A blog about writing, in public
Marginalia
Notes in the margin: what I'm reading, what I got wrong, and the craft arguments I can't let go of. Written between deadlines, edited in public.
Edit like a stranger
The hardest reader to become is a stranger to your own work.
1 min read
The internet did not kill the sentence
We keep blaming the internet for killing the sentence. A term of reading convinced me of almost the opposite.
3 min read
On feminine rage, a year later
A year on, the phrase has softened into an aesthetic. The rage got a marketing department.
2 min read
Cut the first paragraph
Most openings are throat-clearing. The real start is usually a line or two down.
1 min read
In praise of the boring calendar
The least glamorous document I make is the one I would save first from a fire.
2 min read
A caption is a small essay
The snobbery is that social copy is not writing. It is, and it is some of the least forgiving there is.
2 min read
SEO is asking what people already type
Good SEO copy and honest copy want the same thing: the words the reader already uses.
1 min read
The art of leaving out
The first lesson of American fiction was about omission, and it changed how I read everything.
2 min read
A house style is a kindness
A style sheet is not fussiness. It is how you stop making the reader do your work.
1 min read
Opinion still has to report
The Comment pieces that travel are the ones that did the reporting first.
2 min read