Writers’ Rough Drafts – Episode #49 With Alex Proaps

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Alex Proaps is a design psychologist, consultant, entrepreneur, professor, and speaker. She uses what she knows about human perception and cognition to help design and development teams who create human-centered technology. This means that, while a lot of her writing is extremely academic and technical, she often needs to write and present in a way that takes these very high-level concepts and processes and breaks them down into easy-to-understand conversations.

Due to the nature of her work, and her location in Norfolk, Virginia, Alex ends up working on a lot of classified and NDA-laden projects, where she serves as a conduit between different teams and departments to make the whole thing come together in a way that serves the end user. When she’s not getting super techy and applying human psychology to the user experience, she still gets her creative juices flowing with occasional blog posts and “fun” articles, and her online Etsy shop, which prominently features some pretty shiny pieces, with a heavy focus on dinosaurs and robots.

How To Tackle the Question of What to Write About

Let me tell you the one thing I know for sure: “What should I write about?” is a question all writers face, most or all of the time.

I also know waiting for inspiration to strike is not a solution. Finding a workable, effective way to get inspired is the primary step.

We are all aware that writing is done in isolation, but the material has to be collected from outside the confines of your workstation. Ideas can come from interactions with people, being out-and-about, and all forms of media.

Important Rules for Entrepreneurial Writers While Traveling

One of the many glamorous things about being a business writer is that you can work from just about everywhere and anywhere.

All you need is a laptop under your arm and a stable internet connection, and you’re free to run your writing business from any location in the world, as you please.

It all sounds great in theory, and a lot of the time, it is.

Writers’ Rough Drafts – Episode #48 With Jay Acunzo

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Jay Acunzo is a public speaker, the author of the book Break the Wheel: Question Best Practices, Hone Your Intuition, and Do Your Best Work, a critically acclaimed show and podcast host, as well as the founder of Unthinkable Media, which creates documentary shows with brand clients. In the earlier parts of his career, he worked as a digital media strategist at Google, was Head of Content at HubSpot, and was Vice President of Brand at the venture capital firm NextView. He’s also the writer behind one of my favorite new-to-me newsletters of 2018, Damn the Best Practices.