Having fun whilst learning is an objective that most teachers aim for and this can be achieved during a lesson with a focus on writing. Getting your students’ creative juices flowing will result in fun lessons and lots of opportunities for learning new vocabulary. are just one area of vocabulary that can benefit from writing creatively.
Many students may claim that they don’t know where to start with but giving clear instructions and suggested themes will start the ball rolling. Using a story telling exercise to teach topic vocabulary is just one way of getting their creativity going. Don’t be disheartened if they don’t take to the idea immediately, they will once they see how easily a story can evolve from a simple prompt!
Try these creative writing ideas to help your students to expand their bank of adjectives:
For example they may choose etc. When they have written ten adjectives they should compare their lists and see whether they are correct.
is an essential part of creative writing and one in which you can have lots of fun. In pairs ask your students to make assumptions about another pair that they don’t know well. Give them prompts ie Make sure you give them some suggestions and make it clear that they’re not writing what they know but what they think! When they’ve made their assumptions they should join up with the other pair and discuss them to see which are true and which are not.
First they have to decide the following; age, gender, appearance, interests/job. Then give them a list of around ten questions to consider. For example: How would they feel if their best friend had a party and didn’t invite them? What would they do if somebody fainted in front of them? How do they feel when they watch a scary movie? When they have answered these questions they will have a good basis for a character which can then be developed.
Put the students in pairs and ask them to choose two famous people and brainstorm as many descriptive adjectives as they can to describe them. Give prompts such as hair colour, physical build, eye colour etc. but stress that this is about appearance not personality. When complete do the same with descriptive adjectives about personality, job, nationality. They are only allowed to use adjectives – allow them to use dictionaries if necessary. When they have at least ten adjectives the pair should join with another pair and try to guess each other’s celebrity from the descriptive adjectives.
Let them look around them and brainstorm as many adjectives as they can to describe what they can see, smell, hear and touch. Then back in the classroom get them to find synonyms for the adjectives they have come up with and construct a poem or short descriptive passage using the new adjectives.
Alternatively they could write an acrostic and find an adjective to represent their town/city for each letter of the name. Check out for other activities using acrostics.
. Ask your students to look around them when they are next on the bus or walking around outside of the school. Ask them to look for someone who looks interesting to them and write down some of their observations. Ask them to think about appearance, personality, feelings and background. They can then use their observations to develop a character.
Blank out all the descriptive adjectives in the passage and ask you students to add their own. They can then join another student and compare their passages.
Getting them into the habit of looking for synonyms when they learn a new word and to step away from the use of favourites they’ve already learnt can only enhance their learning experience. It is not always necessary to stress that an activity is focused on vocabulary but let the vocabulary come naturally from a descriptive or writing exercise. Most students are enthusiastic about and will participate fully in any activity which helps them to do this. Most of all have fun!
If you enjoyed this article, please help spread it by clicking one of those sharing buttons below. And if you are interested in more, you should follow our Facebook page where we share more about creative, non-boring ways to teach English.Never underestimate the power of cool adjectives. These words will sprinkle color on the greyest sentence, so quit being craven and start reading through this lengthy list of super cool adjectives.
1. Aback: by surprise
2. Abaft: at or near or toward the stern of a ship or tail of an airplane
3. Abashed: feeling or caused to feel uneasy and self-conscious
4. Aberrant: markedly different from an accepted norm
5. Abhorrent: offensive to the mind
6. Abiding: unceasing
7. Abject: most unfortunate or miserable
8. Abortive: failing to accomplish an intended result
9. Abounding: existing in abundance
10. Abrasive: sharply disagreeable
11. Abstracted: taken out of or separated from
12. Acrid: harsh or corrosive in tone
13. Adamant: unyielding; a very hard substance
14. Adhoc: done for a specific purpose, without regard for larger or future issues
15. Adjoining: having a common boundary or edge
16. Adroit: clever, resourceful
17. Aloof: remote in manner
18. Amatory: sexual
20. Animistic: quality of recurrence or reversion to earlier form
21. Antic: clownish, frolicsome
22. Arcadian: serene
23. Auspicious: tending to favor or bring good luck
24. Axiomatic: evident without proof or argument
25. Baleful: deadly, foreboding
26. Barbarous: (of persons or their actions) able or disposed to inflict pain or suffering
28. Bellicose: quarrelsome (its synonym belligerent can also be a noun)
29. Bilious: unpleasant, peevish
30. Boorish: crude, insensitive
31. Brash: presumptuously daring
32. Cagey: characterized by great cautious and wariness
33. Calamitous: disastrous
