Jennifer Howard

You wouldn’t guess it from my wardrobe, but I subscribe to Lucky magazine. Is it worth the $12 bucks a year? You bet! Forget the fashions—I read Lucky for the prose stylings. For instance, the October issue has me asking: Are mustard-colored trousers really “huge for fall”? (Is this good news for plus-size women?) Can a lip balm be “adorable”? Is “glowify” an actual verb? Lucky’s editors are masters of the to-die-for compound modifier. A tote is “intriguingly organic, touchably matte.” Skinny tweed trousers are “distinctly autumnal.” Hair is “sexily unstudied.” (I especially like that one. Dropout chignons, anyone?) Oh,… Read more...

How-to-write books have never had much appeal for me. I am happier when I learn by doing—and by reading other kinds of books. A teacher of mine in grad school used to say that bad novels teach you more about writing than good ones do; the also-rans and failures are cautionary tales, examples of what to avoid in your own work. All rules, even the quirky personal ones, have exceptions, right? At the suggestion of Carole Sargent, proprietor of Booklab, a k a Georgetown University’s Office of Scholarly and Literary Publications, I just read a book called How to Write… Read more...

So I took a month off from blogging without really meaning to. What that says I don’t know, except that I must have had things to do and places to be. Or maybe I’ve been lazy and distracted. I’ve done a little traveling this past month and a little fiction-writing. More on that anon. Anyway, I expect to rev up again here now that it’s fall. On the journalistic front, most of my old Chronicle links appear to be working again, and I’ll be updating the list of recent work this week. There will also be some blogroll-freshening. We’re back… Read more...