It’s mid-November, and I’ve joined the worldwide scrum of happy, anguished writers participating in National Novel Writing Month. Today, in search of inspiration, I went to the Nanowrimo’s archive of pep talks. There, I discovered founder Chris Baty’s pep talk from 2010. He wrote about Week Two and some of…

Sometimes, the English language can be a real jerk. Like a cat pushing a delicate champagne flute off the edge of the table. Need evidence of this? Look no further than the existence of “specious” and “spurious.” …

What is it about Montana that produces, or inspires, such great writers? If you don’t believe me, here’s an entire article on the unlikely rise of Livingston, Montana, to a literary epicenter. …

On my first day in the seventh grade, in math class, we were working through a difficult problem in the textbook. The teacher was prompting us for the correct answer, which none of us could come up with. …

In my younger years, my father gave me some advice — wait, that wasn’t me.

Let’s try again: In my younger years, I read The Great Gatsby twice. Once in high school, again in college, sprinting through its nine economically-written chapters so I could write the obligatory paper on “Car…

Earlier this week, I edited a very tense psychological thriller. So tense that I almost failed to notice two very common errors in language (but not quite) These were reign in used for rein in, and flaunt instead of flout. …

Two years ago, I was on a Slack board for writers and editors, reading an introductory, happy-to-be-here message from a new member. Her brief bio wrapped up with a whimsical list of loves and hates, ending with her avowed hatred of adverbs. …

Everyone loves the Latin language. So romantic, so historic, so ceremonial. Up until the point that we actually start studying it. Then it’s so foreign, so incomprehensible, so unnecessarily complex.

The main reason that people think Latin will be easy to learn is because of its vocabulary. Latin words are…