by Joe Bunting |
About a quarter of the way through the book I stopped reading. Did she really just do that? I thought. Here is the paragraph that struck me:
The crusted pan that baked the chocolate-melt bars slides off the tower of bowls crashes to the floor. Pick it up and watch it sink into sink.
I found that last part, “sink into sink,” open-your-mouth-and-furrow-your-brow fascinating. Not because she plays with the double meaning of sink, but because she drops her article.
Thus begins Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts, a book about how to live fully, experience more joy; about how to be thankful, even for the mundane, even for the tragedies. You don’t forget stories, and if you can prove your point with stories, you can teach people more effectively than if you just told them what to do.
by Joe Bunting |
If the Oxford comma is a prepster in chinos and a green LaCoste polo, I’m a hipster in a dirty flannel shirt and skinny jeans. If the Oxford comma is, in fact, Oxford, I’m the year you took off college to go chill with some Maasai in Kenya. If the Oxford comma is a MacBook Pro, I’m that manual typewriter you got at a yard sale that everyone sees and asks, “Is that a real typewriter? Can I try it?”
Who needs the Oxford comma? Shoot who needs commas in general?
by Joe Bunting |
We’re introducing a new series, long planned, on the Write Practice. We’re going to choose one of our favorite practices and talk about why it was so cool (or not!).
by Joe Bunting |
Sometimes you just have to say, “Rules? No no no. F*&# rules. I’m not following any rules.”
That’s why on Saturdays, we at the Write Practice break some rules.
On Thursday, Matt Snyder wrote a great post about three ways to provoke your audience to action. He told a heart-wrenching story of a young girl forced into prostitution in Thailand. It’s the kind of story that makes you want to get up and smash some gross American men’s faces in.
It makes me want to do something.
But it’s not Thursday anymore. It’s Saturday, and on Saturday we do things differently.
Instead of provoking your audience to action, what if you provoked them to inaction?
by Joe Bunting |
You have two brains: a creating brain and a controlling brain. Both are good, but they don’t always get along. The problem is that your controlling brain has been fed for years. It has been well educated by well-meaning teachers while your creative brain was left to wither, sick in bed.
