What? Another Blog on Writing?

Three years ago, on a lark, I started my first blog: Janice Heck: My Time to Write. After writing 370 posts and getting over 52,000 hits, I decided it was time to reevaluate that blog and plan my next steps. You can read that post here: Dear Readers: On Flying Deeper into the Blogosphere.

One conclusion of that post: I want/need to focus more on writing process and writing craft to help developing writers become more effective writers.

My first blog is an eclectic blog, on which I write about such topics as CATS, travel, photography, current events, food, recipes, book reviews, family, senior health issues, and eldercare. And then I write about writing topics: grammar, usage, punctuation, writing quirks, common writing errors, “fix-its” for common errors, and effective writing tips.

Quite a mix, isn’t it?

Here is my new, more focused blog for developing writers:

Janice Heck Writes: Power-up Your Writing! Build Your Writing craft.

The goal of this blog is to help writers “Power-up” their writing by learning more about writing following this model:

Writers often hear such terms as passive voice, parallel structure, serial commas, dependent clauses, cumulative sentences, periodic sentences, and many more. But just as often, these terms seem a bit fuzzy, especially to newish writers.

The focus on this new blog will be to un-fuzzy these terms by using…

• Grammar-You-Can-See
• Usage-You-Can-See
• Punctuation-You-Can-See
• Writing Quirks and Fix-its

Wordy Grammar Books

Pick a grammar book at random and what do you see?  Pages and pages of words telling about grammar, showing an example or two, then giving incorrect sentences to edit. Sometimes the grammatical term receives little more than an honorable mention: “Don’t use passive voice.”

In this new blog, I take a writing tip and show you, with graphics, how the grammar (or usage or punctuation) works so you can translate it into your own writing.

Other posts will focus on qualities that enhance your writing as well as common writing problems that interfere with effective writing.

Writing Strategies

To give you an idea of what the posts on Power-up Your Writing! Build Your Writing Craft will look like, take a peek at a few posts from my first eclectic blog: (Posts written for the annual A to Z Challenge held every April):

• Q is for Quirky Dreams, Susie Q., and Prepositional Phrases
• R is for Reflexive Pronouns Cause a Ruckus
• K is for Kernel Sentences: Nouns and Verbs Control the World
• D is for Direct Object or Happy Birthday
• A is for Adjectives, Anteaters, Armadillos, and Aardvarks
• Hyper-hyphenated Words Make Surprising Adjectives
• “Don’t Use Adverbs.” Book Reviewers Use Them!
• Common Errors or Effective Writing?

Coming soon: Look for my first official post on this blog here: One Tired, Tarnished Writing Tip…and Six Twists.

So come along for the ride. Ask questions and leave comments. I would love to hear from you.

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Janice Heck, retired educator/administrator, hosts two blogs:

Janice Heck: My Time to Write, an eclectic topic blog.

Janice Heck Writes: Power-up Your Writing! Build Your Writing Craft.

She is co-leader of the Cumberland County chapter of the New Jersey Society of Christian Writers along with Kathryn Ross of The Writer’s Reverie.

Over the years, Jan has given workshops on writing for schools, local and national special education and general conferences, and has published Evaluating and Improving Written Expression: A Practical Guide for Teachers (Janice K. Hall, Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1981; Pro-Ed,  1988, 1999). That book is now an OOP (out-of-print).

Jan’s favorite retirement activities are traveling, blogging, singing in the church choir, eating out, and collecting old grammar books.