Andy Unedited
Exploring Books, Life, and Writing
T. S. Eliot famously said, “Good writers borrow. Great writers steal.” As it turns out, Pablo Picasso and Oscar Wilde are also credited with saying the same thing—which perhaps proves how true the saying is. While we actually can’t find any evidence that Eliot made this statement, he did say say something very much like …
Benjamin Dreyer is the Stephen Colbert of grammar, style, and punctuation—informative while always being cheerfully acerbic. When he tells us in Dreyer’s English to never use actually, it is “because, seriously, it serves no purpose I can think of except to irritate.” When offering examples, Dreyer also gives us cause to smile. Honorary titles should …
In a day of fake news, alternative facts, and politicians regularly not just massaging the truth but fabricating it to their own benefit, the work of George Orwell seems like it was written in response to today’s news. The writer best known for 1984 and Animal Farm was adamant in his opposition to what he …
One of the many delightful features of Fredrik Backman’s bestselling novel is his frequent use of apt similes and metaphors to paint vivid, miniature portraits of the cantankerous and lovable main character in A Man Called Ove.
Ron Brackin tells us, “Writers block occurs when a writer has nothing to say. Unfortunately not all writers experience it.” But you are not like that. No, no, no. Obviously, you have something to say, even if you are not quite sure at the moment what that is. So how do you get unstuck?
Sometimes our writing is stuck because we don’t know where to start. For some of us, we need to know where we are going to end up before we can begin. And if we don’t, the ink has run out, our pencil is down to a nub, our muse is silent, and the battery to …
So you are a writer with lots of ideas, but don’t know where to start. Or you have no ideas, with the same result. What do you do? Here are a few simple ideas to get you going.
A publishing colleague of mine who worked with our book printers was fond of telling me, “With all the things that can go wrong in producing a book, it’s amazing the ink ever hits the page.” What’s true for printers is true in spades for writers. With so many reasons for writer’s block it’s a …
My wife murders clichés. But because these are unpremeditated, we should probably reduce the charges to manslaughter.
Bobby Fischer was a World Chess Champion who stood out as an eccentric genius in a field full of eccentric geniuses. As portrayed in the movie Pawn Sacrifice, he walked out of a chess match complaining about the lighting, ransacked his own hotel rooms looking for bugging devices, thought the Russians were watching him through …