Avoid cliches like the plague if you want your writing to improve. You’ve heard that before, I know, but seriously–you need another cliche-infested sentence like you need a hole in the head. I believe it was George Orwell who said that if a phrase even rings familiar, it’s a cliche. So we’re not talking about [...]

The day dawned over the Ghats, the day rose over the Blue Mountain, and churning through the grey, rapt valleys, swirled up and swam across the whole air. The day rose into the air and with it rose the dust of the morning, and the carts began to creak round the bulging rocks and the [...]

Today I am grumpy. It seems one of the most popular search terms for sending people to my blog is “words to use instead of ‘said’.” People, why are you searching for this? What’s wrong with “said”? I have touched on this in an earlier post, but I want to reiterate. Even in more “colorful” [...]

Kevin Streelman arrived, as always, by car. He placed his Callaway golf clubs in the trunk of his Toyota Camry parked outside his condo in Scottsdale, Ariz., wasted two hours in Phoenix rush hour and then drove 300 miles northwest to Las Vegas. He stopped only once, for gas. Streelman already had logged almost 6,000 [...]

My friend Vox wrote an excellent post this morning on getting mainstream media to pay attention to issues that don’t get enough coverage. Not only that, but her guide includes tips that any writer who wants to break into newspapers can use. Examples: Write a lede that is one or two sentences long and says, [...]

Hank Stuever of the Washington Post wrote an excellent profile of Bob Barker , who is retiring in June, for yesterday’s paper. I was entertained, amused, and wowed. It’s not all sunny and smiles, of course, but there’s a wonderful exuberance in the writing. I wasn’t familiar with Stuever’s work, but I’ll be on the [...]