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On Writing Nonfiction
You know how to take care of business as a nonfiction writer. You’re professional. You attend to all the details of putting your writing into the world from analyzing your audience to zeroing in on new ways to promote your writing. But all this serious business stuff is probably not why you started writing. You […]
When you look back at what you’ve written, take time to find how many times you start sentences with the word “start” or “begin.” For example, in a 5,000-word document I edited, those two words appeared 14 times, while only five were deemed necessary to the meaning. That’s a lot of extra words flooding your […]
How can you change weak verbs into emotional or visual ones? One single practice presented here will transform your writing when you use it consistently. It’s this: Watch out for “is” words and their various cousins. Stay alert to phrases such as “is happening” or “was being good” and change them to “happens” or “behaved” […]
As writers, self-editing is one of the hardest things we have to do. We love our work. The way that we have expressed our ideas makes perfect sense in our own heads, and so analyzing it sentence by sentence can be disheartening and difficult. But it is essential. When you are in the flow of […]
Wow, has writing changed a lot from the time when you had to dip a quill in ink! I mean, can you imagine that you had to rewrite your entire copy every time you edited anything? Or consult a dictionary to make sure that you actually spelled a word correctly? No grammar aid, or tool […]
You might have heard the advice “change passive verbs to active verbs” but don’t quite know what that means—or why making this a habit can improve your writing. Using active voice makes your writing better (most of the time) because: Think of the difference being a flowing stream (active voice) and a stagnant pond (passive […]
Being a nonfiction writer has its pros and cons. For one, you are solely responsible for representing factual evidence in your writing without adding any unnecessary flair to it. Not only that, but you are bound to be remembered as “The” person that wrote a text that everyone is able to reference whenever they are […]
In the classic book from the 1930s, The Elements of Style, the authors Strunk and White called word clutter “the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood out of words.” You never want to be accused of that! So what can you do? Start cutting the clutter by eliminating extraneous phrases that […]
Lady Luck smiles on writers who play their cards right. These five hearts guarantee you a winning hand: YOU ARE THE ACE: Heartwork: Make reading, writing, and communicating a labor of love. Headwork: Learn about books, writing, publishing, technology, and your field. Goals: Have literary and publishing goals and a plan to achieve them. CONTENT […]
It is always the writer’s duty to make the world better. – Samuel Johnson Now is the most exciting time to be alive and the best time ever to be a writer. More than ever, we need the vision, guidance, understanding, and inspiration writers provide. Despite its flaws, the United States is the best hope […]
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