Mushroom Man
Mycellium have the potential to clean up toxic waste, rein in E. coli, and cure Alzheimer’s disease. Plus they make a mighty fine addition to any stir fry.
Motivation-Reaction Units: Cracking the Code of Good Writing
What’s the secret to good prose? What makes it work—not just on the aesthetic level of vivid and poetic word choices, but on the deeper and ultimately more important level of functionality?
Summer Memories
Jagged, shattered, fragmented shards of memory swirled, and then coalesced in her mind. Those hands. Those hands close to her son’s throat.
How Can I Keep From Singing?
If anyone had told me, a decade ago, that I would find such satisfaction and pleasure from singing old hymns liberally laced with gloom and doom and Hellfire, I would probably have been incredulous.
The Surprising Effect of Too Much Clarity in a Story
This week’s video warns against the temptation to eliminate all subtlety and ambiguity.
Excuse Me, Did You Misplace Your Modifier?
One of the most common, and to the careful reader, one of the most distracting, errors made by writers, even the so-called professionals, is the misplaced or “dangling” modifier.
Stars In My Eyes
The magic of the moment when a child realizes that the planets and the stars are real, not just pictures in story books or drawings in a science text, can profoundly affect her understanding of other life experiences.
Episodic Storytelling? Here’s Why
This week’s video offers some pointers for avoiding dead-end events in your stories.
The Portable Writing Teacher
Aspiring writers are fortunate: to find all the great teachers they need, and more, they just have to walk into their local library.





































