Where to Start

No surprise, we write a lot of articles on Craft Your Content. Usually about writing, editing, and crafting your content.

If you haven’t gotten a chance to dig through our articles yet, we wanted to make it nice and easy for you to find what you are looking for.

Here are some of our most popular posts (and some of our personal favorites that don’t get the love they deserve) broken out into five simple categories.

1. On Writing

• Famous Authors and Their Writing Styles – It’s the epic stories and original writing styles that set famous authors apart from the forgotten. By understanding their styles, you can create your own.
• How to Write WAY More Words Per Hour (Without Sacrificing Quality) – Writers’ speeds vary, but there’s lots you can do to write faster. Even if you think you’re naturally a slow writer, you can improve your speed. Just trying out one of these tips could make a big difference.
• Falling in Love With Writing Again –  Professional writers and creative writers alike go through periods of inspiration and dry spells. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows when you’ve set your sights on being a full-time writer. But there are still ways to love writing again and remember why you started in the first place.
• Writers Block Doesn’t Exist – Writer’s block. It’s the bane of every writer’s existence. It keeps us up at night, agonizing over the right words. But guess what? It doesn’t exist.

2. On Editing

• The Editor’s Creed – Worked with a bad editor before? Did they strip your words to make them perfect? Not all editors do that. Many adhere to The Editor’s Creed. If you are going to work with someone, make sure they do as well.
• What I’ve Learned About My Writing While Working with an Editor – What one freelance writer learned after having the Craft Your Content team edit her writing for a few months.
• Why Do We Miss Typos? How Proofreaders Improve Content – Even the most thorough proofreaders miss errors occasionally. So why does this happen, even though these people are in the business of finding mistakes?
• Why Does It Take So Damn Long for My Editor to Edit My Article? – Why does it take so damn long for her to edit your article? Surely it doesn’t take several hours, let alone a few days, to catch a few typos.

3. On Creativity and Process

• What to Do If You Hate Journaling – Journaling has become an oft-given piece of advice to writers, both aspiring and professional alike. But what if you hate journaling? We’ll talk about why journaling isn’t for everyone, and what you can do instead.
• The 32 Most Important Books I’ve Read In My Life (So Far) – Ever read a book that lasts with you forever? Here is a book list of the 32 most important Elisa has read in her life (so far).
• Practical Creativity: Tips for Setting Up Your Ideal Workspace – The first in a series about creativity: how to setup your ideal workspace in a way to best encourage creative thought and uninterrupted creative flow.
• How Can Boredom Make You More Blissfully Creative? – There are going to be periods of boredom — sometimes intense boredom. Sitting alone with one’s thoughts is a challenge in modern creative life.

4. On The Business of Writing & Publishing

• Lessons Learned From The New York Times Modern Love Column Submission Tips – Top advice from editor Daniel Jones on how to write your New York Times Modern Love column in a way that gets noticed and gets you published. (Relevant if you want to pitch any major publication on any topic — the advice is about Modern Love but applies elsewhere)
• Trello as an Editorial Calendar: How To Make It Work – Struggling to plan your content marketing and organize your blog post ideas? Look no further for a solution than the free Trello Editorial Calendar.
• Swipe Right on the Perfect Editor for Your Company – When you’re trying to decide on the perfect editor, there are several things to consider about your company’s goals before you go searching for “the one.”
• What a Content Producer Is and Why Your Business Needs One – For writers, it’s all about finding the right editor. So much so that they often forget about another position they might need… a content producer.

5. On The History Behind Words

• A Word Journal May Be the Best-Kept Secret Weapon in Your Vocabulary Arsenal – By the time you get to the end of this post, you will have a word journal system for finding your favorite words and researching their etymologies. This is gonna get geeky!
• Learn Technique from a Greek: Where Modes of Persuasion Meet Content Creation – Rhetoric – the forgotten art of persuasion. If you’ve buried the lessons learned in  college English, it’s time to resurrect them. For content creation!
• SEO Started in the 12th Century: Bet You Didn’t Know That – The evolution of language is fascinating, but some things haven’t changed. You can find SEO strategies in some of the most ancient printed text.
• The Future of Writing, With Robots – While writing with robots tends to strike fear into the hearts of creatives, working with AI can help get more done, grow audiences, and do better work.

Photo credit: sorokopud