Category Archives for Articles

What’s a Writing Coach and Why Do I Need One?

Your motivation has become stagnant, the words on your unfinished manuscript stare back from the page with dumb accusation, the last thing you want to do is open your computer, and deadlines are elbowing up to you like inconsiderate riders in a crowded subway car.

You want to scream, rethink your profession, maybe change your name and open a Cinnabon in Omaha. Or maybe your situation is less dramatic, and you just want to level up your writing game, or tackle a daily writing practice or a project larger than you’ve ever worked on before.

Wherever you fall in this range, it’s probably time to find a writing coach.

How To Write Short Texts: 3 Tips on Narrative Dynamics and Style

There are long texts, and there are short texts. In our current digital reality, there are also very short texts. Regardless of length, a text that is meaningful and successful is more than a sum of its parts, that is, its words. If that weren’t true, a massive historical novel spanning three volumes would always have been preferable to a short story of a few thousand words.

In fact, however, there is no qualitative difference based solely on the length of a work. An op-ed, when written with skill, can have much wider repercussions than a nonfiction book dealing with a similar issue. But although the above might appear self-evident, the question remains:

Why are some short texts so meaningful and successful?

What I Learned About Writing From Reading Margaret Atwood

There are many authors who have one or two books that I can count among my favorites. Margaret Atwood is not one of those authors.

To me, and many others, everything that she’s written is fascinating and worthy of a spot on my list of favorite books.

As a teenager, her gripping plots, masterful storytelling, and relatable characters had me pulling all the Atwood novels that I could carry off the library shelves. I’ve read everything that she’s written since then with equal gusto.

Writing for Online Readers? 9 Simple Tricks for Better Engagement

If your writing is meant to be published online, then you’re writing for online readers. And this writing can be in different forms like a blog post, an article, a web page, a product description, a buying guide, or a case study.

But there’s no guarantee that anyone will actually read your writing.