34. Capricious: determined by chance or impulse or whim rather than by necessity or reason
35. Caustic: corrosive, sarcastic; a corrosive substance
36. Cerulean: sky blue
37. Cloistered: providing privacy or seclusion
38. Comely: attractive
39. Concomitant: accompanying
40. Contumacious: rebellious
41. Corpulent: obese
42. Crapulous: immoderate in appetite
43. Craven: lacking even the rudiments of courage
44. Dapper: marked by smartness in dress and manners
45. Debonair: gentle, courteous
46. Decorous: characterized by propriety and dignity and good taste in manners and conduct
47. Defamatory: maliciously misrepresenting
48. Didactic: conveying information or moral instruction
49. Dilatory: causing delay, tardy
50. Direful: causing fear or dread or terror
51. Divergent: diverging from another or from a standard
52. Dowdy: shabby, old-fashioned; an unkempt woman
53. Draconian: of or relating to Draco or his harsh code of laws
54. Efficacious: producing a desired effect
55. Effulgent: brilliantly radiant
56. Egregious: conspicuous, flagrant
57. Elated: exultantly proud and joyful
58. Endemic: prevalent, native, peculiar to an area
60. Erratic: liable to sudden unpredictable change
61. Ethereal: characterized by lightness and insubstantiality
62. Execrable: wretched, detestable
63. Exultant: joyful and proud especially because of triumph or success
64. Fallacious: containing or based on a fallacy
65. Fastidious: meticulous, overly delicate
66. Feckless: weak, irresponsible
67. Fecund: prolific, inventive
68. Friable: brittle
69. Fulsome: abundant, overdone, effusive
70. Furtive: marked by quiet and caution and secrecy
71. Garrulous: wordy, talkative
72. Guileless: naïve
73. Gustatory: having to do with taste or eating
74. Heady: extremely exciting as if by alcohol or a narcotic
75. Heuristic: learning through trial-and-error or problem solving
76. Histrionic: affected, theatrical
77. Hubristic: proud, excessively self-confident
78. Incandescent: emitting light as a result of being heated
79. Incendiary: inflammatory, spontaneously combustible, hot
80. Innate: not established by conditioning or learning
81. Insidious: subtle, seductive, treacherous
82. Insolent: impudent, contemptuous
83. Intransigent: uncompromising
84. Inveterate: habitual, persistent
85. Invidious: resentful, envious, obnoxious
86. Irate: angry; enraged
87. Irksome: annoying
88. Jejune: dull, puerile
89. Jocular: jesting, playful
90. Judicious: discreet
91. Lachrymose: tearful
92. Languid: lacking spirit or liveliness
93. Limpid: simple, transparent, serene
94. Loquacious: talkative
96. Luminous: clear, shining
97. Macabre: shockingly repellent
98. Mannered: artificial, stilted
99. Mendacious: deceptive
100. Meretricious: whorish, superficially appealing, pretentious
101. Minatory: menacing
102. Mordant: biting, incisive, pungent
103. Munificent: lavish, generous
104. Nebulous: lacking definition or definite content
105. Nefarious: wicked
106. Nondescript: lacking distinct or individual characteristics
107. Noxious: harmful, corrupting
108. Obsequious: attentive in an ingratiating or servile manner
109. Obtuse: blunt, stupid
110. Onerous: not easily borne
111. Ossified: set in a rigidly conventional pattern of behavior, habits, or beliefs, changed into bone
112. Overwrought: deeply agitated especially from emotion
113. Parsimonious: excessively unwilling to spend
114. Pendulous: suspended, indecisive
115. Penitent: feeling or expressing remorse for misdeeds
116. Pernicious: injurious, deadly
117. Pervasive: widespread
118. Petulant: rude, ill humored
119. Picayune: (informal terms) small and of little importance
120. Piquant: stimulating to the taste or mind; spicy, pungent; appealingly provocative
121. Placid: pleasantly calm or peaceful
122. Platitudinous: resembling or full of dull or banal comments
123. Plucky: showing courage in the face of danger
124. Precipitate: steep, speedy
125. Propitious: auspicious, advantageous, benevolent
126. Puckish: impish
127. Querulous: cranky, whining
128. Quiescent: inactive, untroublesome
130. Rebarbative: irritating, repellent
131. Recalcitrant: resistant, obstinate
132. Recondite: difficult to penetrate
133. Redolent: aromatic, evocative
134. Rhadamanthine: harshly strict
135. Risible: laughable
136. Ruminative: contemplative
137. Sagacious: wise, discerning
138. Salubrious: healthful
139. Sartorial: relating to attire, especially tailored fashions
140. Sclerotic: hardening
141. Serpentine: snake-like, winding, tempting or wily
142. Sordid: morally ignoble or base; vile
143. Spasmodic: having to do with or resembling a spasm, excitable, intermittent
144. Spurious: not genuine, authentic, or true
145. Squalid: morally degraded
146. Strident: harsh, discordant; obtrusively loud
147. Succinct: briefly giving the gist of something
148. Taciturn: closemouthed, reticent
149. Tawdry: cheap and shoddy
150. Tenacious: persistent, cohesive,
151. Tenuous: having little substance or significance
152. Torpid: slow and apathetic
153. Tremulous: nervous, trembling, timid, sensitive
154. Trenchant: sharp, penetrating, distinct
155. Truculent: defiantly aggressive
156. Turbulent: restless, tempestuous
157. Turgid: swollen, pompous
158. Ubiquitous: being present everywhere at once
159. Uxorious: inordinately affectionate or compliant with a wife
160. Vacuous: devoid of significance or point; complacently or inanely foolish
161. Verdant: green with vegetation; covered with growing plants or grass
162. Vivacious: vigorous and active
163. Voluble: glib, given to speaking
164. Voracious: excessively greedy and grasping
166. Waggish: witty or joking
167. Wheedling: flattering
168. Wistful: showing pensive sadness; full of longing or unfulfilled desire
169. Withering: devastating
Read more Reference .
