A RECENT New York Times article on language and gender caught my attention, because its first sentence, which I paraphrase here, immediately rang true: Americans are resistant to use the word “she” when describing a hypothetical president. Not because Americans don’t believe a woman could be president, but because our […]
In Memories to Memoirs, Part 6, I wrote about the importance and impact of fresh metaphor to the life of our stories. Not only does metaphor engage the imagination of our readers, it is key to our own writing voice. Because metaphor is the frame through which we understand concepts, it reveals […]
In the previous installment of this series, we examined the strong verb and its importance to our story’s tone and pace. In this post, we’ll look at figurative language — metaphor. What exactly is metaphor? Metaphor compares abstract concepts to familiar objects and is the mechanism by which we understand those […]
Journal writing is good for so many things: emotional catharsis, sorting out problems, recording life events, self-reflection, and personal growth. It is also a writer’s tool, in which we write about our characters, explore possibilities, and practice writing dialog. Often, though, we don’t make use of previous entries. We mull […]
SPRING is a time of transition, the time between winter and summer, when everything is changing rapidly, growing, greening, budding, and flowering. Spring is also a symbol for many life experiences: times of change, times of growth, times that vacillate between rain and sun, pessimism and hope. For all these […]
FOR FUN this week, we’re going to play with the use of common objects as stand-ins for different aspects of our lives (metaphor). Then, extend each metaphor as far as makes sense. Or if you want to be more playful, extend it all the way to silly. First, I want […]
AS I WAS LYING ON MY BACK this morning, groaning through one of my yoga stretches, I was thinking about the journal entry I wrote earlier. I had, in the spirit of my weekly Journaling Through Life E-zine, written an entry using one of this week’s writing prompts. The topic […]
