The phrase "pearl of great price" is a historical concept, dating back to the ancient scriptures.

The phrase means, essentially, "something that is very rare and is considered very important."

Such...

Dave asked me (Melissa) to write this week’s Tipster. I started and stopped and restarted 19 times. You’d think I wouldn’t agonize over crafting an email. 
 
I’m a...

The right details in a story fire up the imagination of the reader.

This is true with nonfiction or fiction writing.

"What to include, what to leave out," writes John McPhee, in his classic Draft No....

We all have different reasons for writing. Each of our writing paths is unique.

Some want to write for their family only. To ensure that the stories of their challenges and accomplishments don't get...

I recently read a memoir about a prominent American family. I loved the storyline. But I got stuck in one chapter where the author went down a rabbit hole.

He went into "commentary" mode.

He went on...

How Long Should this Article, Chapter, or Book Be?

Good question. If you've never "published" before, most likely you have no real idea of length for your writing project.

By "published," I don't...

Beloved and often profane writer Anne Lamott gave us three words that helped us all start writing and overcome our insecurities:

   Shitty First Draft (SFD)

The idea is this: Just start...

If you tried to take every bit of writing advice, applying all of it as you write, you'd never complete any writing project.

So don't.

As you write, write.

Don't try to craft. Crafting comes later.

...

This past week in our Roadtrippers community, one of our writers asked about my thoughts on Grammerly, an A.I. (artificial intelligence) driven app that helps writers with grammar and basic...

Just this morning, Melissa and I interviewed a free-lance journalist who writes for the New York Times. Our conversation with Melinda Wenner Moyer will be one of our next podcast episodes.

Melinda...

Last week, I discussed the importance of curiosity - and how it helps us become observers of human behavior.

Observation is one of our great tools for writing.

We observe human behavior (the...

William Faulkner, the great American writer from the first half of the twentieth century, once said:. 

“A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination ...”...