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There have been several times in my life in which I didn’t write much of anything for weeks or even months at a time. Life can come and sweep you away to more urgent things. But, for a writer, having to write is urgent even if you don’t really have time. Recently, I was thinking…
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At one time or another, writer’s apathy has dragged us all down. The usual tips and tricks to get writing won’t work. The apathy takes hold and suddenly we find that we suffer from blank page syndrome. Fortunately, I’ve found a few ways to resolve that apathy. Perhaps the best way of overcoming this sort…
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In my freelance writing days, I’d obsess over word count like a marathon runner counting steps. It wasn’t just an important metric for me; hit that magic number, and the heavens would open, blessing me with more pageviews, satisfied editors, and maybe a check with an extra zero. Or so I thought. But does word…
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Even in elementary school, I felt that reading comprehension tests were little more than exercises in restating the obvious. These tests often seemed to measure little more than our ability to regurgitate facts and details rather than allowing us to truly engage with the material. For me, the sign of good writing is if you…
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“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” – Benjamin Franklin If you think you have something that you should write about, chances are you probably should. Really, there is plenty worth writing about that hasn’t been written yet. What you learn as a writer is that the success of a written piece…
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Have you ever stumbled upon a forgotten drawer while cleaning and found it filled with old letters, photos, or even mix tapes from the ’90s? That’s sort of how it feels whenever I dig through what I call my “Death Pile,” a digital treasure trove containing many previously discarded works. It’s much like a graveyard…
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It’s likely that you may have heard the saying “most editors are failed writers,” and this sentiment is not only untrue, but quite insulting. The idea actually came out of a parlay between T.S. Eliot and his future editor Robert Giroux. Of course, Eliot being Eliot said, “Perhaps, but so are most writers.” But, as…
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The Age-Old Debate of Writing as a “Real Job” Even now in the 2020’s, many folks still see writing as a lovely little hobby where you scribble down your thoughts, sip tea, and wait for inspiration to strike. Meanwhile “real adults” do real jobs like constructing skyscrapers or assembling Chinese-produced IKEA furniture. It’s almost as…
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Since the 2020 pandemic, my primary focus in my life was to make the best of my writing archives. As of September 2022, however, my focus has shifted slightly: make my writing archives better. This is, in fact, a very straightforward process. Find the posts that used to get love and improve them, then find…
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So you want to become a better article writer? Here is my simple three-step process to do just that! OK, there you have it. Now go forth into the world and write your heart out! Right, there’s a bit more to it than that. Isn’t there? Obviously, being highly literate definitely helps anyone. But as…