Category: Writing Issues
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In Praise of Punctuation
Several years ago, I served on a committee that was charged with revising the basic composition textbook used by Columbus State’s English Department. The committee consisted of 10-12 English faculty members, both full-time and adjunct. All were excellent writers. Many of them, besides teaching, had their work published. When it came time to revise the…
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Poem by Committee: How It Worked *
There’s an old saying that is trite but often true: “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” Get too many people managing a project and “creative differences” among them cause the project to fail. That could have happened when members of the 2022 CLSC** Class Vigil Committee were asked to help write a poem for their…
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The Danger of “Inflexible” Words
“The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.” English writer and socialite Lady Dorothy Nevill spoke these words over a century ago, but an Ohio Congressman should have heeded their wisdom before speaking rashly about…
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“Feinblum List” helps focus writing-related activities
Back at the start of the year, I hired book marketing specialist Brian Feinblum to strengthen my ability to promote and sell my writing. Over a three-month period, we held seven phone conferences, each focused on a different component of book marketing. From those conferences, I composed a to-do list of measures that, over the…
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Lessons I Learned from Publishing Book #2
To clarify what I learned from publishing my second book, I need to discuss the errors I made writing my first — Fast-Pitch Love (Clean Reads, 2014). First, I had too many POVs. It seemed every character – major or minor – had a voice in the story. Eventually, I gave Jace, the protagonist, the…
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HE WROTE, SHE WROTE: ANOTHER APPROACH TO GENDER-NEUTRAL LANGUAGE
“Just to the extent that man has freed himself from the dominion of ghosts he has advanced; to that extent he has freed himself from the tyrant’s poison. Man has found that he must give liberty to others in order to have it himself. He has found that a master is a slave; that a…