All Blog Posts Tagged 'writing' (141)

What are nominalizations?

Nominalizations are the noun forms of action verbs, as seen here:

Sample action verbs - Corresponding nouns

illustrate – illustration

fail – failure

react – reaction

announce – announcement

increase (v.) – increase (n.) 

Why are they bad, and how do I fix them?

Nominalizations have…

Yesterday a new person joined my Facebook page because they love my Knights of Camelot series. It's a strange feeling that my words have whizzed all the way over to the US and touched someone enough to prompt them to take such action. I am so deeply touched by the effort and kindness. I also amazed that other people out there love my boys as much as me!

I write in a genre that encourages contact with people who enjoy world building as much as the author - we are often referred to as…

Active and Passive Voice: When you are active, you do something. When you are passive, things happen to you. This is the same concept as the active and passive voice in sentences.

In the active voice, the subject performs the action described by the main verb. In the passive voice, the action…

Writing style comprises four characteristics:

1.   Formality

2.   Language complexity

3.   Objectivity, and

4.   Information depth.

The purpose you are trying to accomplish, the readers’ needs, your relationship with the reader, and the type of document affect the style in which you…

Your headline is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a prospective

reader. Without a compelling promise that turns a browser into a reader, the rest

of your words may as well not even exist. So, from a copywriting and content

marketing standpoint, writin, you’re

already dead in the water Great headlines writing is a critical skill.

Here are some interesting statistics.

On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headlin…

I stutter and stumble over words that I can't get out, 

The feelings bubbling up inside, make me want to scream and shout. 

There are just some things even a writer can't write - 

Those tear you apart, rip a h*** in your heart, 

Make you feel like you've been flung from a great height - frights. 

It's like certain words refuse to be penned, 

My mind scared…

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo to everybody involved or aware of it.  This is an international competition, which has no prizes and no entry fees.  Participants are simply expected to write a novel with a word total of 50,000 during the month.  It is a wonderfully simple way of motivating yourself to finally write that story that has been festering in your head for all these months or years.

I have entered this competition.  Having published my debut…

Don't cha hate it when you're in the middle of writing a book and you get stuck? sometimes I just wait a few days- maybe even a week until my subconscious works it out-- how about anyone else?

When I was in college, I worked behind the front desk of a major hotel. Directly across the lobby was the hotel bar, a small, dark lounge with the bar counter on the opposite side and a stage at one end. George Thorogood, when he stayed at the hotel, would sit at the far end of the counter, next to the stage. 

Connie, the bartender, once told me that her job was to…

The basic principal for writing about complex subjects is to do the work necessary so that the reader can understand you easily. Of course, your first task is to make sure you understand your own ideas. As Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” With this in mind, here are three strategies to help you write clearly about complex…

Imagine being in the University-having slept early only to be woken up by that annoying alarm-that is to rouse your room mate, who's snoring like she lives in a world without sound!

Just when I thought my day wouldn't get crazier-I had to do laundry because the Hostel caretatkers-play around with the taps, so we get water once or twice a week!

Then...I read an interview that was…

Before I write anything else, let me state that I like Lynn Truss’s book Eats, Shoots and Leaves. It is funny, and it has a few good pointers on…

One of the main reasons for writers block can be described with just one word...DISTRACTIONS! And we all have them because "life" happens. Modern convenience and technology is a catch 22 situation because along with the ease of computers, microwaves, and iphones, we have complicated our lives with bombarding our "to do" lists with so much STUFF that we refuse to slow down. So at the end of the day when the kids are bathed and put to bed, your…

As a published non-fiction author, people have "pidgeon-holed" me into a particular style and genre; which is okay. However, I am also a very multi-faceted individual who has a huge imagination, and I wanted to try my hand at something very different than what people would expect. Sticking with one type of writing is okay and "to each his own", but I feel if you're a writer, well, you can write whatever you fancy whenever…

Since my first article on publishing an e-book to Amazon’s Kindle, some things have changed with the Amazon DTP (Digital Text Platform). Instead of uploading a zip file with an HTML document and other digital files to be included, there is now the option to upload a Word document. This was good news to me because I had already been working with Word documents and uploading them to…

I would like to share with you a little personal insight. I am generally a very healthy person. I don’t really exercise beyond walking the dog, but I do watch what I eat and am conscious about taking care of my body. Especially so now while I am breastfeeding my baby daughter.



There is one (or several) conditions I suffer from regarding my eyes. I hope that by talking about this condition I might help reach out to other younger people suffering with the same thing. I have…

It occurred to me that every writer has a routine, or certain habits when working on their masterpiece. My routine is usually working from about eight or nine o'clock in the evening, very often staying up past midnight while the family are fast asleep in bed. Luckily I don't have to get up early in the morning, because I can lazily breastfeed my baby in bed and she enjoys her cuddles.

Alongside my routine, I need snacks. These vary according to my mood. For example at the moment I am…