My last bit of advice on the wordriht life was this: “Keep a commonplace book. Write down any notable phrases that occur to you, or that you have come across. If it is one that you have found in another writer, and it is striking, then quote it, as the fellow said, or modify it …
Ancient Roman Toddlers
Back in my callow youth, a number of months ago, when I set out seven basic pointers for writers, the sixth one was this: “Learn other languages, preferably languages that are upstream from ours. This would include Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon. The brain is not a shoebox that ‘gets full,’ but is rather a muscle …
The Memoirs of Old Walnut Heart
My fifth bit of advice for writers was this: “Be at peace with being lousy for a while. Chesterton once said that anything worth doing was worth doing badly. He was right. Only an insufferable egoist expects to be brilliant first time out.” But let’s unpack this a bit. 1. Concert pianists do what they …
Born for the Clerihew
My fourth bit of advice for aspiring writers was this: “Stretch before your routines. If you want to write short stories, try to write Italian sonnets. If you want to write a novel, write a few essays. If you want to write opinion pieces for The Washington Post, then limber up with haiku.” As with …
Word Fussers and Whowhomers
In my recent seven-fold set of admonitions for writers, my third bit of advice for them was this: “Read mechanical helps. By this I mean dictionaries, etymological histories, books of anecdotes, dictionaries of foreign phrases, books of quotations, books on how to write dialog, and so on. The plot will usually fail to grip, so …
Read Until Your Brain Creaks
Some months ago, I listed seven brief and basic pointers for writers, and have since wanted to take time to expand on each one of those points with seven observations under each head. So here is the second point, upon which I would like to enlarge. Read. Read constantly. Read the kind of stuff you …
A Russian Doll of Writing Tips
A few weeks ago, I posted some tips for writers that garnered a bit of attention. Writers like this kind of stuff, it appears. The first tip was to get out more. A writer should have some kind of real life ballast. Here are seven tips that will help explain that first tip. And, weather …
Seven Basic and Brief Pointers for Writers
In no particular order of importance, I would encourage those who want to learn the wordriht life to approximate something like the following: 1. Know something about the world, and by this I mean the world outside of books. This might require joining the Marines, or working on an oil rig, or as a …
Three Feet of Tin Foil
I want to say something outrageous, but I need a moment to set it up. A number of years ago I heard a speaker quoting Eugene Peterson to the effect that there was something deficient in John Calvin’s theology, as evidenced by the fact that he was capable of writing all that high level theology …
Vampires, Left Behind, Propaganda, and United We Serve Lickspittles
One of the staples of discussion about basic aesthetic principles is that art has to exist for its own self, and cannot be prostituted to advance a particular cause or point of view. Perfect nonsense, of course, but that doesn’t keep it from being repeated ad nauseam. There is a truth buried in all the …