Janet Fitch gives 10 tips to write better. She details them in her blog post.
For the past 20 years, Michael Pollan has been writing about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: food, agriculture, gardens, drugs, and architecture.
“The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, about the ethics and ecology of eating, was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Join Michael Pollan at the RSA as he introduces his new book, “Food Rules” – and explores its key central message:
“Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.”
Using those seven words as his guide, Michael Pollan provides a set of memorable everyday rules for eating wisely, gathered from a wide variety of sources: among them, mothers, grandmothers, nutritionists, anthropologists and ancient cultures.
Speaker: Michael Pollan, the award-winning author of “In Defense of Food” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and the Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley.
Link: Food Rules for Healthy People and Planet on Huffduffer
Whenever the topic of books comes up, I notice people always kvetch on how difficult it is to read and how slowly they read. I usually give a standard reply that practice makes perfect.
Most of the times, my suggestions to people roughly run on the lines of:
I suggest taking up a book for reading preferably an hour or so before sleeping. I usually read in bed. It helps in readying my body to sleep and also sometimes the book sometimes puts me to sleep. ;-)
I wouldn’t want you to pick up Anna Kareina at the beginning. Read some short stories or magazines before moving on to bigger books. Please don’t pick up the newspaper as your nightly reading material.
Steer away from heavy stuff when you are starting. Picking up Wodehouse is a lot better than reading Eco. Starting off with humour is the best medicine you can give to your mind. It helps you relax at the end of a tedious day.
Almost everyone pronounces the words you are reading. Some might move the lips or mutter the words under their breath. Some might read each word in their mind. Irrespective of how you subvocalise, it slows down your reading speed. I used to subvocalise when I was young, but I still sometimes find myself doing that now. (that is why I always keep my mouth busy with some snacks during reading. :-D
Say you are able to read atleast 50 pages in an hour, try improving that to 60 pages and so on. You will find that you can read a lot in a matter of time. 80 pages per hours would translate to roughly 480+ pages in a week (roughly the number of pages in an average paperback). If in a week, you can complete a book, You can complete nearly 50 books in a year. It is just a matter of practice.
In fact the more you read, the more faster you can read.
Just let me know if you’ve found this helpful.
Faster, you say to yourself, faster. The same mantra that you’ve been repeating to yourself for the past couple of hours. Faster.
You push down the urge to glance back. To tell the truth, you are afraid to look back. But a single glance wouldn’t hurt, would it? you think. ‘No’, you say out loud, ‘Don’t look back. Keep running.’
You keep running through the golden brown grass, not ignorant of the frantic activities of the wildlife underneath your feet. You never notice the family of rabbits scampering before you to avoid being trampled. But you notice the thick cloud of flies rise above the grass as you pass by – their steady buzzing reaches your ear – and you see them settle back again on some animal’s carcass.
The flies, oh, the flies, you mutter as you pause for a moment as another similar scene, not so far in the past, flashes across your mind.
No. You push aside that thought. Faster. Keep running. Faster.
So you keep running, the setting sun warming your back; the long shadow before you mirroring your every move, pointing the way for you. The grass slowly becomes shorter and shorter. You see a copse and you feel hungry. When did I last eat? You ask yourself When? and you remember.
The sun shining. Brightly. Your shadow below you. The smoke. Yes, you recall the smoke. And the fire. And the smell. That horrible smell. And then you recall the curse. That condemnation.
Time to get up and start running eastwards of Eden…
