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Merriam Webster defines the noun frisson as a “brief moment of emotional excitement”. The Collins English Dictionary has a similar meaning of “shiver of fear or excitement” . The appropriate synonyms are shudder and thrill which is also the translation of frisson in French (according to About.com). Did you know that the first known use of this word … Continue reading
Your writing style is unique to you – if people choose to read what you write, it will be because they like your style and the personality that shines through. William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well, says that “all writing is a journey; you the writer are asking someone to go on a trip with you”. This could apply … Continue reading
On my way home from work I flicked through The Little Red Writing Book by Brandon Royal in order to get some inspiration for today’s blog. In the introduction he explains that “writing had four pillars – structure, style, readability and grammar” and compares each pillar to a single chair leg. My interpretation of this is the … Continue reading
Yesterday I blogged about similes and today I am going to explain how they differ from metaphors. Graham King in his book Collins Improve your Writing Skills, explains that metaphors are “describing something by using an analogy with something quite different”. In the example it’s raining cats and dogs, we don’t actually think that there are cats and dogs falling … Continue reading
According to Graham King in his book Collins Improve your Writing Skills, a simile “makes a direct comparison between two dissimilar things”, for example, as fit as a fiddle or as drunk as a skunk and similes are usually joined by the introductory words ‘as’, ‘like’, ‘as if’ or ‘as though’. Bernard C Lamb in his book The Queen’s English calls them … Continue reading
Have you ever wondered how successful your Twitter account is? Today I learnt about a great free tool called Tweet Grader (by HubSpot) and by just typing in your Twitter user name, you can find out how powerful your account is against millions of other graded accounts. It only takes a minute or so for your … Continue reading
I’ve heard a lot about Digg and its benefits to writers but never visited the site until today. Digg is a social media site displaying blogs and articles about a wide variety of topics e.g. lifestyle, sport, technology and many more. Digg itself doesn’t decide what is popular, this is all done by users votes (or Diggs). The … Continue reading
To mark the milestone of my 200th blog on my daily My Writing Challenge I thought I’d show you something a little different. Did you know that The Free Dictionary (by Farlex) is more than just a dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopedia? The link above will take you to their home page which has a whole range of information and … Continue reading
I have recently learnt that StumbleUpon is a great tool for writers. Brian Halligan Darmesh Shah (authors of an audio book I am listening to called Inbound Marketing) describe StumbleUpon as a free social discovery site “helping you discover content that you might like”. It has over 7 million registered users and is well-known for showing you the best that is on the … Continue reading
It’s been suggested to me three times over the last few weeks (by word of mouth, from my online writing course and when listening to an audio book) that creating a LinkedIn Account could benefit me as a writer. So, taking that as a sign I have set up an account today and although I am very … Continue reading
My Writing Notebook 