About the author
Jerome London
How to make money writing – 6 ideas.
Learn how to get paid to write for beginners and much more.
Ghost writing, copywriting, technical writing, social media writing, magazine and newspaper writing, frequently asked questions (faqs).
Do you have a way with words? You could turn your prowess with pronouns, verbs and adjectives into a lucrative side hustle when you learn how to make money by writing. Many large and small websites hire freelance writers to produce their content, offering you a platform to share your insights and an opportunity to make some extra dough. Even those who have never written anything besides personal social media posts or journal entries can find a place to sell their writing. This list provides a step-by-step guide to how to earn money by writing and will answer all your questions, whether you’re a beginning or veteran scribe.
You can make money by writing in many different ways, including blogging, ghost writing, penning reviews and working for small businesses. You have a greater chance of being published by pursuing several options simultaneously instead of prioritizing one. It’s like baiting multiple fishhooks. The more you cast, the better your odds of pulling something in.
You will make the most money by working for bigger sites and businesses, and you can do nearly all of it remotely. Ghostwriting pays better than blogging because businesses want more polished, focused writing. Blogging, however, may take less time and allow you the chance to complete more assignments. Journalism gives you greater opportunities for creativity in your work, and social media writing appeals to those who like pithy, funny writing. Copywriting and technical writing can be drier, but they also provide higher payment and steadier work than other writing. Here is a breakdown of the main ways to make money while writing.
Blogging means publishing content online written especially for that publication. Individuals, businesses, journalists, influencers, homemakers and many more publish blogs, which are often but not always written in first person. Anyone can write their own blog and publish it through a self-publishing platform, such as Medium, Blogger or WordPress.
The time and effort required for blogging depends on what you write about. For instance, if you run in your spare time and decide to start a running blog, you may be able to write several short blogs about running a race in under an hour. But if you want to explore the ethical implications of artificial intelligence using reliable sources, it could take hours to finish one post. The better the writing and sourcing, the better a post will perform, so making the extra effort to be informed and publishing grammatically correct copy is always worth it.
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You don’t need experience to become a blogger. Anyone can do it, though it may take a while for you to settle into a style and voice that becomes popular. You need readers to make money on a blog. People make money on blogs in several ways:
How much can you make from blogging? The answer varies according to how often you publish, what type of payment method you use, and the popularity of your work. Some top bloggers make six figures per year. Sponsorships with big companies like Walmart that pay people to hawk their goods can be lucrative, paying thousands of dollars. But most bloggers make a few hundred dollars per month, enough to pay off a car or credit card bill but not enough to live on.
Blogging, ghost writing, copywriting, technical writing, social media writing and newspaper and ... [+] magazine writing are six of the most lucrative ways to earn money writing.
Ghost writing is the most lucrative type of writing. Ghost writers channel the voice of a third party, writing as though they were that person or business and presenting their ideas in first person. Businesses and thought leaders use ghost writers to take their thoughts and ideas and present them in a prettier package.
Ghost writing can take many forms. You might produce communications for a company CEO or create a book about an important event for a historical society. Every job is a little different. Ghost writing usually requires several years of writing experience, though if you are a subject matter expert on something—for example, if you are a nurse asked to write articles for a nursing degree program—then you may be able to get a job without writing experience. Time spent on an assignment will vary, but it takes longer than blogging. Ghost writing demands high-level clarity, grammar and readability.
You can make money by earning an hourly or per-project rate from the client. Most ghost writing gigs pay well, from $50 per hour and more. Some ghost writers pull in six figures per year, though those have extensive experience. To get started, search LinkedIn for the words “freelance writer” or “writer.” Or think about companies you would like to work with and send an email to the hiring manager introducing yourself and spelling out your expertise. You can also sign on with agencies that hire out ghost writers to businesses. Again, send your resume and a letter of introduction (LOI) to the agency hiring manager or search job ads online.
Copywriting is similar to ghostwriting, but sometimes you will receive a byline and the writing is not always presented in first person. Copywriting includes copy on businesses’ websites, material for pamphlets, mission statements, advertising, newsletters and more. People with copywriting skills are persuasive and clear writers good at conveying information and encouraging sales.
You can start with simple copywriting jobs and work your way up to higher-paying ones. Experience is required for bigger companies, but small businesses around your town might hire an inexperienced writer. You can begin by approaching them and offering to, for instance, rewrite their website or start a monthly newsletter. As you gain knowledge and confidence, you can reach out online to larger places. Follow freelance job boards to find new opportunities, interact with companies on LinkedIn to get your name out there, and send LOIs to hiring managers wherever you want to work.
