- What I Learned About My Writing By Seeing Only The Punctuation
- There were 155 efforts to censor books in US schools and libraries, group says
- The Plagiarism Scandal That Ended Nella Larsen’s Career
- The 'Goodnight Moon' House (Cobble Court)
- Writing Compassionately about Parents
- The Different Verb Tenses and Why They — and Tense Sequence — Matter
- The Oddness of Oz
- The 100 Best Baseball Books Ever Written
What I Learned About My Writing By Seeing Only The Punctuation
I’ve saved this piece until after NaNoWriMo so as not to distract you from the all-important task of writing. But once you’ve completed that draft of your novel, take a look at this article (which I find fascinating) and see if it can help you revise and polish what you’ve written.
There were 155 efforts to censor books in US schools and libraries, group says
The American Library Association says it has provided legal guidance and support to a number of libraries impacted by the “dramatic uptick” of attempts to remove books concerning LGBTQ issues and people of color.
Since June 1, the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom has tracked 155 incidents across the country and has provided support and consultation in 120 of those cases, the association said.
The Plagiarism Scandal That Ended Nella Larsen’s Career
it was another of her [Larsen’s] pieces, the short story “Sanctuary,” published in 1930, that was her most controversial. The story tangled Larsen into a claim of plagiarism and as literature scholar Hildegard Hoeller explains, “caused a scandal from which she—as many critics have pointed out—would never quite recover.”
This article considers the important question of who, if anyone, owns a story that originates in the folklore tradition.
The ‘Goodnight Moon’ House (Cobble Court)
The next time you visit New York City, you might want to take time to scope out Cobble Court in Greenwich Village, which Margaret Wise Brown used as a writing studio. Read about the colorful history of the small building that “remains under the watchful eyes of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.”
Writing Compassionately about Parents
“Many of us end up writing about our family dynamics in memoir and personal essays, whether we planned to or not,” says writer and editor Katie Bannon. Here she offers some advice on how to write compassionately about complicated family dynamics.
Though aimed at nonfiction writers, Bannon’s advice can help both writers and readers of fiction as well in understanding how the family, where our life stories start, influences who we become.
The Different Verb Tenses and Why They — and Tense Sequence — Matter
NaNoWriMo may be over, but the English comp teacher in me always loves to see grammar guidance pieces like this. This one is succinct but to the point. “You may be surprised to find how many writers get this wrong — and appreciate even more the work of those who get it right.”
The Oddness of Oz
The year 2000 is the centenary of a famous and much-loved but essentially very odd children’s classic: L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. Those who recall the story only from childhood reading, or from the MGM film, have perhaps never realized how strange the original book and its sequels are.
This article, originally published in 2000, explains how—and perhaps why—L. Frank Baum’s works are so strange.
The 100 Best Baseball Books Ever Written
“Baseball is the writer’s game, and these indispensable books prove it.”
Because it’s winter and I miss baseball.
© 2021 by Mary Daniels Brown
Here is what one of my short stories looks like without words. I sure use a lot of commas!
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Very interesting, Liz. I keep meaning to find a piece of my own writing to plug in, but I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by end-of-year catching up and holiday preparations. So thanks for trying it out. I’m curious: Did this exercise have any effect on the way you’ll write in the future? I have a feeling that every piece gets written in the way it needs to be written and that this exercise will therefore be entertaining but not otherwise useful. What are your thoughts?
It just reinforced that I’m using longer sentences in my fiction than I used to–but it was a conscious choice.