All posts by Amanda Stein
Practical Creativity: 7 Tips for Silencing Your Self-Critic
“This article is terrible.”
“You call this writing?”
“Everything you have to say is boring.”
“You’re just not good enough.”
These are the kinds of things you’d expect to hear from a horrible boss, a troll in the comments, or a cruel bully.
Yet too often, these are the kinds of things that we say to ourselves.
We may claim that this way of speaking to ourselves and attacking our writing is useful: It’s just us being realistic and giving ourselves an honest self-critique. After all, Simon Cowell was the best judge, right? So why should we be Paula Abdul, overenthusiastically praising ourselves?
But this sort of thinking isn’t constructive criticism. It’s just, well, mean.
Practical Creativity: Tips for Setting Up Your Ideal Workspace
Creativity is often thought of as something elusive, as something that just happens to you, some passive blessing that gets bestowed on the bemused creator with no warning, logic, or effort.
The image of a creator desperately waiting for the muse, totally at the mercy of its whims, is far too common. And too frequently, we creatives encourage that idea.
How many times do we refuse to paint because “nothing is striking us?” Or refuse to even sit down at our desk because we’re certain we’re crippled with writer’s block? Or leave our guitar to gather dust because we just aren’t “feeling” it right now?
What Not to Do: 5 Lessons from Bad Copy
We all come across it, all day, every day.
In our email inbox.
In sponsored posts on social media.
On websites.
Even infiltrating the news.
It’s every writer’s, marketer’s, and business’s worst nightmare:
Bad copy.
Using Fiction Techniques to Write Effective Copy
On the surface, copywriting and fiction writing may seem like wildly different things, with completely unique tool sets. Copywriting is often practical, information-driven, and concise, while fiction can be verbose, emotional, and highly stylized.
However, there are many elements that fiction and copywriting have in common. They both need to be engaging, memorable, and attention-grabbing. They both need to know their audience, have a consistent message and voice, and stand out amongst other writings.
Whether you’re a professional copywriter, a fiction writer who writes copy as a day job, or a business owner or other professional who writes their own copy, fiction techniques can help teach you how to make your copywriting captivating, relatable, and highly effective—and can help you reach your target audience in the best way possible.