Category Archives for The Craft
5 Ways Bertrand Russell Can Help You Become a Better Writer
Feeling self-conscious, struggling to translate your thoughts into words, or just not being able to write consistently. If you’re a writer, you’ll be familiar with all of these issues.
The craft of writing is something we shape and hone over a long period of time. Often, the enormity of this task causes us to shudder. “How can I get to that level?” is what we often ask ourselves when reading the work of greats such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce.
While it’s incredibly difficult to hit such heights, striving to reach them is a noble task and gives us the potential to create great things.
Taking inspiration from the work of master thinkers can provide writing help to take us to the next level. Often, their musings can be applied to our writing in order to make it more thoughtful, more challenging, or simply better-written.
Take Bertrand Russell, for example: a British philosopher with an unconventional outlook on life. Growing up in Victorian England in the late 19th century, society was firmly entrenched in old-fashioned ideas of class and religion.
But the young Russell rebelled against such notions.
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What Cycling Across Canada Taught Me About Writing
I biked across Canada in the summer of 2017.
I had just finished my master’s degree, which was a very challenging experience—and not in a good way.
As I was finishing my thesis, I decided I needed to do something to recover. I wanted to do something difficult, but not in an intellectual or academic way. I didn’t want to rely on other people for my success. I wanted to get out of my head and into my body.
So I bought a bike and started pedaling.
Between June and September, I cycled 7,400 kilometers (about 4,600 miles) from Victoria, British Columbia to St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Then, about a year ago, I started a freelance writing business. Riding 7,400 kilometers across the country seems like a very different endeavor than creating a sustainable freelance writing business, but a lot of the things I learned from my journey have helped me with my writing business.
I hope these lessons can help you, too.
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6 Ways To Gain More Knowledge as a Professional Writer
If you’ve made up your mind to push all forms of learning to a very distant future because you’re too busy growing your business as a professional writer, you need to quickly have a rethink.
Because the world we live in moves fast and changes rapidly, your current skills and knowledge can become obsolete and irrelevant at any time, and that can happen sooner than you’d expect.
And if you’re caught unaware, making a living from your writing can become impossible, since you won’t be able to provide value or meet the needs of your target audience with obsolete knowledge and information.
But guess what?
To avoid this big mistake, you don’t have to go back to school for years at a time or take a whole week or even a day away from your business.
Instead, you can take deliberate steps to gain more knowledge and improve yourself on a regular basis while still growing your business.
Eager to find out how to do this successfully?
Then keep reading to discover six ways you can gain more knowledge daily as a professional writer.
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The 5 Myths That Can Stop You From Becoming a Successful Writer
Smell that? Yeah. Hearsay. Myths. Or as I like to call it, gibberish. Light a candle, quick! It reeks.
Unfortunately, myths about writing are a thing. And for full-time writers like yours truly, the old urban legends tend to peep their ugly noggin out from behind the sofa every now and again.
Don’t let them put you off!
Let it be known, as a warning; the sad truth is, there will always be some writing myth out there that will attempt to kick the ladder from under your feet. Things like needing a stack of startup cash and a wealth of qualifications, having to be a member of the “grammar police” or a workaholic, and always having to seek paid work to start a writing career.
I quit my office job in 2015 to become a full-time writer, and I’m here to tell you that writing for a living is very possible, given you side-step the myths, hearsay, and speculative jargon I’m about to tell you about.
The writing gods from the future sent me to warn you about these threats … I kid you not!
Come on, I’ve got you.
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