Illustrator Francois Place

This is how I discovered the work of Francois Place...

One day about three years ago I was trying to find a place I'd never been before in one of the most infuriating quartiers of Paris - Montmartre.  After having gone up and down a few of the steep staircases Montmartre is famous for, I decided to have a cigarette break to calm my nerves and there on the windowsill of where I stopped to fish out my smokes was a book called "Du pays de Jade à l'Île Quinookta".  Since it was early morning and the garbage bins (called bacs) had not been taken, I thought someone had bothered to fish this book out of the bins, but had left it there.  Maybe I was wrong and I actually stole someone's book, in which case I'm very sorry, but actually not really because this trash was a treasure.

If one visits the bookshops and comic book shops of Paris, you will see a lot of illustration similar to Place's style and I am not well-versed enough to say that Place came first or second or third, or whatever the particular details might be.  His Wikipedia page (in French) is rather sparse, and his Amazon page simply lists the books he's worked on, but if ever one day I should be lucky enough to be able to have my own works illustrated, I would definitely put him on top of a very short list.

They say pictures are worth a thousand words, so I'll cut this post short, and maybe you'll see why I fell so in love with a book that was saved from a rubbish bin and then saved from a window sill to be part of my library and a source of inspiration.

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How to Write Good

Found this on the Villanova website (university in America) and had to share.


How to Write Good

1. Avoid alliteration. Always.

2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

3. Employ the vernacular.

4. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

5. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

6. Remember to never split an infinitive.

7. Contractions aren't necessary.

8. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

9. One should never generalize.

10. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

11. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

12. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.

13. Be more or less specific.

14. Understatement is always best.

15. One-word sentences? Eliminate.

16. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

17. The passive voice is to be avoided.

18. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

19. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

20. Who needs rhetorical questions?

21. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

22. Don't never use a double negation.

23. capitalize every sentence and remember always end it with point

24. Do not put statements in the negative form.

25. Verbs have to agree with their subjects.

26. Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

27. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.

28. A writer must not shift your point of view.

29. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)

30. Don't overuse exclamation marks!!

31. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to the irantecedents.

32. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.

33. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.

34. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.

35. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.

36. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.

37. Always pick on the correct idiom.

38. The adverb always follows the verb.

39. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; They're old hat; seek viable alternatives.

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