WritingThoughts

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You fill in the blank: e-book, guest post, website, app, etc.

I get a lot of requests from readers wanting me to review something of theirs. Occasionally, when something really interests me, I do publish a review or a guest post here. But, most of the time I don’t do the reviews that I’m requested to do.

Here’s why.

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Working according to a style guide can save both you and your client time and money. When I worked as a writer in the corporate world, each company had their own style guide.

The style guide listed the writing rules that a particular company wanted followed. More than that, it saved time and money by reducing rework.

In this post, I list five times when a style guide is important.

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Recently, I read some great advice from my friend James Chartrand over at Men With Pens. Last week, James explained Why You Should Ditch Your Blogging Schedule.

James is right with this advice! And then again, she’s not. Let me explain.

You see, there are at least three different types of blogs out there. And, like anything else, not all blogs are created equal. The same advice does not fit all. (Nor should it.)
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It’s easy for writers to get a bad case of “perfectionism” and think that their copy is not good enough.

If you’ve ever written, and rewritten, and rewritten the same piece of writing again and again because it just didn’t seem right to you–then you know what I mean.

While I’m definitely in favor of editing your work (got to nip those nasty typos in the bud wherever we can), I think writers are often too hard on themselves.

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Have you been writing marketing copy? Are you getting little or no results–even though you can tell from analytics that your pages are being read?

Your headline is hot. Your writing rocks. Your topic fits–yet none of your readers ever *do* anything at all. Why not?

What could be wrong?

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I might have been a bit moody as a teen. I remember dragging a notebook around (it wasn’t really a journal–just an ordinary composition book) and jotting down poems and other thoughts as they occurred to me.

Why would I do such a thing?

I attribute my early scribblings to something many of us who are professional writers seem to have forgotten–the joy of writing.
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It’s that time of the year again. The time when everyone posts a long (or not so long) list of New Year’s Resolutions to their blog.

Well, you won’t see that here. Are you wondering why?

Here are a few of the reasons why I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions any more.

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Sometimes it’s nice to sit back and share past material with the readers. This is one of those times.

I like to share past posts for a couple of reasons. First of all, readers may have missed the posts the first time around. Secondly, a second reading often brings a fresh perspective.

Today, I thought I’d share some of my favorite WritingThoughts posts from 2011. I think you’ll agree, there’s some really useful stuff here. [Read more →]

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Tutorials, or “how to” articles, are still very popular online. While there are some bad tutorials out there, there are also some great ones. Their popularity is just one reason that writers should be interested in tutorials. The other reason is that writing a tutorial usually pays more than writing a less detailed piece.

In general, the more technical and specific the tutorial, the higher the pay. In this post, I’ll give you a few tips to help you write a winning tutorial.
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We like to focus on failure. We often tell ourselves that we should learn from our mistakes (and indeed we should), but if we stop there we’re not doing ourselves any favors.

You see, while we don’t want to repeat our mistakes we definitely DO want to repeat our successes. But we can’t do that unless we understand what went right. In this post, I identify five questions you should ask yourself when a writing project goes right.

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