Shout Out to The Blood-Red Pencil

I was out all day yesterday so I didn't have time to post, but I was thinking this morning about what I could post about to gear me up for posting next week. It occurred to me that I had had a lot of time to follow my usual blogs, but one that I did go to was the The Blood-Red Pencil.

So this is an unashamed advert for The Blood-Red Pencil. here's a quick run down of some of the more recent posts.

Tired or Fresh? The use of Clichés in writing - and they're not all bad!

The Spice of Variety covers style editing, and Don't Talk Like That covers dialogue.

The post about Reference Books came perfectly for me. I have been considering getting books about writing for quite a while. I bought one about 15 years ago that i though was quite good at the time, but since I have really got stuck into writing and learned so much recently I now know it is well a bit rubbish. It was only a cheap impulse purchase from WHSmith so no worries. Anyway, I haven't spent much on reference books because the Web is crammed with info on writing. I had considered Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain, and it is still on my list, but now I need to add The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms.

Why are these books on my list? The Techniques of the Selling Writer covers MRUs extensively and I've found MRUs very helpful when structuring my writing, and The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms is rather more than a thesaurus, (I usually use dictionary.com and thesaurus.com) it explains subtle differences in word meaning and connotation.

Also on my list is a style manual, but I'm not sure which one yet.