I’m always on the lookout for great new books to read, so I was super excited when I bought a copy of Harbor from eBay. I had so many other books I had to read first that it sat on my shelf for about a month before I had the chance to start on it.…
Do you write a rough draft or a rough draught? Would you place your clothes in a draw or drawer? Are the two going to have a dual or duel? Will the prisoner be taken to the dudgeon or dungeon? draft, draught Draft has many meanings, one of which is an outline or preliminary sketch of…
Eat your heart out—what does this phrase really mean? Wouldn’t it be kind of gross to rip a heart out of someone else’s chest and eat it? Yuck! And you certainly wouldn’t want to eat your own heart. Where did this phrase come from? Once you know its origins and true meaning, you should be…
Love is a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. Jack and Marcie have known each other for most of their lives. They have fallen madly in love. How would their physical and mental actions show this? Ways Your Character Would React Physically When Jack and Marcie realized their feelings of friendship were turning into…
New ideas for characters, all wrapped up and ready to be written about, present themselves when you read about strange things in the news. Never would I have thought about creating a character who believed she was a cat, at least not until I ran across this gem—The Slippery Slope Is Here: Woman Says She…
Would you call a female deer a do, doe, or dough? When you take a nap, do you does, doughs, or doze? When you finish a project, are you done or dun with it? Is the senior male member of a group a doyen or doyenne? dissidence, dissidents Dissidence is a disagreement. The dissidence between the…
A phobia is an irrational fear of a person, a place, an object, or an activity. When confronted with the object of one’s fear, a person could possibly go into a panic attack or worse. Phobias are to be taken seriously and not disregarded as something that just affects one who is thought to be…
What do you see when you look at a picture of a lake? Do you just see a lake? Or does your imagination go wild as you look deeper? When you look at any picture, do you only see what is right in front of your eyes? Or do you see more? Maybe you can…
Even while a baby is still in the womb, their future is being planned—perhaps they’ll be a judge, ruler of a country, or that athlete who scores the winning points for their team. And, like all other parents, I too had lofty goals for my child. In the last trimester of pregnancy, I’d decided that…
Parenting is an adventure all its own. Until the moment that first child comes along, do any of us really know what we are getting ourselves into? No matter how many books you’ve read on parenting, no matter how many have given you advice on how to raise your kids, there are still many surprises…
