It Is Better to Use Google Earth Hopefully Than Arrive

Aliya Whiteley on whether a writer needs to be there or just look it up on Google Earth:

I know that place. Two of my rel­at­ives have held wed­ding recep­tions in that hotel. The beach is indeed stun­ning, and very often empty. Although the names have been changed, every detail is exact. And I sup­pose this stuff is not secret, but it is sur­pris­ing to find such a small corner of the UK depic­ted so accur­ately. I won­der why she changed the name of the place. I thought — she must live around there. And then I thought, hey, she’s a great writer, I’m sure she could have researched it and done it justice. Can you cap­ture a place so exactly if you visit it only once and then Google Earth it a bit?

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The Amazing Adventures of Strunk and White

Via Daring Fireball, I see that it’s the fiftieth anniversary of the pub­lic­a­tion of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. For those who don’t know, the book is a rock-solid primer on gram­mar, style and punc­tu­ation. (American English, of course, but 90% is applic­able to those writ­ing in International English.) I recom­mend it to my under­gradu­ates because it’s more straight­for­ward than Fowler’s. Have a writer in the fam­ily? Why not buy them a copy of Strunk and White? They’ll thank you — in a beau­ti­ful turn of phrase.

★ A Gentle Tweet

As some of you might know, m’friend Roger Morris has joined that Web 2.0 band of authors what seri­al­ise their nov­els via Twitter.

It’s true, get­ting a sen­tence or a frag­ment every hour — that’s how I am now schedul­ing my tweets — is not like sit­ting down and read­ing an exten­ded sec­tion of the book through. You won’t neces­sar­ily remem­ber what went before. The text will work on the reader in a dif­fer­ent way — but I am inter­ested to see just how.

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