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Remembering William Zinsser

Dennis L. Peterson

May 12, 2020
2 min

Remembering William Zinsser

Zinsser was born October 7, 1922. Following service in the Army in North Africa and Italy during World War II, he returned to the United States and fulfilled a life-long dream by being hired as a writer for the New York Herald Tribune as a theater reviewer. When that stopped being fun for him, he quit and became a freelance writer. He also taught writing courses at Yale and later became executive editor of the Book-of-the-Month Club. In addition to numerous articles and revie

Where Has the Time Gone?!

Dennis L. Peterson

May 1, 2020
2 min

Where Has the Time Gone?!

First, he calculated how much time he had had to that point of his life. (I think he was in his mid-70s at the time, having been born about 1908.) He laid it all out, down to the number of hours and minutes. (He was a much better mathematician than I am.) Then, he began to recount his estimation of the various activities of his life and how many hours he had spent doing each of them. Sleeping took up much of that time, of course. He had gotten relatively little of it during t

Lessons from Sun Tzu, Jomini, and Clausewitz

Dennis L. Peterson

Apr 14, 2020
1 min

Lessons from Sun Tzu, Jomini, and Clausewitz

Throughout much of America’s military history, its strategies of warfare have been based to varying degrees on the teachings of three great military men: Sun Tzu, a Chinese philosopher and military strategist who wrote The Art of War around 500 B.C.; Antoine-Henri Jomini, a French general who published Treatise on Grand Military Operations in 1838; and Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general whose work On War, published posthumously in 1832, emphasized the moral (psychologica

Tuesday Teaser: Faithfulness in the Least

Static: Imprecise Language

Dennis L. Peterson

Feb 28, 2020
2 min

Static: Imprecise Language

That quotation came to mind the other day as I read a short article by Stephen Clay McGehee titled “Words Have Meaning” at The Southern Agrarian http://www.southernagrarian.com/words-have-meaning. McGehee noted how the term gentleman has been used so loosely, without any attention to its true meaning, that it hardly holds any meaning for many people today. The same is true for the term lady. (The greatest compliment anyone ever paid me was when a female coworker referred to m

Tuesday Teaser: Followup and Long-Term Success

Dennis L. Peterson

Feb 25, 2020
1 min

Tuesday Teaser: Followup and Long-Term Success

“The transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next, Sun Tzu taught, was the key to long-term military success. . . . [The Bible] enjoined parents to teach their children at every possible opportunity . . . and pastors were to teach their congregations. . . .” (from Combat! Spiritual Lessons from Military History) #writing #reading #lessonsofhistory #writers #Militaryhistory #History #education #books #publishing #learning

Tuesday Teaser: Dealing with Setbacks

Dennis L. Peterson

Feb 18, 2020
1 min

Tuesday Teaser: Dealing with Setbacks

Be sure to check out Part 1 of the featured article about this book on Southern Writers magazine’s Suite T blog this Friday at https://southernwritersmagazine.blogspot.com! #writing #teachers #reading #lessonsofhistory #teaching #writers #Militaryhistory #History #education #books #publishing #heritage #perseverance

Education Article Published

Expectations

Dennis L. Peterson

Nov 1, 2019
3 min

Expectations

Don’t you just hate it when you buy (or buy into) something that has been highly touted but once you get it doesn’t meet your expectations? Yep, that pretty much describes my experience the other day. I had learned that a famous writer (whose name I’ll omit to protect the guilty) was going to be conducting a live webinar for writers in which he would share some of the secrets of his success. Wanting to learn from the best and thereby improve my own efforts at writing (and may

Books Given and Received

Dennis L. Peterson

Oct 11, 2019
3 min

Books Given and Received

Readers of this blog know by now that I’m a bibliophile, I love books and reading them. Granted, I’m selective in what I read, but within certain categories I read avidly. I must be selective in my reading because there are just so many books to choose from. Therefore, I also seldom re-read a book, although I have done so with a few. (So many books, so little time!) As Sir Francis Bacon famously said, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be ch

Two Adages and Your Writing

Dennis L. Peterson

Oct 4, 2019
3 min

Two Adages and Your Writing

“Write what you know.” “Your writing becomes like what you read.” Since I began writing for publication back in the late 1970s/early 1980s, I’ve come to acknowledge the validity of those two mantras, but my writing has tended to reflect a slight modification of them. While it’s true that you should write what you know in the sense that you should be knowledgeable of the topics about which you write, you can also get a lot of mileage from writing about what you don’t yet know