You can get a little creative to find jobs, too. Find newsletters for companies you love or share expertise with. Send them an LOI outlining your subject matter background and what you could contribute. Copywriting work requires precision and often background research, and it takes longer than many other types of writing. You can make a good living as, like with ghost writing, clients tend to pay on the higher end of the payscale for copywriters, often $40 per hour and more. The best copywriters can make more than $150,000 per year.
Technical writing refers to communicating information about niche topics, such as medicine, engineering, manufacturing or construction. It can also encompass things like the directions to put something together or operate an electronic device. The aim is to create digestible, informative content while eliminating jargon.
Technical writing requires a great deal of writing experience, but it can be lucrative. Few people have the skills to boil down information and serve it back up in the right format. It can take hours to finish even a short writing assignment because you need to get every word right and leave out extraneous ones. But most jobs are paid per hour ($60 and up for experienced writers), so the time and effort pay off.
A lot of technical writing jobs are full time. But you can find part-time opportunities using job sites such as LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster and more. Taking courses in technical writing could be a worthy investment, as that background will open up new opportunities and give you valuable experience.
Technical writing, a great way to earn money by writing, may involve simplifying jargon and ... [+] complexities for a lay audience.
Social media writing is a relatively new way to make money. Many businesses hire people to write captions on Instagram , video descriptions on YouTube , thought leadership posts on LinkedIn and much more. This is an excellent entry point for writers with little formal experience.
Social media writing pays more modestly than other types of business writing, anywhere from $15-$35 per hour. However, it takes less effort. You can often bang out lots of posts in an hour, and very little knowledge or experience is needed, beyond knowing the character limits for different social platforms. You can find jobs by looking at writing job sites or reaching out directly to businesses with LOIs. Try small businesses in your hometown first to get some examples for your resume before targeting more prominent places.
Magazine and newspaper writing is one of the more specialized forms of writing to make money. But if you have some training and are more interested in writing as a means of changing the world and informing people, it is a worthy pursuit. You can start by publishing pieces in hometown newspapers or niche magazines.
You won’t break the bank with journalism writing. Even some bigger papers and publications pay less than $1,000 per story, and you would need to string together a lot of assignments to make a living. But to make extra spending money and perhaps affect change, you can’t beat journalism. You will need to learn the publication’s style guide and adhere to it for pieces you submit. Editors make assignments, which you can get by pitching (sending a cold email) to the editor explaining your story idea and why you are the right person to write it.
Time and effort vary depending on the scope of the story. Many can be quite involved. Editors often prefer to work with people who have experience, so build up your resume with pitches to smaller publications first.
Bottom Line
Writing can be a fun way to make extra money, or you can even turn it into a high-paying career with the right experience. Whether you pen blogs, website copy or social media posts, you can find an outlet that’s “write” for you.
Writers can make a decent salary depending on their experience level and who they write for. How much writers make may depend on on where they work, how many clicks their work generates, and how long the job took.
The salary range for a writer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , is a median of $73,690 per year, or $35.43 per hour. Income rises with higher experience levels.
You can find hundreds of websites that pay for writing. A few of the most popular include:
The Penny Hoarder
Bustle
Transitions Abroad
Vibrant Life
Scary Mommy
Paying websites look for writing they think will draw readers. Using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, such as incorporating keywords that people search for, can generate higher traffic, so be sure to mention any SEO knowledge when you apply, as that will help your chances. The more views you generate, the more money the website makes. Create a portfolio of your past work that you can share when you apply for jobs that shows your best efforts.
You can get paid to write reviews across a number of platforms for products ranging from books to vacuum cleaners. Some of the most popular include Get Reviewed , Kirkus , UserTesting and Amazon Vine , though note that you get paid in products for that site.
To become a reviewer, you may need no experience at all for many sites. They value trustworthiness and honest feedback. Some hire people they find through online reviews they have already posted. Other sites require more extensive background in writing reviews. For instance, if you want to work for DotDash, one of the largest editorial operations on the web that runs lots of reviews across its sites, you will need writing experience for a major website and product expertise.
You can write letters and get paid by watching for these jobs on freelance sites such as Upwork , Contently , compose.ly and Fiverr , which serve as clearinghouses to hire writers for businesses. A business may need one letter or a series. You can gain repeat work if you do a good job.
You may have seen TikTok and YouTube videos about writing handwritten notes for businesses and earning $5 per letter. This is a scam that has been debunked by multiple websites. You won’t find companies paying you a lot of money to write handwritten letters. They want polished, professional copy for communications with clients and customers, and you must have experience doing this type of work. It falls under copywriting and can pay $40 per hour or more.
How can you get paid to write for beginners? Breaking in with little experience can be difficult. Some aspiring writers choose to take volunteer gigs to build their portfolio, but you can probably find low-paying work that will do the same for you.
Search job boards such as Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Monster and LinkedIn. You can also start a blog of your own with no experience, though it will take time to monetize it using the strategies outlined above. You could also submit poetry or prose to literary magazines, which usually pay an honorarium, or submit finished essays to magazines or newspapers. As you gain experience, you can approach higher-paying markets.
