What Sports Taught Me About Writing
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Author John McCaffrey explains how a round of golf altered his approach to writing and publishing. More
Nice Guys Finish Last…Unless You’re Reading
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The first book that ever obsessed me, that changed my reading life, was ‘Nice Guys Finish Last’ by Leo Durocher. I was 12 when I purchased it with birthday money, from a bookstore in Rochester, New York, where I grew up. What first caught my eye was its bright yellow cover, which reminded me of… More
Spring Grows Prose
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“What a strange thing! to be alive beneath cherry blossoms.” ― Kobayashi Issa, Poems As of March 20th, we have officially entered the spring season. And while it is still disarmingly chilly and dreary in the northeast portion of the United States that I roam, the beginning buds in the trees and points of crocuses… More
Reading for the Pleasure of Purpose
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An agent friend of mine told me long ago that the best way to learn how to write well was to “read well” – meaning read quality stories, books, perhaps even recipes with nutritious ingredients rather than artificial additives. Unfortunately, I took this advice as the agent “stating the obvious,” thinking it impossible not to… More
New Year’s Resolutions for Writers
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It is traditional at this time of the year for folks of a reflective bent to look back on the past 12 months, consider what went well and what didn’t, ponder changes made and changes needed to be made, goals achieved and goals unrealized, and then, after bloating the body (if not the mind) with… More
Walden Deck
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“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living… More
Winning Words
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Winning Words When I was young, during the summer, a friend and I played tennis nearly every day, and nearly every day he beat me. We were equally skilled, there was no advantage in equipment, and the games and sets we played often came down to the wire. Yet I would invariably lose a key… More