WritingThoughts

I always chuckle to myself when I see the blog posts and forum posts to freelance writers recommending that they have someone else proofread their writing. It’s not that having someone else proofread your copy is a bad idea. It’s not. It’s a very good idea. Many companies hire full-time editors to proofread their documents […]

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While larger publications often use a copy editor, smaller publications often do not. This means that it is doubly important for us to check over our own work. Self-editing is hard, though. It’s easy to miss your own mistakes. That’s because when you read something you’ve written, your mind tends to “fix” minor mistakes in […]

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Do you want to earn more money? Of course you do. If you’re like many small business owners, there’s only one obstacle in your way–time. We all have the same 24 hours in a day, but how we spend those hours has a direct bearing on how much money we earn. Most freelance writers and […]

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Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. So why do some writers accomplish so much more than others? The answer is better time management. If you’re a new freelance writer, the demands on your time may surprise you. You expect to have more time as freelancer. What you don’t expect is that you […]

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Studies show that crisp, concise writing that gets the point across quickly is the most effective. For online writing, efficient copy is even more important. Most readers scan online posts and articles before they decide to read them. Yet, many writers make careless mistakes. You can’t count on your spell checker to catch everything. Do […]

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Grammar mistakes can make you look bad. A misspelled word here, a dangling participle there. That’s all it takes for your would-be client to decide that you’re sloppy and move on. That’s why it’s so important to proofread anything you publish. Of course, it’s hard to catch your own mistakes. There’s nothing more annoying than […]

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Recently, I’ve noticed a new trend in content creation. With an increasing frequency, clients are asking me to do just a single task in the content creation process. For example, a client will ask me if I can come up with headlines for a topic. Or, they’ll ask if I can just do the research […]

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When it comes to writing for the web, you have to grab your reader’s attention quickly. In many cases, you have just seconds before they click away. That’s why shorter is better. Shorter paragraphs. Shorter sentences. Shorter words. A newbie mistake when it comes to online content is to write like you’re trying to impress […]

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For as long as I’ve been writing, the people around me have mistakenly thought that writing was easy–an afterthought. Non-writing colleagues always seem to believe that good writing is something that can be slapped together at the last minute. When I was a technical writer, software development teams often left manual writing or online help […]

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Recently, I’ve seen another flurry of posts and even eBooks that claim to teach writers how to write more quickly. (Out of respect for the authors, who are some of my most admired professional colleagues, I’ve decided not to link to those posts and resources here.) I have to ask myself, is speedier writing really […]

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