Category: Writing Craft
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Seven Frequently Ignored Habits for Improving Your Professional Writing
A writer at work who stands out from their colleagues can always answer one question without hesitation: What’s it like working with you? (If you’re pausing right now, even briefly, that pause is worth paying attention to.) I’d like to introduce a framework. Not the software kind. A different kind of SaaS: Skills Adaptability Attitude…
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Seven Essentials for Crafting List Articles That Actually Deliver Value
A lot of smart writers despise list posts. I understand the instinct. The tabloid sites have made an art form of numbered garbage: “These 17 Celebrities Used to Be Hot.” The internet is lousy with crummy listicles, and any writer who cares about craft wants to distance themselves from the whole ugly genre. That would…
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Polish Your Drafts With the Traffic Light Editing Method
As a born-and-raised Angeleno, I’ve logged more hours in traffic than some people have logged at their jobs. The kind where you’re not moving, the AC is struggling, and you start having deep philosophical conversations with yourself about whether you actually need to get to your destination. But here’s the thing about traffic jams that…
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Polish Your Drafts: Transforming Mediocre Writing Into Exceptional Prose
The phrase “something more” should be engraved above every writer’s desk. Not as aspiration, as standard. Because here’s what I’ve noticed after years of editing: the difference between content that disappears and content that sticks isn’t the idea. It’s the edit. A mediocre idea, edited with care and stubbornness, will outperform a brilliant idea rushed…
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Mastering the Comma: Expert Guidance for Cleaner Punctuation
The comma is the brave little toaster of the punctuation family. Stalwart, unassuming, essential. And apparently two-thirds of the internet has forgotten it exists. Somewhere along the way, web writers decided commas were optional, an annoying interruption they could just leave out because “nobody cares about that stuff anymore.” Then, possibly regretting their previous choices,…
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Letting Your Inner Artist and Tough Critic Collaborate on Your Writing
Type, type, type. Backspace, backspace, backspace. Type a sentence, delete half of it, rewrite the other half, stare at it, decide it’s wrong, and start over. Sound familiar? Of course it does. Every writer knows this rhythm, the maddening two-steps-forward, one-step-back dance of trying to write and edit at the same time. It’s excruciatingly slow.…
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Is Professional Editing and Proofreading Really Necessary for Your Blog?
You might expect me, a career content editor, to recommend thorough proofreading and editing for every blog on the internet. I don’t. I don’t know enough about your blog to make that blanket recommendation. What I can do is give you a framework for evaluating your own publication and deciding whether more rigorous editing would…
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How Regular Writing Practice Creates Rich, Layered Content
We all recognize junk content the way we recognize junk food, instantly, viscerally, with a slight grimace. But “high-quality” content? That’s harder to define. Here’s my best shot: it’s content that helps your audience in ways they can’t find anywhere else. Simple to say. Not so simple to produce. Because the content that actually moves…
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How Refined Authors Adapt Frameworks Without Losing Originality
Templates are like cilantro. People either worship them or regard them with deep suspicion, and both camps are wrong. The lovers treat templates like vending machines, insert formula, extract result. They chase gimmicks and headline plug-and-play frameworks without doing the thinking underneath. The result is content that looks like everyone else’s content, which is another…
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Grab a Drink and Sit Down for a Quick Writing Session Right Now
Daydreaming asks nothing of you. No schedule, no preparation, no outcomes. It drifts in when you’re staring out a window and drifts out when your phone buzzes. Effortless. Undemanding. And, most of the time, forgotten within the hour. What if you could capture more of what your daydreams are trying to tell you? Here’s the…
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Four Intelligent Routines to Elevate How You Absorb Information
It was 9:00 p.m. on a Friday. I pulled into my driveway, pressed the garage door opener, and nothing happened. Dead battery. I knew I’d need a nine-volt eventually, so I drove to Target, which was convenient, because I also “needed” trash bags, candles, and whatever else the end-cap displays would convince me was essential.…
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Forty Fast Revision Strategies Every Writer Should Know
I watch an unreasonable amount of YouTube videos about how to clean a bathroom. Not clean my bathroom, that would be productive. I watch other people clean bathrooms. I study their techniques. I admire their product recommendations. I absorb their satisfaction at a gleaming tile. Then I do nothing. My bathroom remains exactly as it…
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Five Clever Techniques for Weaving Metaphor Into Magnetic Writing
I was halfway through a perfectly fine article when I swapped the headline for a metaphor and watched the click-through rate double overnight. Same article. Same audience. One image changed everything. That’s when I stopped thinking of metaphors as literary garnish and started treating them as load-bearing walls. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most content is…
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Eleven Frequent Grammar Errors Writers Keep Making
Let’s get something out of the way: I’m not here to be your grammar scold. Writing that’s conversational and engaging will always serve you better than writing that’s technically flawless but stiff enough to crack. Some of the best sentences ever written break rules on purpose. Outside of academic and professional contexts, writing that’s easier…
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Eight Powerful Revisions That Turn Average Writing Into Exceptional Prose
I once spent forty-five minutes editing a single paragraph. Not because it was broken. Because it was almost right, and “almost right” is the most dangerous state a piece of writing can inhabit. It lulls you into complacency. It whispers, “Good enough.” It is not good enough. Here’s the uncomfortable truth most writing advice won’t…
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Eight Methods to Blend Basic Imagery with Your Powerful Writing
It happened around third grade. You were nine. And something shifted. Before that age, you drew without embarrassment. You built towers. You mixed colors with abandon. You tried everything because you hadn’t yet learned the phrase “I’m not good at that.” Then the sorting began. The teachers and the classmates and the standardized tests carved…
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Drop the Fluff and Start Producing Sharper Prose Today
“Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think. If you want to ‘get in touch with your feelings,’ fine, talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade,…
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Do You Have the Guts to Create Bold Content?
In January 2006, I launched a blog with the tagline “How to sell with blogs.” Within weeks, prominent bloggers were calling me pond scum. Publicly. By name. With genuine contempt. And here’s the part most people don’t believe: that was the plan. I knew that tagline would offend the old guard of blogging, the purists…
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Distinguishing Between Metaphor, Simile, and Analogy Once and for All
A friend of mine was presenting to a board of directors when someone interrupted to say, “That’s not a metaphor, that’s a simile.” He froze. He stumbled. He lost the room over a distinction he couldn’t articulate. He never made that mistake again. Neither should you. Here’s the thing: these three tools are cousins, not…
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Developing Your Writing Personality Without Going Overboard
I once read a blog post that opened with three exclamation points, deployed the word “amazeballs” without irony, and included so many emoji that my screen looked like a teenager’s phone had exploded across it. The topic? B2B software implementation. The writer was trying to be lively. I respect the impulse. But somewhere between “conversational”…