The Rolling Stones Discover America, my eyewitness account of a month-long Stones tour in 1969, became an Amazon Kindle Single e-book early this year, and now Hachette is publishing it as an audio book. When Hachette Audio's editor Anthony Goff and I shook hands on the deal in June, I asked if I could narrate the book.  Continue reading...

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.

As a teacher, writer and editor, I spend a significant portion of my life reminding others (and myself) that certain pairs of words are not interchangeable, although they might seem to be. Now isn't the same as know, and affect can't pinch-hit for effect. Lose vs. loose is a particular frustration as of late. However, in all of my many years of teaching and writing, no one has ever asked me whether they ought to use O or oh, and this makes me sad.  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...

There is nothing worse than feeling sick and having to write. (Well, feeling sick and having to lift bricks might come close.) If you ever face this problem, here are five tips.  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...