What Dr. Seuss Can Teach You About Writing
Listen to the wisdom of the Cat in the Hat. Reconsider green eggs and ham. There is a lot to learn from the words of Dr. Seuss, and you’ll discover that there is a good deal of it that can apply to improving your writing. “Today...
Six Things You Must Do Before You Push Submit
It’s getting damn close to the due date for college applications. So, in the midst of all the pressure, you might well be getting to that place of just crashing and saying, “I can’t do this anymore, I’m just sending it. No one deserves to live this way. I want my real...
Don’t Spam Admissions Officers — Essay Topics for the Junk Folder
Spam the meat and spam the mail have the same PR challenge. They don’t seem genuine, appealing or have any real flavor. People work hard to avoid both, and when it comes to spam mail, people just can’t delete fast enough, unsubscribe themselves, and curse under their...
What The Walking Dead Can Teach You About Revision
If you have never watched The Walking Dead, hopefully you at least know the basic premise. For the last three of you living under a rock, in a cave, beneath the ocean, here it is. A team of live humans run around a post-apocalyptic Atlanta, trying to avoid being...
Kurt Vonnegut Can Help You Go to College: Part 1 of 2
A lot of writers try as best they can to adhere to, or at least keep in mind, the Eight Rules for Writing of Kurt Vonnegut (author of Cat’s Cradle andSlaughterhouse-Five, among many others). While the rules are generally for fiction writers, they all are equally...
Words That Suck and How to Avoid Them. (Or, why ‘little’ and ‘very’ are cheap as* words.)
If you're knee deep in your essay, or knee deep in thinking about writing your essay, here's a heads up once you've got a first draft. It's a way of making sure that you haven't slipped into lazy writing, which basically means not thinking about your word choices. You...
Taking Chances With Your Essay
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader, no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” -- Robert Frost All of us who enjoy writing are tortured by Mr. Frost’s quote because we know he is correct, and curse ourselves daily trying to build...