Friends and readers, you have reached the final installment of Building Your Own Boat, a craft-centered column for fellow self-taught writers in progress. Thank you for sticking with me! If there is such a thing as a golden rule in the writing of fiction, it is that you must keep the reader engaged. A “likable”… Read more »
I spent most of my working lifetime teaching students at London University, and, after immigrating to Southern California, at USC, UCLA and California State University, Long Beach. During that time, under pressure to publish, I wrote seven nonfiction books. Some were works of literary criticism, others included a biography, a genre study of autobiography, and even… Read more »
We finally have a question for the editor! It only took a few months for someone to write to me, but here it is, and I’d like to take a moment to celebrate. And apparently, when it rains it really does pour because I actually received TWO questions about the same topic: italics. So—celebration now… Read more »
