One secret to writing well is … there is no secret! There’s no substitute for simply sitting down day after day to practice the craft and learn from your mistakes. Plus, childhood mixups around word definitions can lead to some funny stories...
Bonnie Hearn Hill’s essay “What I Wish I’d Known” offers aspiring authors lots of great tips gleaned from Hill’s long career of writing books. The essay won a contest sponsored by The Writer magazine. This is part of a...
Martha shares her childhood misunderstanding of the term State of the Union. Who knew it wasn’t an annual contest to determine the best one of all 50 states? This is part of a complete episode.
How do actors bring Shakespeare’s lines to life so that modern audiences immediately understand the text? One way is to emphasize the names of people and places at certain points. That technique is called billboarding. And: Anyone for an...
This entry submitted to Wordsmith.org’s pangram contest was timely, but didn’t win: Ariana Grande visited a bakery, licked a doughnut, and made an unpatriotic, jejune exclamation; she was required to apologize thereafter. This is part of...
This lyrical entry in Wordsmith.org’s pangram contest would have been a strong contender had it not been for the fact that it includes all but one letter of the alphabet: A quivering butterfly wing conjures a zephyr that expands to a storm...