Jim's Writing Column

The column "On Writing" offers some wide-ranging thoughts on how to write well. The column publishes every other Thursday in the Arts section of the Juneau Empire.

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Latest Columns

• Trust Your Fear - 12/21/16

• Flip-flop - 11/23/16

• Thinking toward the Reader - 11/9/16

• On Not Being a Writer - 10/12/16

• Still Harping, Part 2 - 9/28/16

• Still Harping on Strunk & White, Part 1 - 9/14/16

• Implausible Deniability - 8/29/16

• Clarity and Precision - 8/16/16

• God Bless You, Rocky Ragazzo - 8/3/16

• The Dance We Do with Readers - 6/22/16

• The Sound of Writing, part 2 - 6/8/16

• The Sound of Writing, part 1 - 5/25/16

• The Scattering Afield: A Personal Essay - 4/16/16

• Burn your Strunk & White - 4/13/16

• Idioms & Oddities, part 2 - 3/30/16

• Idioms & Oddities, part 1 - 3/16/16

• Gods of Death - 3/2/16

• Naming the Sun - 2/24/16

• Between Sentences - 2/10/16

• How to Make Love in Pidgin - 1/6/16

• Words, pt. 2: The Colors of a Word - 12/23/15

• Words, pt. 1: Acting Like Hamlet - 12/9/15

• The Name of the Sentence - 11/25/15

• Paragraphs - 11/11/15

• Running out of ink. Guest columnist Michelle Hale - 10/28/15

• Writing and Reading - 10/14/15

• JPD against the Borg - 9/30/15

• Bologna and the Borg - 9/16/15

• Rehabilitation & Red Tape, by guest columnist Lowell Ford - 9/2/15

• Living in a Concrete Box, by guest columnist Byron Benedict - 8/19/15

• Writing at Lemon Creek - 8/5/15

• Writing in Bad Faith - 7/22/15

• Dummies - 7/8/15

• Style - 6/24/15

• How to Think & Write at the Same Time - 6/10/15

• Racism and Charlie Hebdo - 5/27/15

• Editorial Horrors - 5/13/15

• How to Think - 4/29/15

• Moses & Me - 4/15/15

• Omitting Needless Words - 4/1/15

• The Existential Keyboard - 3/18/15

• Buying Shoes - 3/4/15

• Love and Desire - 2/18/15

• Religion and Satire - 2/4/15

• Talking to Vampires - 1/21/15

• When Typewriters Roamed the Earth - 12/25/14

• Painting by Numbers - 12/11/14

• Telling the Story - 11/27/14

• Big Words, part 2 - 11/13/14

• Big Words, part 1 - 10/30/14

• Don't Seize the Day - 10/16/14

• Mistakes Were Made - 10/2/14

• Commas, history and William Strunk - 9/18/14

• Philosophy and writing well: what's bad about bad writing - 9/4/14