[I’m stealing the idea of a joy report from my friend Dakota (who stole it from someone else)–check out his joy report here!] Focus on the Positive We all have different trials and tribulations in our lives, many of which have been compounded by the pandemic. To help get us Read more
Critical Thinking Skills In school, we’re taught from an early age that there are right answers and wrong answers. Back in my day, it was the red pen on homework and test papers that signified what was wrong. The more red marks, the lower the grade. It’s, of course, important Read more
The First Rule of Writing Is… The first rule of writing is… I know some of you want to finish that sentence with “…you do not talk about writing.” But while that may be the first rule of Fight Club, that is NOT the first rule of writing. The first Read more
The Fallacy of Productivity You may have seen the memes on social media, things like Shakespeare having written King Lear while quarantined during the plague. Or heard of people using this time of sheltering-in-place to learn or perfect a new skill. Or to dive into that stack of books they’ve Read more
The Academic Writing Virtual Retreat Video Series In collaboration with Nicole Shea, Ph.D. and Adeline Boettcher, Ph.D., I am very excited to be co-leading the Academic Writing Virtual Retreat Video Series–coming soon! These free “bite-sized” videos will be aimed at promoting our retreat’s mission: providing you with the tools and Read more
*With acknowledgement to Robert Fulghum of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten Lessons from Writing A year ago, in January 2019, I launched my website and “officially” hung out my shingle as a full-time editor, proofreader, and writing consultant. Prior to that, I had done freelance Read more
Keeping New Year’s Resolutions According to history.com, it was the ancient Babylonians, 4,000 years ago, who first made New Year’s resolutions and celebrated the new year as such. Nowadays, nearly half of all Americans say they make resolutions. Of the people who make New Year’s resolutions, though, only a small Read more
“I love rules precisely because they make transgression possible.” ~François Camoin (“The Texture of Fiction”) A Stickler for Punctuation Rules? Many people have noted the contradictory nature of the two main aspects of my professional life. I am, on the one hand, a diligent technical/academic editor and proofreader who is Read more
Author’s Note: A couple of months ago, I had a post about generating writing ideas. That post focused on general writing ideas, though, and not creative writing (i.e., poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction). When generating creative writing ideas, my approach is a bit different, but there are some similarities, particularly in Read more
So Many Books to Choose from! One of the most awesome things about trying to choose just a handful of book titles to highlight is that there are so many to choose from! For that reason, I want to offer a big encouraging THANK YOU to anyone who writes. Sharing Read more