Laura Fabiani's Blog

A special movie has you entranced in its visual world, captures your attention throughout, and moves you emotionally. You become a part of the movie as "Character X". Without a doubt, you want this movie to become a part of your DVD collection. Something appealed to your inner self as you watched and immersed yourself in that movie. With some introspection, that piece of entertainment can now serve as an inspiration for a future work of literature.

Watching a movie is an interactive...

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Len Richman is an educator, actor, playwright and loving grandfather who has taught and been associated with the West Island College in Quebec, several universities and middle schools in China, and is currently at the Thomas More Institute for Research in Adult Liberal Studies in Montreal. He has recently worked on the set of Barney's Version with Dustin Hoffman, Mini Driver and Paul Giamatti.

If any of you live in Montreal, I encourage you to see the theatre performance of Raisin in The Sun ...

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Writing prompts make it easy to stimulate the creative process and find something to write about. There are many different sites online that provide prompts for writers of every genre. Here are 15 places to explore when you feel like practicing your craft:

Writer's Digest - The Writer's Digest, an online writing information warehouse, provides 96 different writing prompts. The prompts cover a wide variety of subjects and will work for almost any writer.

WritingFix - WritingFix offers a random w...

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I was so honoured when The Quebec Writer's Federation asked me if they could feature me in their Love Ms Julie's Blog—a blog about new Quebec English-language writing. They have a feature called The Writing Room, where QWF members talk about their writing space and writing process.

I'm very excited to share this with my family and friends. Please feel free to visit the post and leave a comment!
 http://lovemsjulie.blogspot.com/2009/10/writing-room.html

Thanks for your support, as usual.
Laura Fab...

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There are many reasons for using the comma, the punctuation mark used most frequently within sentences. Today, we will look at one basic function of the comma that is often omitted. Look at the following sentences and see if you can tell what is missing and why.

I told my mother I was famished and she proceeded to make me my favourite peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The teacher repeated the rules but the students continued to ignore them.

We could barely make out the road ahead for the storm...

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In our last issue we looked at a commonly forgotten usage of the comma. Although the rule may seem simple enough, until one starts writing and conscientiously applying the rule, a new writer may tend to omit using the comma where needed.

Let's look at how we use the comma for non-restrictive relative clauses and restrictive clauses. Are there commas missing in the following sentences?

The crowd which initially consisted of a few hundred people became a swarming horde of thousands.

In the winter...

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For anyone who loves to read and write, words are fun, interesting, magical. They transport us to other places and times; make us laugh, cry, or shiver with fright.

An often-overlooked way to build one's vocabulary is to learn the origin of words. This study is called etymology.

If you are not familiar with the meaning of certain words and you take the time to look them up in the dictionary, most of the time you will find its origin. Take, for example, the word fiancé. When I looked it up on <a>

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Searching for an idea that inspires you to develop it into a work of literature may be as close as going to your home entertainment center. In your unique collection of CDs you might find that special song that stimulates your creativity either through its music or lyrics.

Each of us has a music collection as unique as our writing style. This selection of music offers a glimpse into your psyche. By your taking that same glimpse, you can rediscover aspects of yourself from where ideas will emer...

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Recently, in an email of a most special person, the question, "How do writers do it?" was poised to me, in regards to continuing to write in spite of the many rejections writers receive.  The answer I gave came with much reflection and with the moral condition that I share it with you, the reader and writer.The true writer, dedicated to his craft, whether it takes the form of fictional entertainment, nonfictional disclosure or an opinionated essay, is compelled to write through altruism to...

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I love this...


con't with part 2

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