It was a Friday night and I was sitting at my computer studying Google maps. I had to give a speech to more than 200 people the next morning and — given my notoriously bad sense of direction — wanted to be sure I was heading for the right place.

Suddenly, my husband yelled from the basement four words no homeowner wants to hear: "We have a leak."  Continue reading...

Michael Lydon, a well-known writer on popular music since the 1960s, has for many years also been writing about writing. Lydon's essays, written with a colloquial clarity, shed fresh light on familiar and not so familiar aspects of the writing art. Here Lydon shines a light on literary realism, the style by which writers "make the imaginary real and the real imaginary."  Continue reading...

In the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, competitors are asked to write incredibly bad opening sentences to incredibly bad novels. The 2010 winner for worst opening line features a comparison to "the world's thirstiest gerbil." Read the whole thing, and the rest of the results, here.

A group of judges is gathered in court. But instead of looking grand and imperial in their robes, they appear to be naked. And, puzzlingly, they are arrayed, under blankets, in a selection of beds spread out behind the bench.  Continue reading...

Erin Brenner of Right Touch Editing provides "bite-sized lessons to improve your writing" on her engaging blog The Writing Resource. In the latest installment of Erin's series on the correct use of punctuation, she offers tips on using the apostrophe to create possessive nouns.  Continue reading...

Michael Lydon, a well-known writer on popular music since the 1960s, has for many years also been writing about writing. Lydon's essays, written with a colloquial clarity, shed fresh light on familiar and not so familiar aspects of the writing art. Here Lydon takes issue with the novelist Elmore Leonard's "rules" against descriptive writing.  Continue reading...