Summary: Kurt Vonnegut advised against using semicolons, but he employed them regularly in his own writing. Learn about the eight different ways he used semicolons: What Vonnegut Said about Semicolons When the topic of semicolons arises, inevitably, someone will mention Kurt Vonnegut. Even people who don’t spend their lives writing, editing, and thinking about punctuation […]
When the topic of the Oxford comma comes up, there are typically two reactions: Exuberant support Resounding indifference There are, however, few people who argue vociferously against the Oxford comma. I am one of those few people. The Oxford comma is unnecessary. Here, I refute the most common arguments people repeatedly use to show the
So, today my essay “‘I’ve Never Met Anyone I Didn’t Disappoint’: In Your Eyes‘ Flaws and Fortes” came out as part of the revised and updated edition of Joss Whedon: The Complete Companion, making this my second essay published on Whedon’s works. And of course, in a Whedonesque twist, it’s already outdated. Don’t worry, there’s nothing too
I wrote a list for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency called Shameful Plugs. It’s pretty funny. Especially the last one. But it’s only funny if you read them all in order. There’s something ascendant — or, perhaps, descendant — about the sequence. This is my second list published at McSweeney’s. The other is my rather popular list of
In April did the Avon Bard appear, and in that self-same month did he depart whilst sun shone bright with ever-fulsome sneer and Springtime dallied chill as boggler’s art. Today, we halt anon and dream awhile to make our vulgar speeches simular, frail trump’ries though they prove to be, and smile in epilogue to his
Many people think the secret to writing is – logically enough – writing. The same mantra gets repeated over and over and over: Sit down and write. You don’t have to brainstorm, you don’t have to outline, you don’t even have to think about what you are going to write. Just write. That’s actually pretty
Things happened this year. Some of them are listed here. Big Stuff In early October, my cousin was involved in a horrific car accident. Thankfully, he survived and is now at home, but still has a lot of recovery ahead. At the end of February, I stopped working at Bank of America after 12 years.
One of the writing instructions I’ve always taken with a molecule of NaCl is to never use adverbs. I constantly see this advice in the various writing blogs I follow, most recently in a Men with Pens post by Chris Banks titled 5 Common Mistakes that Even Great Writers Make. On adverbs, Banks offers this
Really not that long ago I can still remember how that pastry used to make me smile And I know if I had one more In its wrapper it would store And maybe I’d have no cravings for awhile But those confectioners made me shiver With every picket sign they quivered Bad news on the
So, yesterday my harddrive crashed. I don’t mean hold-the-power-down-and-reboot crashed: I mean erase-reformat-and-reinstall-the-operating-system crashed. Given my present participation in NaNoWriMo (although, you wouldn’t know it from my lack of writing this past long weekend, but we’ll get to that…), my first thought was, “Oh crap!” when I realized that I last backed up my Macbook
