Category Archives for Articles

Our Favorite Content of 2022

Another year, another sprint to the finish line. Amiright?

As we tentatively returned to our “new normal” lives this year, the content we consumed ended up reflecting what we needed out of it. For some, that meant books that fed our escapism or media that broke up the monotony of our daily lives with something fresh and different. For others, it meant content that satisfied a craving for knowledge or taught us something new.

That’s the beauty of art. There is a book, podcast, movie, or show out there for us no matter what we’re looking for. Something that every person on this planet can connect with, learn from, and feel at home in. 

So if you’re looking for something in 2023, maybe you’ll find it in our team’s recommendations. Here’s the content that we connected with in 2022 …

70 Gifts for Writers – Craft Your Content’s 2022 Holiday Gift Guide

How Not To Write Like an Expert

If you want people to take you seriously, you need to sound like an expert, right? 

The internet is littered with advice on how to write like an authority in your field, but you might want to add a pinch of salt to it all.

It’s not that you shouldn’t sound like you know what you’re talking about. The problem lies in the way many of us think an expert ought to sound. 

To live up to the weight of the word, we make choices we would never make in normal conversation. We douse our readers with information, say everything in the passive tense, or write in a superior, distant tone. ‘Verbification’, oversized paragraphs, and using words that are way too short or way too long are the other main hallmarks of expert writing gone wrong.

None of this helps us convey knowledge or authority; it just builds up walls between us and the people we’re trying to reach. Here’s how to share your expertise – without letting it get in the way of your message.

How To Self-Assess Your Writing and Why It Is Important

I’ve been writing for three decades, having published more than a dozen novels—one of them traditionally (and that was more than enough for me). I’ve also spent more than 10 years studying and teaching literature at a university level, including getting a PhD in English. Still, it took me all this time and more to figure out something both intriguing and essential to know: Nobody can gauge my own writing but myself.

People can have ideas or opinions, and they can even be good ideas or informed opinions. Very often, when a knowledgeable person with writing experience offers you a piece of advice about your writing, it’s actually a rather accurate assessment.

But that doesn’t necessarily make it true; not until the final authority on the matter—the author of the work—decides so. That’s why they call it… author-ity (yeah, stand-up comedy is not for me; got it).

In the end, writing is a fundamentally solitary endeavor. True, there can be other people involved—advisers, supervisors, editors—but the core of the work is made by one person, the author.

That’s you!

As a result, you are the only one entitled to say whether you’re getting better, in which areas of your writing you’re improving, and by how much. So, it’s worth learning how to do it in a way that serves you and does your writing justice. That’s precisely what I’ll be sharing with you in this post, hopefully inspiring you to look at your career with new eyes.