Many writing how-to writers — including one or two who have something worth reading — stand ready to help you pick a cookie-cutter approach to writing. You will receive guidance, for the type of writing (usually non-fiction), the subject (something you understand at depth), the goal (making a profit), and the method (everything from beta testers to web sites and blogs, to having (can you believe it?) a My Space page.

I am here to tell you that you must find and respect your own writer’s voice. Without a sense of your writer’s voice, any advice about how or what to write will mean little, if anything. If you do not know your own voice, you can write anything (to no real purpose). If you copy some other voice, you will sound flat.

Who wants a writer’s voice that sounds like a dial tone? None of us does. So what can you do to find your voice?

• Read the entire blog post at HouseofVerbs.com

It is challenging to edit my own writing. I must do battle with a tendency to fall in with the cadence of my prose like a good toy soldier on parade, counting out one, two, three, four … one, two … three, four! I look up from editing to realize that I have been more intent on admiring and far less intent on improving the text. This familiarity never breeds anything approaching contempt.

And come to think of it, a copy editor should never have contempt for the writing that is at hand. An attitude of alert and even hyper-alert attention paired with lodged suspicion will get you where you want to end up when you sit down to edit. Contempt will poison your spirit and drive off your business.

The late Prof. John Bremner said it this way: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

• Read the entire blog post at HouseofVerbs.com

Into each life, a little bit of E.B. White should fall.

Chances are, a little will grow to be much more, as your interest pays dividends.

White wrote the book (Elements of Style) on the craft of writing, for the 20^th century, his fans say, and it is also true that White had a knack for children’s stories for kids of all ages (Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little).

If you do not appreciate the tone or approach of Elements, or if you simply enjoy reading from the category that White all but created, for our time, a smallish work of recent birthing that you might enjoy is How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One, by Stanley Fish.

Many of you will know of Fish from his work in The New York Times.

I know of Fish from the angle of being an English major at UC Berkeley.

Thereby hangs a tale.

• Read the entire blog post at HouseofVerbs.com

I do not need to go back in my mind to the Record-Searchlight newsroom, silent witness to my days as a cub reporter. The rooms of the newsroom, the two of them, often are with me without bidding when I sit down and set out to write.

The mind, it seems, anchors memories with images. I learned in seminary that the discipline called Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) speaks of this phenomenon in terms of its therapeutic applications. If you do not like the feel of a memory anchor, you can swap anchors in a simple mind process.

Basically, you close your eyes and pick a new anchor image.

And it works.

• Read the post at House of Verbs

Without persons who speak and write, and observe, words — our words — would be dead and gone. I care more about self and other persons, but I also prize words in themselves, like I love my three cats — less than my wife, certainly, but more than many other persons, or things.

Without words, how could I say, I love you?

• Read the post at House of Verbs

I’ve been reading a young adult book, Wildwood, by Colin Meloy with fine illustrations by his spouse, Carson Ellis. Meloy is the lead performer of the Portland, Oregon, band called The Decemberists and Wildwood, his first novel, published in 2011, is Book 1 of the Wildwood Chronicles. The publisher is Balzer + Bray, an imprint of big-house publisher HarperCollins.

I almost quit this book.

Read all about it at HouseofVerbs.com

My first five Tweets of the day –

@baldyblogger Jon Rieley-Goddard re: within and without … *without* is the culprit w/its two meanings of *outside* and *lack*. As idiom, OK to use. I don’t.

2 hours ago

@baldyblogger Jon Rieley-Goddard re: inside and out. Works w/o the ambiguity of idioms (qv) such as *within and without* cf *inside-out* (takes hyphen in all uses) #usage

2 hours ago

@baldyblogger Jon Rieley-Goddard re: idiom. A phrase that skates on the usual rules by common assent. For example *common assent* tho redundant enjoys wide use. #usage

1 hour ago

@baldyblogger Jon Rieley-Goddard re: q.v. … q.v. stands for two Latin words meaning *which see*. cf *v.* which is handy and short for *see*. For other abbrev. e.g. *cf* …

1 hour ago

@baldyblogger Jon Rieley-Goddard re: cf … which means *compare to*. For all other abbreviations and shortcuts handy for TwitterTalk? v. Google. JFGI (q.v.)

1 hour ago

A web site  for writers would look like this, I suppose.

Or maybe a web site for writers would resemble a book for readers who have written and who will write again.

Repeat offenders.

Read all about it at HouseofVerbs.com

My first three Tweets of the day –

• @baldyblogger Jon Rieley-Goddard

  Gary Snyder sez Coyote stomped on Nothing until the World appeared. Surely words stuck to Coyote’s feet, ready to speak. -31 minutes ago

• @baldyblogger Jon Rieley-Goddard
  re: language. Each word a poem, each image an anthology. Each speaker a trickster like Coyote – playful, dangerous, sly. -38 minutes ago

• @baldyblogger Jon Rieley-Goddard

  re: coined words. Language=images at peace, like water taking on a shape. Struck like coins, grateful for the slap of creation. – 47 minutes ago

I will be giving a reading from my two current book projects at 6 p.m. Wednesday, July 13, at the Environmental Cottage of Riverside-Salem UCC/DC, for Wednesdays at the Waters Edge.

The details:

Our co-pastor Jon Rieley-Goddard will give readings from two book projects that he is working on — a novel titled Grimoire: The Mystery Man Murders, first of a series concerning a group of over-the-hill and cast-aside spooks who run a used bookstore and cannot keep out of trouble, and a non-fiction title, House of Verbs: Grammar (some) and Usage (a lot) for Writers.

Jon is also a publisher, being the proud publisher and every other job big or small at BaldyBooks, which will print his books using print-on-demand technology.

To see his works in progress, go to http://buffalonya.com and select for the link to BaldyBooks publishing.

One Rierside-Salem tie-in with the novel is the history of our church during the Vietnam war, when members’ antiwar stance attracted the attention of certain TLAs (three-letter agencies, such as FBI). The novel, first in a series, is partly an imagined backstory for the agents who were so interested in fellow citizens of good intentions.