At the same time my husband and I were in between books in a fantasy trilogy, waiting for the next one to arrive at our library, we were goi...

Remember that post I wrote a couple weeks ago, saying that English classes should teach students how to write things they will actually be w...

Retyping, an exercise in noticing how a writer writes. Today, I'll retype a passage from Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro's "Free...

My final flash fiction attempt for the writing contest I entered was the attempt I submitted (and was rejected based on). I originally titl...

And now for the third flash fiction attempt (I don't know that these got significantly better as I continued on writing them): Jessi...

 My second flash fiction attempt looked like this. In my defense, it was late at night when I wrote it. “It feels like a perfect night to ...

As a review from last week: I entered a flash fiction writing contest, and I didn't win (whoops, I didn't mention that part earlier,...

I've been thinking about musicals lately and how they work. Most importantly, is there a written equivalent to a "show tune" i...

Today, we discuss endings in honor of the last of the Writing Tools  posts. Roy Peter Clark notes that everything has an ending; sentences...

If I was really cool and planned ahead more, I would have posted this closer to Martin Luther King Day. Oh well. In Writing Tools , Roy Pe...

What I wrote down: Active verbs move the action and reveal the actors. Passive verbs emphasize the receiver, the victim. The verb "to ...