Charles Wiegand - Author

How to Make Your Reader Feel the Moment

March 3, 2026

"Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon."
--E. L. Doctorow (commonly cited; no exact published source found)

This powerful insight reminds writers that our ultimate goal isn't to describe reality, it's to recreate it in the reader's mind and muscles. Every raindrop should be something we can feel on our skin. Every sigh should echo in our chests.

Though we can't find this line in a published book by Doctorow, it appears across writing forums, blogs, and quote collections.

English Is a Language Built from Linguistic Spare Parts Found in a Junk Drawer

February 21, 2026

Open the drawer. You know the one. The junk drawer. Every home has it. It's where useful things go to become mysterious things. Old keys that unlock nothing. A screwdriver with a chipped handle. Rubber bands turned brittle with age. A battery whose charge is a philosophical question. None of it belongs together. And yet, somehow, when you need something, the answer is often in there.

That's English.

English isn't a carefully engineered machine like German. It isn't a disciplined sculpture like Spanish. It's a pile of parts borrowed, stolen, inherited, and occasionally duct-taped into service. Old Norse gave it bones. Latin gave it muscle. The French dressed it in tailored clothing. Greek earned a medical degree. And then English looked around and said, "I'll take some Hindi, some Nahuatl, some Arabic, some Italian, and whatever else isn't nailed down."

Tense Confusion, Questionable Punctuation, and Other Rabbit Holes in English Grammar

February 28, 2026

This blog explores the strange little paradoxes hiding inside everyday English, from rhetorical questions that wear periods instead of question marks to the subtle “tense harmony” that lets a past action truthfully point to a present identity. What begins as a simple writing hesitation becomes a deeper realization: English grammar isn’t a rigid machine but a flexible, intuitive system full of quiet exceptions that native speakers navigate without even realizing it. By comparing English to structurally demanding languages like German, Russian, Japanese, and Finnish, the piece ultimately reframes English not as chaotic, but as surprisingly forgiving. It’s a reflection on how writers and speakers instinctively follow invisible rules, often discovering them only when they stop and look closely at the sentences they’ve been crafting all along.

TL;DR

English may have its oddities - tense harmony, rhetorical punctuation, idiomatic exceptions - but compared to some global grammar systems, we've got it easy. Relatively.

So the next time you write "I didn't lie about who I am," pat yourself on the back. You just danced across tenses, followed an unwritten rule, and probably taught your inner grammar nerd something new.

Here's a little oddity I've come across from time to time:

"Who knows what the result could be?"
"Who knows what the result could be."

"Who" is implicitly a question word, but we often use that line with the intonation of a statement. So… is it okay to slap a period on the end instead of a question mark?

Short answer: yes. If you're asking rhetorically or making an indirect question - a statement that merely includes a question word - then a period is fair game. Writers use it all the time when they're not trying to prompt a direct answer. It's more of a shrug than a raised eyebrow.

Polysyndeton: When a Sentence Decides to Linger

February 14, 2026

Writers are usually trained to move things along. Trim. Tighten. Keep the line lean. Polysyndeton is what happens when you choose not to rush.

It’s the deliberate use of repeated conjunctions, usually “and,” to slow a sentence down and let it breathe. Not because you forgot that commas exist, but because the moment calls for weight rather than efficiency.

The important thing is this: polysyndeton isn’t clever. It’s emotional. If it doesn’t serve the feeling of the scene, it becomes noise.

The Wild Bite and the Open Door: Writing as Discipline and Instinct

February 7, 2026

There's a beautiful tension in the writing life, a balance between showing up every day like a disciplined craftsman and being ambushed by an idea that demands to be written now.

William Thomas Harris reminds us of the discipline required to be a writer. His advice is grounded, practical: sit down every day, even if the inspiration doesn't show. Because if an idea passes through your neighborhood, you'd better be at your desk with the light on and the door open.

That's the structure of writing. The routine. The quiet act of making yourself available to inspiration, even if it stands you up 99% of the time.