The 5 best writing columns of the week

Writers, here’s your hurricane-tossed weekend reading:

Old words don’t die, they just wait to be rescued. Every dictionary has something called a corpus, which is basically its own collection of words. London Telegraph columnist Christopher Howse writes about how some dictionaries are shedding words from their corpus, and creating lists of good words to try. In Howse’s view, the dictionaries are essentially telling us which words should stay and which should go.

Authors who were copywriters first. For all of those who hope to one day finish and sell that book, this story from The Awl may offer some inspiration. Here are abbreviated versions of how F. Scott Fitzgerald, Salman Rushdie, and four other notable authors went from talented copywriter to famed author.