I was playing with Stumble today and came across a website with funny metaphors from high school essays.  I read through them and must admit a few of them are really quite good.  Here’s a few of the better ones:
-Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed [...]

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To those in America, of course!  (and apparently Japan…?)

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Well, my favorite Writer’s Digest prompt page has apparently met it’s end, so prompts will start being a bit different for awhile because I’m partially making them up until I find another one I really like!  This one is about half WD and half me.  But, it is fun and I may actually do it! 
You [...]

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Haha.  This is pretty much just amazing to me.  Thanks to Penguin for the link!
LONDON (AFP) - A collection of poems by a Scottish bard dubbed the “world’s worst poet” was to go under the hammer Friday, expected to sell for thousands of pounds. William McGonagall was mocked by literary critics and had food thrown [...]

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There are lots of commonly misused words, and no doubt they number in the hundreds or even thousands. However, the most commonly misused words I always see are “effect” and “affect.”
Many times, the easiest way to discern the difference between two words is to take a look at their Latin roots. In this case:

- [...]

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The Young Writers Blog is starting to get more attention, so I thought it’d be best to spruce things up.  I think, or at least hope, you’ll agree that the change is for the better.  For now, neither the Archive or About links work, but those will be fixed in time.  In the time being, [...]

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Make sure you are firmly sitting down for if you have not seen it before, then you are about to read the shortest story you will ever encounter in your bleak, meaningless life:
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
According to legend, that is Hemingway’s six-word story and he referred to it as the greatest story he [...]

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Working on a story?  Having trouble with the first line?  The opening line is often the beginning of the hook, and thus very important.  You don’t want a common line, of course…that’s boring right away.  But do you want something short?  Something long?  Something awkward or elusive? 
Check out these 100 Best First Novel Lines.  Here [...]

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Kurt Vonnegut put together 8 basics to his works while writing amazing works like Slaughterhouse Five.  I read over these and some are very agreeable for short stories.  However, you don’t have to follow all of them to make an amazing story (just ask Flannery O’Connor).  And we all know, as writers, that our goal [...]

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Get the creative juices flowing! 
 This site gives you one word, and you have 60 seconds to write whatever you can about it.  Speed writing?  Yes.  Then…it becomes an entry into a contest!  Although….I have yet to figure out what contest and who runs it and what you win…that part seems rather unmentioned.  But, it’s still [...]

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The following story, entitled Walter and Winnie, was published sometime in the 19th century by an unknown author. It’s roughly 450 words long, and after you read it once, try reading it again three times fast.

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Best movie quote in awhile…

“In my world everyone’s a pony and they eat rainbows and poop butterflies.” -Katie, Horton Hears a Who
It’s amazing how much humor is in kids movies that kids just don’t get haha.

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Try DarkCopy!  It’s a full-screen text editor (if you click full screen) so you aren’t distracted by anything else while writing!  There are a few downfalls with it, however.  It is a black screen (hence the “dark” part) with green writing, which is kind of weird and unusual.  And it also does not cover your [...]

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There are so many words that are frequently mispronounced.  Here are a few I found interesting:
across (acrossed), affidavit (affidavid), Alzheimer’s Disease (old timer’s disease), arctic (artic), cardsharp (card shark), champ at the bit (chomp at the bit), et cetera (excetera), for all intense and purposes (for all intensive purposes), jewelry (jewlry), miniature (miniture), nuclear (nucular), [...]

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April is National Poetry Month.  It is also the month that hosts National Poetry Writing Month, the poetical brother to NaNoWriMo.  Instead of 50,000 words in a month, a participant must write a poem a day for 30 days.  Sound easy?  I’m sure for the first week the creative juices may come out with ideas, [...]

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Whether it’s high school or college (some of you are even younger!), writing competes for time with studying and other activities. Between balancing your schedule and the fact that many people don’t think young writers have much to say, it can be discouraging to those of us who want to someday become writers. Five tips:
–At [...]

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Back in 1996, maybe even 1995, The Young Writers Club came into being. A Computer Science professor in Turkey created it for his daughter, and the site was one of the very first writing forums on the Internet. It brought together kids around the world to share their writing for the first time. [...]

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That’s Saint Patty’s day! Woo!

Go pinch all those losers not wearing green!

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Nec laudas nisi mortuos poetas: tanti non est, ut placeam, perire - If only dead poets are praised, I’d rather go unsung

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No, not “illusions”. Allusions. They’re references to history, mythology, or even other pieces of literature. They’re also known as “nods” to another author. Literary allusions can be fun just for the fact that we recognize them. Seeing an idea or quote in a work that you just know came from another somehow tickles the mind [...]

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For me, it’s two, because of classes. “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevsky and “The Call of the Ocean” by Jean-Claude Mourlevat.

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Thinking about writing a mystery novel? About.com has a list of tips you should know before starting including:
– Introduce both the detective and the culprit early on.
– The detective should solve the case using only rational and scientific methods.
– In mystery writing, don’t try to fool your reader.
– Do your research.
So best of luck [...]

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I found this great blog post about speaking properly. Apparently, in England if you “speak one way, you will be running the country. If you speak another way, you will be cleaning it.” In America, this isn’t always so. Even incredebly smart people speak poorly at times. It’s nearly “hip” to have improper grammar.
For the [...]

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What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad.
Dave Barry
US columnist, humorist and Pulitzer Prize Laureate
From Quotes 4 All

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I wait impatiently every Saturday night for that stroke of 12am so I can read the new postcards on PostSecret.  Of course, they are rarely posted exactly at midnight, and by 12:15 I give up and go to bed.  I love the secrets and the artistry behind them.  But, today I was stumbling and came [...]

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Emphasis can make English mean a lot of different things. Try this out:

I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.

I [...]

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Open up the last creative piece that you have worked on whether it be a story or a poem. Now take a look at the very last sentence you have written. Post it here.
 If you like what you post, then you’ll probably be the type of person who ends on a good note, who only stops once he/she [...]

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