First, how do you like the new version of the site? I think it looks a lot cleaner, and will be easier to navigate. The text space is wider and not white on black, which I think looks better. I'm open to any helpful suggestions. 

Here's my writing post for this week: 

One of the first things I notice about a writer’s style is their use of dialogue.  It is one of the hardest things to get right in writing, I find. The problem is, we don’t talk in full sentences. Take the following instance.

“Hello, James. It is very good to see you today.”

“You too, Emily. The weather today is perfect, don’t you think?”

“Yes. We should go on a picnic today.”

Though each one of these sentences is perfectly grammatically correct, the exchange sounds a bit stilted.  People rarely talk that way.  It would sound more like:

“Hey, James. Good to see ya.”

“You too. Nice weather, huh?”

“Yep. Picnic weather.”

If in doubt, it is usually a good enough test to read your dialogue out loud. Are there places where you stumble? Does anything sound awkward? That’s probably where you need to rework you dialogue. It also helps to have others read passages you are not sure about out loud to see what someone who didn’t write the dialogue thinks about it.