VS Grenier ~ Award-Winning Author, Speaker & Podcaster

Serious readers routinely look up any words they do not know. But there are also “intuitive” readers, who figure out a word just by reading the context in which the word is used and look up its meaning to fully grasp the writer’s meaning. I've heard some call this wishful thinking and the GrammarBook.com recently posted on this exact topic. Here is what they shared. The three examples below are sentences you might find in print or online. Each contains a possibly unfamiliar word which, if misinterpreted, sabotages the meaning of the sentence. • On a blistering August morning we came upon a 1960 Buick coruscating in the sun . Understanding coruscating is the key to understanding the sentence. The Intuitive Reader ponders the word, with its echoes of corrosion and rust , and concludes that the car was falling apart. A reader’s first impressions matter, and this reader now is picturing a broken-down old wreck. But coruscating means “sparkling.” In fact, the car in the tale ...

As an author, I'm asked a lot in interviews or when I meet someone, "Why did you start writing?" I've given a few different answers to this question over the years. The most common answer really is how I began my writing career, which is this: I used to work full-time in the fashion industry as a buyer. I moved from California to Utah as my husband, and I decided this gave us the opportunity for me to be home with our children, instead of gone, traveling or working long hours in an office while private schools and daycare became our kids lives. However, going from working to not working as a stay-at-home mom just isn't me, and so I took a writing course, loved it and so my writing career began.  Yes, this is the how I started writing, but what really made me fall in love with writing and for that matter reading books, too, I have to get a little bit more personal for the first time ever. As a kid, I was never a big reader. Sure I read the books assigne...