Betsy Ashton

Over the past two weekends, I've had the pleasure of meeting many writers and readers at two separate conferences. At both, I listened to people lament how at sea they felt when they moved to new communities and away from family and friends. That got me thinking about...

We've all seen the tee-shirt: "Let's eat Grandma. Let's eat, Grandma. Commas save lives." And every writer is familiar with the bugaboo of the Oxford comma. To "Oxford" or not. Have you ever really looked at some of our punctuation symbols? Some are really funny. Take...

That's right. Today, August 1, is National Girlfriends Day. I might of missed it if my gal pal, Kim Dalferes, fellow writer and all-round crazy Southern Irish gal, hadn't thrown down a challenge in her blog...

Anne Lamott will forever by memorialized (even though she is very much alive) for coining the phrase, “shitty first draft.”  That’s the draft where you basically puke everything onto the screen, knowing that many of the words might survive ruthless editing but never...