That’s what you do when outlining some knotty bit of technical guidance for the very first time: “Thorough,” you say to yourself. You go so deep as to make a tree diagram; you have so many levels of indenting going on that by the fourth or fifth you’re unable to focus any longer. Bullet point […]

One of most overlooked pages of a book is the back of the title page. Small print contains all of the publisher’s address information, ISBNs, and all sorts of other legal stuff. Unless a designer informs you there isn’t enough copy here or it’s overflowing into the following page, most authors don’t pay any attention […]

Every opening line are a bet. It asks a stranger for their time, and only allows you about one breath to explain why they should grant it. Writers agonize over what to say in those words yet forget how much they weigh. Too many writers trip their readers over the starting line by making it […]

You begin an essay confidently, without knowing how to speak in your own voice. Because you believe piling quotes on top of quotes will make you sound smarter, you fill page after page with direct quotations. More often then not, this results less from malice than from a lack of awareness. You are trying to […]