Category Archives for Writing
The 3 Short-Term Challenges Writers Should Consider
Most authors, like myself, have had grand ambitions about their writing. Let me see if I can guess yours correctly.
You’ve always had long-term ambitions of being published by well-respected publications around the globe, getting your name “out there,” and nailing down some highly valued clients in the process.
Did I guess right?
While I’ve personally milestoned many of these ambitions to date by working for some high-profile search engine optimization (SEO) companies, agencies, and publications in the past and present, I am in no way satisfied by just sitting on my hands or sleeping on a win—I want them all on my resume.
Now who said being ambitious was a crime, eh?
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Why Every Writer Needs to Audit Their Past Work
As a writer, what do you do after you have penned and even published a piece of writing? Whether you write publicly or privately, you often want to move on to a new creation and leave the written work behind you.
After all, you have accomplished the uphill task of creating the content. So why not let that work belong to the people or die somewhere in the corner of the internet?
Or, if you are like me, allow it to gather dust in your archives, then later give it a new home in the trash can. Never to look at it again, while convincing yourself that only greatness lies ahead of you with a new piece.
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“Milk Drinkers Are Turning to Powder”: How To Avoid Ambiguity in Your Writing
Miners refuse to work after death.
Squad helps dog bite victim.
Iraqi head seeks arms.
As the article headline and the sentences above indicate, ambiguity in writing—a sentence that can have multiple meanings—can have a thoroughly humorous effect.
If you write comedy, or if you try to come up with a cheeky headline for your article, then ambiguity in writing is your friend. But ambiguity isn’t just about headlines and comedy.
To name a few examples, if you’re a blogger tackling a social issue, if you’re a journalist covering important events, or if you’re a nonfiction author preparing a book on climate change, you would want to avoid ambiguity in your writing. Inadvertent ambiguity can harm your text, by having a humorous effect that can be thoroughly destabilizing in an otherwise factual narrative.
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One Way To Abandon Your 9-to-5 Job and Become a Full-Time Writer
Some writers discover their calling early in life; others might be late bloomers. There is no universal right or wrong, but understanding (and adapting to) your individual circumstances can be pivotal in evolving as a writer.
I knew what I wanted to do for some time; right from the beginning of my early 20s (I’m 31 now), and that was to write!
Balancing my full-time, 9-to-5 office job with writing drafts, practicing, and pitching to local editors in the evenings (until the early hours of the morning) was admittedly a tough grind—and it took some getting used to.
But, hey, that was OK with me. I was prepared to walk that extra mile on glass barefooted to get there.
I wanted to become a writer, full time; desperately. And in the process, I wanted to leave that dreadful 9-to-5 admin job in a puff of dust behind me. Five long years. It just wasn’t me, that job. I was better than that.
“Make your own pissing cup of coffee; answer your own friggin’ telephones, and post your own God darned letters,” I’d think to myself, often.
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