Positive Presentations–and a Pet Peeve

Dennis L. Peterson

Sep 25, 2019
3 min

Positive Presentations–and a Pet Peeve

I suspect, however, that for many attendees a better name might be Ignite2Write, because they often leave the conference inspired to write, either to begin writing (the wannabes), to resume (those whose passion for the craft has waned), or to improve (those who realize that each of us can do better). At least that’s what the two conferences I’ve attended have meant to me. Last week’s sessions included for me (1) reminders of some things I already knew but needed to have reinf

Beyond My Comfort Zone

Dennis L. Peterson

Sep 20, 2019
2 min

Beyond My Comfort Zone

I’ll soon be leaving the safety and security of my writer’s cocoon and venturing well beyond my comfort zone. And for an introvert like myself, that’s sort of scary. But it’s necessary, even critical, for my continued life as a writer. A man has to do what a man has to do! So what is this dangerous assignment I’ll be venturing forth to complete? I’ll be attending a writers conference. Oh, is that all? you’re probably thinking. That’s not so bad. What’s scary about that? Oh, i

Learning More from Louis L’Amour

Dennis L. Peterson

Aug 30, 2019
2 min

Learning More from Louis L’Amour

I finished reading Louis L’Amour’s memoir Education of a Wandering Man last week in the spare moments when I wasn’t writing or doing research for my writing. So many of you seemed to enjoy the quotations I shared from it in my previous post https://dlpedit.wordpress.com/2019/08/23/life-lessons-from-louis-lamour/ that I decided to share a few more this week. Perhaps these gems will increase your appreciation of reading, learning, and then sharing what you’ve learned through yo

Life Lessons from Louis L’Amour

Dennis L. Peterson

Aug 23, 2019
3 min

Life Lessons from Louis L’Amour

As readers of this blog already know, I tend to prefer reading nonfiction over fiction. But they also know that I’m trying to break out of that rut and read a little fiction now and then. On Education: “[N]o university exists that can provide an education; what a university can provide is an outline, to give the learner a direction and guidance. The rest one has to do for oneself.” “Education depends on the quality of the teacher, not the site or beauty of the buildings. . .

New School Year Revives Memories

Dennis L. Peterson

Aug 16, 2019
3 min

New School Year Revives Memories

It’s school time again. You can’t avoid knowing that fact because of all the Walmart aisles crowded with school supplies for sale. (I don’t think we had to have a fraction of that stuff back in the days when I was a student!) But this time of year always brings back a lot of memories for me. This week’s activities provided the initial spark for my memory machine. My wife began in-service training this week at the school where she teaches. As always, however, she actually had

Doing It Right

Dennis L. Peterson

Jun 28, 2019
3 min

Doing It Right

I was impressed the minute the man got out of his truck. My appreciation for him grew by the minute. When the installer arrived, two young boys exited his truck with him. I greeted them and said to the man, “I see you brought plenty of help with you today.” After returning my greeting and shaking hands with me, the installer said, “These are my grandsons. They’re shadowing me today to begin learning the trade.” He then turned to the boys and said in a low voice, “Introduce yo

The More Things Change. . . .

Dennis L. Peterson

Jun 14, 2019
2 min

The More Things Change. . . .

The children of those early settlers either established farms (often quite large ones), towns, and cities or pressed further west to do the same things there. In their wake came other settlers, builders and entrepreneurs, who further developed the land and turned its vast resources to the good of others, even while advancing their own interests. That was before the Eisenhower interstate highways. Before air conditioning in cars. Before GPS. Before much of the vast expanse of

Reflections on a Winslow Homer Painting

Dennis L. Peterson

May 17, 2019
2 min

Reflections on a Winslow Homer Painting

But that painting, “Snap the Whip,” was more than a sanity-maintainer for me. It reminded me of three special people: my grandfather, my father, and teacher-author Jesse Stuart. Finally, the painting reminds me of Jesse Stuart, who began teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in which he struggled to teach his students not only the daily lessons of the curriculum but also, and more importantly, the life lesson that learning is critical to success in any and all life endeavors. On

Books I Recommend to Writer Friends

Dennis L. Peterson

May 3, 2019
2 min

Books I Recommend to Writer Friends

I recently completed an eight-part series answering the question “How does one go about getting a book published?” Some of my writer friends are now asking, “What books would you recommend to get us started, and keep us moving, toward that goal of book publication?” I’m glad someone asked, expressing their confidence in my opinion about this question. I often find myself drawn to other writers’ lists of what books they have found helpful. Perhaps the books they found helped t