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I grew up in the golden age of blogging, that glorious time when you could scribble a few thoughts on the internet, hit ‘publish,’ and suddenly find yourself the authority on just about anything you please. Yeah, I remember those days fondly. Back then, the most intense competition was between you and that one overly…
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Every once in a while, I need to renew my dedication to writing. It’s a curious ritual that I find myself performing every year, a self-imposed checkpoint in my writing journey. I’m sure many writers do this, perhaps with varying frequency or intensity. For me, I find that about every year, I need to refocus…
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Even the most seasoned writers have blind spots, especially in familiar topics. Gaps in our knowledge are unavoidable. So, research isn’t just for seeking credibility to shoulder the burden of proof for your ideas. It shouldn’t be about finding interesting filler in order to reach a certain word count. Research shouldn’t just be scaffolding. It…
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5 Red Flags Every Writer Should Know When I first published this post several years ago, it originally helped dozens of writers steer clear of scammy agents. While the literary landscape keeps shifting, the core red flags haven’t changed. I’m bringing it back for 2025 — refreshed and polished — because too many hopeful authors…
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“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” – Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting John Swift’s aphorism about the Confederacy of Dunces is more than just a quote from a great 18th century essayist. It…
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We live in an era characterized by unprecedented connectivity and yet, paradoxically, also burgeoning divisiveness. This is why, for me, E.B. White’s call in his essay ‘Intimations’ to find individuals “big enough to love the whole planet” reverberates with a profound urgency. White’s words from December 1941 beckon us to envision a society nurtured by…
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Once Upon a Truth… In the beginning, there was Truth. No questions asked, carved into stone tablets and shouted from mountaintops by bearded men with suspiciously confident eyebrows. You knew where you stood. Reality was what the guy with the staff and the fire-belching bush said it was. These were the good old days, back…
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Let’s not pretend we live in a rational world. We reside, often too comfortably I might add, in a full-throttle, glitter-drenched Charlatans’ Paradise. Our modern world has become a kingdom ruled by confidence artists in limited-edition sneakers and bespoke suits, armed with buzzwords, ring lights, and disturbingly bright teeth. Our national pastime isn’t baseball anymore;…
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You and I probably each know someone in our lives that embodies the Boss Bitch. We all know one of those, a shimmering capitalist chimera who allegedly “has it all” and reminds the rest of us plebs that we, too, could rise and grind our way into the annals of hashtag empowerment. But that dream…
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“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations For years, I’ve felt that nearly every single word I utter is but a shadow of the thought I wish to convey. Indeed, human expression is often forcibly funneled into the narrow alleyways of symbols and allegory, what we colloquially…