I have always loved reading for pleasure. And for the most part, I love all the books I read. That’s because I don’t read books I don’t like. I have two—and only two—rules for reading: Outside of an English class, you don’t have to read a book just because someone says it’s good. (There may …read more…
The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator. Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money. Never use the word then as a conjunction—we have and for this purpose. Substituting then is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of …read more…
Every November is National Novel Writing Month, an opportunity to write a 50,000 word novel. Sponsored by the Office of Letters and Light, a California-based nonprofit organization which hosts some of the largest literary events in the world, it started in 1999 with 140 participants, and last year had over a quarter million participants in …read more…
I have just spent the last year being in and out of classrooms, and I noticed that many of the English classrooms (especially in middle school) displayed posters that provided synonyms for the word “said.” In one room I saw poster that extended horizontally over half the length of the wall, listing over 300 “synonyms” …read more…
For some time now, I have wanted to do a blog post about my writing process for the reviews I do here, in an attempt to demystify my writing process for my students. I want to be very clear about one important thing up front: writing for this blog is very different that some of …read more…
I just found out about another interesting digital story-telling tool: Google Search Stories. This tool allows you to make 30-second movies, like the one Google used during the 2010 Super Bowl. Now, you can’t do all the neat things that they did in the commercial, but you can still come up with some creative stuff. …read more…
I’ve reviewed the Hank Zipzer books twice, and while I’ve had plenty to say about Hank Zipzer and Henry Winkler, I said nothing about Mr. Winkler’s cowriter, Lin Oliver, because I had never heard of her until I encountered the Hank Zipzer books, and knew nothing of her writing. So I did what I always …read more…
Nineteen-year-old Ed Kennedy, a cabdriver in Australia, almost accidentally stops a bank robbery and nabs the would-be thief, thus achieving his Warholian fifteen minutes of fame. This would seem to be the high point in a life of mediocrity, but then a series of playing cards begin arriving in Ed’s mail, each with a set …read more…
