Making a Literary Life by Carolyn See

Carolyn See is a writer, albeit one I have no experience of except for this book. But Making a Literary Life is a great book, so if I am only going to read one of her books, it might as well have been this one. I like everything about this book, from the old fashioned looking cover to the no nonsense advice to the shocking bits of humor. This was a fun read. Her advice boils down to a few simple rules. Write a thousand words a day, or two hours of revision. And write a charming note a day…

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Tips for Better Writing and The Readability Tests

George Orwell was like many writers-he didn’t like the way other writers wrote. Writers look at the written word a bit differently from readers. Readers might like writing filled with enough grammatical errors to make English teachers reach for their rulers. Writers hate laziness in other writers. Mark Twain hated other writers. Edgar Allen Poe complained about the writing skills of authors that have long since been forgotten. Hemingway’s short attention span style of writing was a revelation. Yet when Hemingway was writing, William Faulkner was cranking out sentences that took up entire pages. Would Hemingway be a better blogger…

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