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A new novel sees procrastination as one of the last bastions of the creative mind.
Procrastination, or the art of doing the wrong things at one specifically wrong time, has become a bugbear of our productivity-obsessed era. Wasting resources? Everybody’s doing it! But wasting time? God forbid. Schemes to keep ourselves in efficiency mode—the rebranding of rest into self-care, and of hobbies into side hustles—have made procrastinating a tic that people are desperate to dispel; “life hacks” now govern life. As the anti-productivity champion Oliver Burkeman once put it , “Today’s cacophony of anti-procrastination advice seems rather sinister: a subtle way of inducing conformity, to get you to do what you ‘should’ be doing.” By that measure, the procrastinator is doing something revolutionary: using their time without aim. Take to the barricades, soldiers, and when you get there, do absolutely nothing!
The novel has been sniffily maligned throughout its history as a particularly potent vehicle for wasting time—unless, of course, it improves the reader in some way. (See: the 19th-century trend of silly female characters contracting brain rot from reading, which Jane Austen hilariously skewered with Northanger Abbey ’s Catherine Morland.) Which makes Rosalind Brown’s tight, sly debut, Practice , a welcome gift for those who dither about their dithering. It presents procrastination as a vital, life-affirming antidote to the cult of self-discipline, while also giving the reader a delicious text with which to while away her leisure time.
In Practice , Annabel, a second-year Oxford student, wakes long before sunrise on a misty Sunday morning “at the worn-out end of January.” The day holds only one task—to write a paper on Shakespeare’s sonnets—but Annabel is a routinized being and must act accordingly: “The things she does, she does properly.” So first she makes herself tea (coffee will rattle her stomach) and leaves the radiator turned off to keep the room “cold and dim and full of quiet.” She settles in with a plan: a morning spent reading and note-taking, a lunch of raw veggies, a solo yoga session in the afternoon, writing, a perfectly timed post-dinner bowel movement. A day, in short, that is brimming with possibilities for producing an optimized self. Except that self keeps getting in its own way: Her mind and body, those dueling forces that alternately grab at our attention, repeatedly turn her away from Shakespeare. Very little writing actually takes place in Practice ; Annabel’s vaunted self-discipline encounters barrier after barrier. She wants to “thicken her own concentration,” but instead she takes walks, pees, fidgets, ambles down the unkept byways of her mind. She procrastinates like a champ.
Read: How to spend your time ‘poorly’
Brown’s novel elevates procrastination into an essential act, arguing that those pockets of time between stretches of productivity are where living and creating actually happen. Which makes procrastination one of the last bastions of the creative mind, a way to silently fight a hundred tiny rebellions a day. Screwing around, on the job and otherwise, isn’t just revenge against capitalism; it’s part of the work of living. And what better format for examining this anarchy than the novel, a form that is created by underpaid wandering minds?
Practice is technically a campus novel, but it makes far more sense as a complement to the recent spate of workplace fiction that wonders what exactly we’re all doing with our precious waking weekly hours. Some Millennial novelists, born in an era of prosperity and then launched into adulthood just as the usual signposts of success slid out of reach, have fixated on the workplace as a source of our discontent. Many of us were told in childhood that we can do anything we want, that “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Work was supposed to be a promised land of fulfillment, a place where your aptitudes would flourish and— bonus —you’d get paid. But no job could live up to such a high standard. It doesn’t help that a torrent of systemic issues—inadequate health care, drastic rent hikes, underfunding of the arts—have left members of this generation feeling like they’re dedicating 40-plus hours a week to treading water.
Recent literature has been flush with examples. In Helen Phillips’s The Beautiful Bureaucrat , a 20-something spends her workdays entering inexplicable series of numbers into “The Database” at a labyrinthine office. The job itself turns out to be vital to humanity, but compensation, explication, and basic human dignity aren’t on offer. Halle Butler’s The New Me features a 30-year-old working as a temp at a design firm, the kind of place populated by ash-blondes in “incomprehensible furry vests.” Her try-hard personality keeps her from climbing the office social ladder, which in turn leaves her pathetically shuffling papers and slipping further into loneliness, both at work and in her personal life. The young narrator of Hilary Leichter’s barely surreal Temporary takes gigs as a mannequin, a human barnacle, a ghost, and a murderer—but all she really wants is what she and the other temps call “the steadiness,” an existence in which work and life feel benignly predictable. According to these novels, the contemporary workplace turns us into machines, chops our intellect into disparate bits, and hands our precious attention over to the C-suite.
