deep thoughts, pretentiously expressed
… but, nevertheless, something I think is true: the one indispensable trait for a reader is humility. The one indispensable trait for a writer is arrogance.
Continue reading →Category: Prose Style and Substance
Confession: I don’t take notes
Here’s a fact about me and my writing process that I have long hidden from teachers and peers: I don’t take notes. Ever. I remember way back in sixth grade when my shame first came to light. In my school district, you attended K-5 at one elementary school (and how I wanted to stay there […]
Continue reading →Book Bros, First Edition
Just for fun! A little chat about The Great Gatsby with my brother John.
Continue reading →University of Virginia Piece on College Essays
One of my favorite resources that concerns writing the college admissions essay– an annoying task– has recently disappeared from the University of Virginia website. Written by Parke Muth, a UVa admissions officer, the piece discusses what makes for an effective or ineffective college essay. I don’t agree with it entirely– it states that good essays […]
Continue reading →the ethic of minimal self-reference
I’m struggling a bit with how to write this post, as I don’t want to inadvertently endorse the dogma of minimalism. The minimalist dogma is the constantly-evoked notion that doing less in writing is always doing better. Its origins are multiple, with major players being authors like Ernest Hemingway, style guardians like Strunk and White, […]
Continue reading →I refute it thus! “Writing should always show, never tell”
“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” — Ecclesiastes 9:11 Among the many tired banalities that get […]
Continue reading →/advice
So this is a very minor thing, on balance, but I see it enough to think it’s worth saying. In the realm of practical advice: if you have to insert a word or phrase to indicate that something you’re writing means something dramatically different from the surface meaning, you’ve already failed and should try again. […]
Continue reading →cautionary tale: composition-cognitive overload
“When this news came out, I said it would be best if the supposedly-iconic character DC was going to have come out was someone for whom the revelation that he or she was gay helped tie together things we’d always known about the character and their personality, much as J.K. Rowling did with Albus Dumbledore.” […]
Continue reading →cautionary tale: overly clever metaphor
“If Oklahoma City is going to become a great team, which is not in any way guaranteed but which is within their field of possibility, they’re going to have to get used to things being weird, and to dealing with enhanced pressure. They’re going to have to commit to playing defense on every possession, because […]
Continue reading →resource on the first person for students
A webtext I wrote for the online journal Writing Commons has survived the peer review process and been published. WC’s webtexts are designed as resources for students to develop their writing and multimedia compositions; mine considers the effective use of the first person in academic writing. You can check it out here.
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