The backstreet cafe in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but […]
3 Things You Should Remove From Your Writing
If we can plop a reader into a situation and pull him to the edge of his seat, we’ve accomplished something. But slip up one time—whether it’s a patch of choppy prose, a typo, or bland phrasing—and we break the streak. His concentration is interrupted. He’s lost the mood. Taking a reader to that engaged, engrossed place […]
Six-Word Stories
Pillar House Press just hosted its first six-word story contest and received a ton of excellent submissions! In fact, it was so much fun, we’ll definitely be hosting another one soon. Before we get to the results, what is a six-word story exactly? Well, it’s a story told in six words—no more, no less. Ernest Hemingway […]
Is They Acceptable?
There is a great debate in the grammarian community. It may not be as heated as the infamous Oxford comma debate or as touchy as the possessive apostrophe debate… But it is a problem. And today we will address it. The question, ladies and gents, is this: Is they acceptable? “They” is the subject of the debate, and here’s […]
5 Tips for Academic Writing Success
We’ve all gotten that one assignment that makes us scratch our heads, try to push down sobs of defeat, and drop our heads on our desks in agony at the trials of life. But no matter what the subject is, how ambiguously the instructions are worded, and how clueless we are on where to begin, here […]
Help! I’m Single!
“Single” can be a scary word. For some, it can bring to mind other words like “lonely”, “unworthy”, “unwanted”, and “crazy cat person”. I know; I’ve been there (except for the cat part…not too crazy about them). But being single doesn’t have to be scary. It doesn’t have to be lonely. And being single […]