What’s missing in each of these characters’ lives is the space for rumination, the necessary lapses our brains need to live creatively, no matter our careers. Brown exquisitely spells out how procrastination is intrinsic to the imaginative process. Despite her professed allegiance to a schedule, Annabel interrupts her own routine early and often. Just after waking, she opens a window and then immediately wishes she could experience the feeling of opening it again: “She wants to know exactly how the cold blue light feels when it begins to appear, she doesn’t want to miss a single detail of the slow dawn , the reluctant winter morning .” While settled at her desk under a cape-like blue blanket, she spends as much time considering how to spend her time as she does actually spending it. She imagines her old tutor advising her to “look away from the text and out the window if you have to, try and pause your mind on the one thing.” Sure, she jots down occasional adjectives to describe Shakespeare and the mystery lover he courts in the sonnets, but most of Annabel’s focus is in the moment, in the rabbit hole of lightly connected memories and notions her brain accesses when it’s drifting off piste. Rather than turn her ideas into a work product, she listens to a robin sing, thinks through an unconsummated relationship from the past year, and fondly recollects her time studying Virginia Woolf—a writer who herself dwelled in the interstices of passing time.
Read: Procrastinating ourselves to death
Like Woolf, Brown understands that life is lived in the in-between moments, and that buckling down to produce a piece of art does not necessarily have the intended effect. (Anyone who has sat at a desk, desperate for the words to come, can affirm.) It’s no surprise, then, that Annabel admires Woolf, whose churning novels of the mind revolve around ordinary activities that are often waylaid by characters’ fancies and distractions. Mrs. Dalloway’s party planning ends up on the back burner as she considers alternate versions of her life; the Ramsay family fails to reach the tower at Godrevy in To the Lighthouse because their musings intervene; the children of The Waves spend as much time dallying as they do putting on their play. Similarly, Practice places Annabel’s decision making—what to write about the sonnets, whether her much-older boyfriend should visit her at college—on the same footing as her daydreams.
What Annabel senses, and Brown beautifully drives home, is that it’s the strange mental collisions between the thinking mind and the wandering mind that yield the most interesting results. These are the moments when artistry sneaks in unbidden; Annabel understands that if art is created out of life, the latter has to have space to happen. She copies out a line from the poetry critic Helen Vendler: “A critical ‘reading’ is the end product of an internalisation so complete that the word reading is not the right word for what happens when a text is on your mind. The text is part of what has made you who you are.” The creative life isn’t about doling a self out into different portions—it’s about sitting in the stew that a whole life makes and offering your perspective on it.
Annabel’s day turns extraordinary, albeit in small ways. She breaks a treasured brown mug, the one thing she’d rescue in a fire; this slash through her routine almost makes her cry. She finally decides whether to invite her boyfriend for a weekend, and maybe invite him deeper into her life. A tragedy in the bedroom next door jerks her toward the understanding that all lives are as complicated as her own. She also ends the day with no more than some notes and a few words on Shakespeare’s poems: “slick — bitter — nimble.” Who is to say if she’s been productive or not?
The art of procrastination requires confrontation—with our inefficiencies, with the allure of easy pleasure, with the fact that time will someday end for us. But we can melt into it. We can let ourselves float in the in-between. Perhaps with a meaningful, self-aware novel.
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FILE - Associated Press Sports Editor Darrell Christian addresses a writing seminar for the AP’s Nashville staff in September 1980, in Nashville, Tenn. Christian, a former managing editor and sports editor of the AP known for a demanding demeanor and insistence on excellence during more than four decades with the news agency, died Monday, July 1, 2024. He was 75. (AP Photo/Corporate Archives, File)
FILE - Associated Press Gramling Award winners, including from left, Sally Jacobsen, Michael Boord, Colleen Newvine, Darrell Christian of the Stylebook team, Achievement Award; Julia Weeks, Scholarship Award; and AP President Tom Curley pose for a photo during the Gramling Awards dinner at New York headquarters, Oct. 26, 2011. Christian, a former managing editor and sports editor of the AP known for a demanding demeanor and insistence on excellence during more than four decades with the news agency, died Monday, July 1, 2024. He was 75. (AP Photo/Stuart Ramson, File)
Darrell L. Christian, a former managing editor and sports editor of The Associated Press known for a demanding demeanor and insistence on excellence during more than four decades with the news agency, died Monday. He was 75.
Christian died of Parkinson’s disease at Elegant Senior Living in Encino, California, according to his wife, Lissa Morrow Christian. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease around 2015, his wife said.
“Darrell was the finest story editor I ever saw, with an unerring instinct for the lead and shape of copy and zero tolerance for anything but the best,” said Mike Silverman, the AP’s managing editor from 2000 to 2007 and senior managing editor through 2009. ”I had the great good fortune to be his deputy for several years when he was managing editor and much of what I later brought to the job I owed to him.”
A no-nonsense editor known for directness and rigor, Christian modernized AP’s sports coverage during seven years in charge, emphasizing breaking news and in-depth reporting on such issues as the sports business, academics and high school safety standards. That coverage earned him a promotion to managing editor under William E. Ahearn, then the executive editor.
“Sports is just an extension of hard news with a slightly different flavor,” Christian told the National Press Club in 2007.
Born on Dec. 26, 1948, Christian was a native of Henderson, Kentucky. He began his newspaper career as a sports writer and sports editor at the Henderson Gleaner in 1964, worked two summers in the AP’s bureau at Charleston, West Virginia, and received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kentucky in 1969. After serving in the Navy from 1969-1972, Christian joined the AP in Indianapolis in 1972. He became news editor in 1975, moved to the Washington bureau in 1980 and became deputy sports editor in New York the following year.
