Tuesday, October 22, 2019

The Writing Workshop Book is Out!


The big news in our lab this week: The Writing Workshop Book is finally out!  It includes all of the material that was in the blog posts (except revised and edited, so . . . better) plus several new chapters.

Saturday, January 5, 2019

Writing Workshop: Omit Needless Words

 
Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.—Strunk & White, The Elements of Style, 1959 (2000)

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Writing Workshop: Choose Good Words



[Hemingway] has no courage . . . He has never been known to use a word that might cause the reader to check with a dictionary. -William Faulkner

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? -Ernest Hemingway

We've arrived at the part of the writing workshop where we talk about revising. For the next several chapters, I will assume that you already have a bad draft of whatever you are writing, and you are ready to revise it into a better draft. These chapters are about polishing up words, sentences and paragraphs.

Sunday, December 2, 2018

Writing Workshop: Talks and Posters


One of the underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.  -William Zinsser

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Parasites in Peril


Last week I received an email from the academic publishing giant Elsevier, inviting me to check out Elsevier’s new Open Science page. I don’t believe for one minute that Elsevier supports open science, but I found the email encouraging, because it shows that even Elsevier knows its current business model is unsustainable.

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Sunday, July 15, 2018

Writing Workshop: The Term Plan

Writing productively is about actions that you aren't doing but could easily do: Making a schedule, setting clear goals, keeping track of your work, rewarding yourself, and building good habits. -Paul J. Silvia