I recently read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, who claims to work—you guessed it—four hours a week. The book forced me to admit that I could be a lot more productive. As we all know, time wasters abound, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of focusing on seemingly urgent but unimportant things.… Continue Reading
Today, Gretchen Rubin reminded me that it will soon be National Novel Writing Month again. I’ve written before about my languishing novel, and Rubin suggests a writing bootcamp is just the thing to get a novel finished. Instead of doing a little bit each day, Rubin suggests doing more. That way, your juices get flowing,… Continue Reading
Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor (2013) is an inspiring book by Sylvia Ann Hewlett that offers practical advice to fulfill your professional goals. Like Donald Asher (author of Who Gets Promoted, Who Doesn’t, and Why), Hewlett informs workers—especially women and visible minorities—how the world of work operates: hard work alone won’t get you where… Continue Reading
Broadcasters and publishers receive a deluge of complaints about grammar and usage. Anna Maria Tremonti, host of CBC Radio’s The Current, dubs these complainers “the grammaratti.” And I’m sure they’ll be expressing displeasure after the grammar discussion on The Current today. Tremonti spoke with Ammon Shea, author of Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation.… Continue Reading
In a previous post, I suggested that if you commit to writing a mere 500 words per day, you’ll have a book written before the year’s out. And printing that book is easy-peasy. One way to do it is with the Asquith Press at the Toronto Public Library. The press is located at the Toronto… Continue Reading
Rebecca Solnit’s latest book, Men Explain Things to Me, is a collection of essays that explores the condescending manner in which some men speak to—not with—women. If you’re female, you know exactly what “mansplaining” is, and I’ll bet you’ve experienced it more than once. Solnit coined the term mansplaining in a blog post in which… Continue Reading
Angela Misri is a Toronto-based author who was recently featured on CBC Radio’s Here and Now. She spoke about her new detective novel, Jewel of the Thames, which features protaganist Portia Adams, a young detective with a Sherlock Holmes connection. Misri tells another story, however, that has captured my attention: her story of writing Jewel… Continue Reading
The Confidence Code is a new book by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, who argue that women are left behind in the corporate world in part because they lack the confidence that men have. The authors define confidence as the nitty-gritty stuff that turns our thoughts into actions. For example, a man applies for a… Continue Reading
Amy Einsohn, who passed away recently, is the author of The Copyeditor’s Handbook, a tome beloved by copy editors everywhere (note that we Canadians spell the profession using two words, not one). She had me hooked from the very beginning of the book: in the preface, she discusses coming across the word folderize and attempting… Continue Reading
If you’re a writer who’d like to learn a thing or two about grammar and usage, you can’t go wrong with Strunk and White’s concise classic, The Elements of Style. Another favourite of mine is Line by Line: How to Improve Your Own Writing by Claire Kehrwald Cook. Today I came across a more recent… Continue Reading