My 20-year-old son, a graduate of our home school, is in college and he recently turned in a first draft paper to one professor, the final draft being due the following week. He expected a vast number of notes and things he had to change before his final draft. Instead, the professor suggested he move a few sentences around, made no corrections and told my son it was basically ready to be the final draft. My son was stunned. I gave him a fist bump and said, "You're welcome!" He looked at me curiously and I explained, "I made you diagram sentences in middle school, remember? This is the pay off. You're welcome." He went on to say that when he's writing his papers for school, he's constantly analyzing his sentences, almost automatically. I told him, "This is memory muscle. It was ingrained in you, through diagramming sentences, to analyze and weigh each word and how it fits into your writing." Folks, make your kids diagram sentenc...

I was invited to write a guest blog for Anne Wayman of About Freelance Writing and am thrilled that my blog post is live today. Check it out here . It was a pleasure to work with Anne and write this post for her blog. It's all about how I started my online editing business and the unique things that led up to it and the launch of my editing website - editmaster.pro . A big thank you to Anne Wayman for the invitation! Happy Writing!

This book, Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, describes my life so well it's eerie. I was born in Middletown, OH, into a Hillbilly Elegy . Some of the stories J.D. Vance told in this book could have been my own. Like Vance, I worked my entire life to overcome and rise above my Hillbilly Elegy. I wanted something more than the despair and unreasonable use of alcohol I saw all around me growing up. Fortunately for me, only half my family had the full Hillbilly Elegy in force. My mother and my maternal grandmother defied the odds of their Hillbilly Elegy by rising above it and insisting on more civilized behavior, which resulted in a more civilized lifestyle. Neither of them drank alcohol, even though both their husbands did. I don't recall my maternal grandfather ever drinking in their house and I would be hard pressed to remember ever seeing a beer in their refrigerator. It was an unspoken truth, known by everyone in the family, that my grandmother did not tolerate drinking in ...

I saw actor Harrison Ford on Live! with Kelly & Ryan one morning. He's clearly a talented actor and I've enjoyed his work in several different movies. One of my favorites is The Fugitive. Air Force One isn't bad, either, not to mention Star Wars and the Indiana Jones series. Not bad. However, not everyone believed in him. During his interview, he related a story from early in his career. In one movie, before he hit it big, he played a bell hop in a hotel. He said one director called him over and told him he will never make it as an actor. He told him he knows an actor who was so good that when he played a delivery boy, he watched him and saw a great movie actor. Harrison Ford's response was unreal...he said, "Shouldn't you have seen a great delivery boy?" Now, that's a great comeback! And it wasn't in any script. My point in telling this story is simply that not everyone will believe in your talents, but it doesn't matter. If no one e...

I often say everyone needs an editor. I thought I would elaborate on this idea for a few minutes. Needing an editor does not make you an idiot. Admitting you need an editor sets you apart. I can't tell you how many blog posts and articles I've read that needed editing. For me, it's rather distracting. I've come up with a few reasons editing is so necessary. 1. When we write, we are spelling out our passion. Whether it's a lifestyle blog or instructions on how to cook crickets, writers write with passion and passion often disregards grammar. Perhaps one could argue that the more mistakes you make while writing, the more passionate you are about your topic. 2. We often write how we think or talk. One universal thing I teach my writing students is not to write how they talk unless they are writing a novel with that required dialog. A common mistake I see on this one is, "I could of gone to town," which should read, "I could have gone to town....