craft – Veni. Vidi. Scripsi.

Writing More Like Elmore

A few years back I came across Elmore Leonard’s short list of rules for writing. The man had a way of making stories feel like real life overheard. One line from him has stayed with me: “My most important rule is one that sums up the ten. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”ContinueContinue reading “Writing More Like Elmore”

Writing Like You Talk — And Meaning It

I came late to the em dash. Embarrassingly late, really… Like a good restaurant that’s been there all along, right down the street, and you just kept driving past. For most of my writing life, I treated punctuation like traffic signals. Period: stop. Comma: slow down. Semicolon: pause, but stay with me. Colon: something formalContinueContinue reading “Writing Like You Talk — And Meaning It”