Christian was promoted to sports editor in 1985, coordinating coverage of the 1988 and 1992 Winter and Summer Olympics and overseeing the addition of featurized approaches to game stories on all major sports events — something he brought to news stories as managing editor.
“When Jackie Robinson came along, sports began to develop a social consciousness,” Christian said at the National Press Club. “It really exploded in the 1970 and early ’80s with television coverage, which brought sports events into the living room and the proliferation of money in sports, the free agency where you suddenly created a whole generation of instant millionaires. And what happened between the lines was no longer enough. That created a public appetite for everything you could possibly want to know about these athletes.”
Called “DLC” throughout the AP, Christian was known for his sharp, concise critiques sent to reporters, left in mailboxes in blue envelopes in the pre-digital era. The “blue notes” were feared among the staff.
Christian said the top story he covered as sports editor was Ben Johnson testing positive for a banned steroid at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, which caused him to work for 48 consecutive hours . Among the major stories he oversaw as managing editor: the O.J. Simpson saga, whose coverage he led with aplomb.
“It was indeed the circus of the century and it was one wild ride to cover it on a day-in, day-out basis,” Christian said.
Christian replaced Martin C. Thompson as managing editor in 1992 and chaired the Pulitzer Prize investigative jury in 1995 and 1996.
“Darrell was an old-school competitive newsman who valued creative stories delivered quickly to readers,” said Kathleen Carroll, the AP’s executive editor from 2002 to 2016. Those values infused every decision he made leading state, national and sports coverage: Make it interesting, write cleanly and get it out the door. His crusty exterior and droll sense of humor barely disguised his deep devotion to fast, accurate, interesting stories and the people who wrote them.”
After six years as managing editor, Christian was succeeded by Jonathan P. Wolman and became director of MegaSports, the AP’s multimedia sports service for newspaper and broadcast members and commercial online services and websites.
“Darrell combined old-school editing skill with a hunger to stay on top of the latest and innovation that would help keep AP competitive at the very beginning of the internet news age,” said Michael Giarrusso, AP’s deputy for newsgathering-global beats, who worked under Christian. “He was as comfortable editing the lead on a story as he was meeting with tech startups that wanted access to AP news or photos.”
Christian became business editor in 2000, and in 2003 was appointed to the newly created position of director of sports data, combining AP Digital’s MegaSports service with the AP’s newspaper sports agate service.
“Behind the gruff old-school newsman exterior was an editor who proved to be a mentor for the next generation of journalists,” said Brian Orefice, a manager of the data division and now vice president of product at Stats Perform, the renamed digital company. “His professional credentials were unquestioned and his advice invaluable.”
Christian became editor at large in 2006, then created the AP’s Top Stories Desk in 2008 and managed it until his retirement in 2014, when he moved to California.
“Darrell never really stopped doing what he loved, which was to edit and illustrate,” AP golf writer Doug Ferguson said. “He put an emphasis on letting details do the work of adjectives. And he had this terrific ability of knowing what the story was and how to get there. He made us better.”
Christian had been living at home in Encino and still going to a gym and playing golf and softball before he entered Encino Hospital Medical Center on May 24. He was transferred to a rehabilitation facility a few weeks later and moved to the senior living facility on June 25.
Christian’s first marriage ended in divorce. He met Lissa Morrow when he was supervising AP’s coverage at the 1984 Super Bowl in Tampa, Florida, where she was covering for a radio station. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a brother, Scott, and niece Erika Whitman.
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These words describe features like shape, texture, color, and size. They help differentiate between items in a group by calling out distinguishing features. In English grammar, you can use the following to describe nouns and pronouns: Abandoned. Abrupt. Academic. Acute. Admirable. Adorable.
Creativity is the heart of innovation and artistic expression. Through descriptive adjectives, we can further understand and explore the many facets of creativity. Description of Creativity Creativity is the ability to produce original ideas and solutions by thinking differently and seeing beyond the usual. Words to Describe Creativity Here are the 30 most common words ... <a title="Top 30 ...
Use adjectives that capture the colors, textures, and emotions conveyed by the piece. For example: "This mesmerizing painting captures the vibrant hues of the sunset, with bold strokes that create a sense of movement.". "The artist skillfully blends soft pastel tones, giving the painting an ethereal and dreamlike quality.".
Adjectives -- descriptive words that modify nouns -- often come under fire for their cluttering quality, but often it's quality, not quantity, that is the ... You're book marked for some exciting adjectives in my writing. Thanks don. Martingerrard. December 15, 2015 at 4:15 pm . Superb stuff, absolutely top notch.
You can use these adjectives to describe the people in your stories, the places, or even the actions happening place. If you need help creating character sketches, take a look at this article on the subject. Below are lists of descriptive adjectives you can use for your creative writing. Take a class in turning your creative writing ideas into ...
