing the shelves of a hushed private library recently, I came across a small book, Essays on Modern Novelists, by William Lyon Phelps. The author's name rang a faint bell, so I took the book down, blew off decades of dust, opened its stiff brown covers, and flipped through its yellowed pages, many of them still uncut.  Continue reading...

I am 56 years old. I have an honors degree in political science. I've written professionally for 33 years and was a senior editor at a metropolitan daily for six of them. And I just signed up for some more continuing education. Yes, more lessons!  Continue reading...

You and I want to be good writers, but what will make our writing good? Inspiration, perspiration, determination, and endless revision — all fine answers, but the biggest answer is: good writing captures life.  Continue reading...

Writing for The Boston Globe, NYU doctoral candidate Rachael Scarborough King reported on recent studies that cast doubt on the commonly held assumption that William Shakespeare invented many of the words we use today.  Continue reading...