Barbara Gregorich's Blog

During the 1970s and ‘80s I wrote a lot of educational materials, several of which were on the topic of vocabulary. I remember teaching that the “context clue” method of learning words was ubiquitous but not reliable. To learn a word through context clues means that you encounter a word, written or spoken, and you infer or conclude what it means by all its surroundings. Children learn words this way all the time, and so do adults.

The problem with the context clue method, as opposed to the lo...

If you’re like me, you learned all about past, present, and future in grade school, where we were taught the names and functions of verb tenses. Past tense verbs, usually ending in ed, are used to indicate actions that occurred before the current “now” moment, as in I published my first novel in 1987.

Present tense verbs are used to indicate actions occurring now, in the present moment, as in I write in the mornings, not in the evenings. And future tense verbs indicate actions that have not ...

I first heard the word novella when I was a college freshman. Among the many works of literature which I was assigned to read were some books that were classified as novellas. I don’t know how I learned this: I think that maybe one of my professors mentioned casually that our assigned reading was a novella. It might have been Billy Budd, by Herman Melville. Or The Stranger, by Camus. Quite possibly Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad.

It could have been another book that I was assigned to rea...

Back in the 1980s I was writing mainly children’s books, and so I spent a lot of time with illustrators and their illustrations, judging whether each illustration served its purpose and, if it didn’t, discussing how it could be changed. Doing this became second nature to me, and I very much enjoyed it.

In 1993, though, what was to become my best-known book [so far] was published — Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball (Harcourt). This was a nonfiction book aimed totally at adults. I s...

When I hear the words “how does it feel?” I immediately think of the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” Dylan is singing about somebody who has been reduced in status. In my case, it’s the opposite. When people ask me (as they have been lately) how it feels to be prescient, I’m being elevated in status, not demoted.

Yes, it’s true: recently I’ve been called prescient for creating the plot and theme of The F Words.

Prescient is an adjective. When I look up the word in my dictiona...

In order to explain a grammatical question I encountered recently, I need to briefly define three terms: colloquial language, literary language, and narrative.

Most people know what colloquial language is: everyday speech used in ordinary or familiar conversations. Colloquial language is different from formal language (that used in writing or in professional speeches such as sermons, business proposals, or TED talks.). You could say that colloquial language is the opposite of formal language....

Sigh.

The title of this blog post is Very. Basic. But, apparently, it’s also Very. Necessary. And that’s because it appears that most Americans don’t know what a mule is. I say “Americans” because it’s fellow citizens I’ve heard from, and not people from elsewhere. So I don’t want to assume that people from elsewhere have the same lack of knowledge.

So. What is a mule? A mule is an equine: a member of the family that includes horses, donkeys, and zebras. However, unlike the horse, donkey, ...

Because I self-publish mainly through KDP, I have had way too many years of experience choosing keywords: search terms that customers use. Even when I published Exit Velocity with BookBaby, it was still me who had to come up with the keywords. No matter where I go, I can’t escape keywords, and one thing that shows I can’t escape them is that I’ve written about them before: on November 15, 2023, in “Keywords on Amazon.”

And escape them I would, if that were possible. I find it tedious and cont...

Back in 2012 if I typed “crossover book” into a search engine, I got very little information that corresponded to what I was looking for. Maybe no information at all: I simply don’t remember.

Today the situation is different. Type “crossover book” into a search engine, and AI responds immediately, telling you that a crossover book is one that appeals to both young people and adult people. And you also get far more other hits describing what a crossover book is. This is the kind of book Jack ...

I don’t know about you, but when it comes to writing the final draft of a book, I generally have no fear. I know what things to look for in general, ranging from consistency of character names to word usage to punctuation and so on. And for each book I make a list of what to look for in particular. For example, in The F Words I was concerned with whether there was enough of the Chicago setting, and also whether there were enough jail scenes with Cole’s father.

Coupled with my general confiden...