The cottage she bought is red and white . They walked out into the busy and crowded street. When using three or more adjectives from the same group, separate the first two with commas and use "and" to join the last two adjectives. Anne ran to the white, green, and yellow house on top of the hill.
Strong adjectives describe the important characteristics, feelings, or qualities of writing. These adjectives are often things that readers cannot ignore. Writers use strong adjectives instead of very + a normal adjective. For example: Very short → Succinct, Terse. Very long → Lengthy, Extensive. They often paint a strong example of a noun ...
16. sympathique. 17. talentueux. 18. terrible. In conclusion, descriptive adjectives are words that describe the qualities or features of a person, place, or thing. They can be used to make writing more interesting and vivid, and to help the reader get a better understanding of what is being described.
In the English language, describing words play a crucial role in enhancing your writing and speech. These words mainly include adjectives, adverbs, and participles, which help you provide more information about nouns and verbs, making your expressions clearer and more vivid. Describing words, or adjectives, are used to modify nouns and pronouns.
Descriptive adjectives describe nouns, providing more information about their characteristics, like size, colour or condition. They add detail, so readers can better visualise your world. Imagine one of your characters lives in a bleak house, tangerine house or tiny house, for example. Here are a few more examples:
An adjective is a term or phrase that describes and modifies the qualities, state, and quantity of nouns and pronouns. There is a specific rule when there's more than one adjective in a sentence that cannot be broken even in informal speech or writing, unlike grammar and syntax. It's called the "order of adjectives," where the use of ...
Creative Writing Words with meaning and examples. Here is the table of Creative Writing words with their meanings and examples: Abundant. Meaning: Existing or available in large quantities; plentiful. Example: The garden was abundant with flowers, creating a vibrant display of colors. Alleviate.
Writing Prompt #1. Keep a sensory journal for a month, devoting each weekday to one of the five senses. Describe in detail three things. Review your week's descriptions on Saturday or Sunday and combine some of them into longer, more elaborate descriptions. Monday:Taste. Tuesday:Touch.
A creative person is someone who sees the world a little differently. They're often able to find beauty in things that others might miss, and they have a unique way of looking at the world. Creative people are often imaginative and curious, always exploring new ideas and ways of doing things. They're also often passionate and expressive ...
clean - clean language or humour does not offend people, especially because it does not involve sex. conversational - a conversational style of writing or speaking is informal, like a private conversation. crisp - crisp speech or writing is clear and effective. declamatory - expressing feelings or opinions with great force.
Spice up your writing with this list of descriptive words. Get some inspiration for adding extra detail and personality into your vocabulary.
Each has its own adjective list subcategories. Here's an overview of what is covered in this guide: A Descriptive Adjectives List. Attributive and Predicate Words. A Limiting Adjectives List. Cardinal Adjective List. Definite and Indefinite Articles. Demonstrative Adjective List. Interrogative Adjective List.
Interesting adjectives list for students, storytellers, creative writing. Choose adjectives word list for elementary or advanced adjectives lists for kids in middle school grades. ... Our super easy storytelling formula-- combined with creative writing prompts and story prompts, free writing worksheets, writing games and more-- make it easy to ...
Opinion Adjectives Excel for Flash Fiction or Action Scenes. Opinion adjectives reduce word count by telling rather than showing. A point-of-view character might describe someone's face as gloomy. However, gloomy is a judgment based on the POV character's opinion. Perhaps the person being described is in fact thoughtful or perplexed.
Having fun whilst learning is an objective that most teachers aim for and this can be achieved during a lesson with a focus on writing. Getting your students' creative juices flowing will result in fun lessons and lots of opportunities for learning new vocabulary. Adjectives are just one area of vocabulary that can benefit from writing ...
Narration - the voice that tells the story, either first person (I/me) or third person (he/him/she/her). This needs to have the effect of interesting your reader in the story with a warm and ...
These words will sprinkle color on the greyest sentence, so quit being craven and start reading through this lengthy list of super cool adjectives. 1. Aback: by surprise. 2. Abaft: at or near or toward the stern of a ship or tail of an airplane. 3. Abashed: feeling or caused to feel uneasy and self-conscious. 4.
Sometimes, a place or a person deserves to be spoken of positively. In that case, use one of these 125+ positive adjectives to describe them to your heart's content. ... A bigger personal vocabulary also improves your writing, so keep your eye on that silver lining. ... creative: characterized by originality and expressiveness: artistic ...
Ghost writing is the most lucrative type of writing. Ghost writers channel the voice of a third party, writing as though they were that person or business and presenting their ideas in first ...
Sure, she jots down occasional adjectives to describe Shakespeare and the mystery lover he courts in the sonnets, but most of Annabel's focus is in the moment, in the rabbit hole of lightly ...
1 of 2 | . FILE - Associated Press Sports Editor Darrell Christian addresses a writing seminar for the AP's Nashville staff in September 1980, in Nashville, Tenn. Christian, a former managing editor and sports editor of the AP known for a demanding demeanor and insistence on excellence during more than four decades with the news agency, died Monday, July 1, 2024.