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Are You a Writer? Does Writing Make You Happy as Your Day Job?
I volunteer at the San Francisco Writers Conference doing my “get sh!t done” thing. Specifically, I do logistical management of the 8-minute consultations (previously of just the editors, now of all of them). Having done this for several years with a core group of editors, I’ve become well known for my ability to perform scheduling…
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Why Beat About the Bush? Everyone Just gets Lost.
There are many reasons people choose to not get directly to the point: tact, fear, the desire to make things sound better than they are, the desire to hide what is really being said. However, when you choose to communicate that way, start handing out the compasses, because your audience is just going to get…
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Does that Word Make You Happy, Sad, or Mad?
One of the things I do for editing clients is question their word choices. My best example was when I convinced a client that she didn’t want to use the word “manifesto” on her website – even though she was using it correctly. I find that people’s brains tend to go to one of two…
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Musings of a Writer without a Book … Yet
Well, I’ve drafted enough of How to be a Writer without Writing a Book to get feedback. So out to the beta readers it is. Now I’m facing a whole new world of writer-hood: getting published. Initially, my intention was to self-publish, and I still may. However, my writing coach has convinced me that the…
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Vacation and the Business Owner
My original plan for this blog was an attempt at something useful that would convince entrepreneurs that they really do need vacations in their life. That went nowhere quickly. I’m not sure I could say anything that hasn’t been said in a way that could be any more compelling. So, for fun, I went to…
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Free from Fiction
After three years, I guess you can say I have a new tradition: Logistics Nazi for Mary Knipple, Organizer of the Independent Editors at the San Francisco Writers Conference. TANGENT: “Logistics Nazi” is a term I came up with over a decade ago to describe my uptight coordination of something like six people to meet…
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Get Inspired, Damn It!
That’s helpful, isn’t it? Writing for other people has a decent amount of inspiration built in – they provide the topic, I write about it. While some of those topics are harder (more boring) than others, at least I know what I’m writing about. And, for me, the topic is the hardest part. The quality…
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It Takes More than Just Words – What’s Really Involved when Writing
When people say, “I’m going to write a <fill in the blank>,” it is amazing how little they know about writing a <fill in the blank>. Most people think that all they need to do is sit down and write! OK, maybe it is not that bad. A large portion of the population understands that…
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Why Writing Needs Editing
OK, the obvious does apply here. Typos, misspellings, and bad grammar are the easy answers for why anything written needs editing. However, most spell/grammar checks will alert a writer to the worst of those. And going back over what you write can also catch a huge number of errors. And if that was my only…
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What Color is Your Language?
After writing my “Ode to the Thesaurus,” I started to think about how I could write a multitude of such Odes and have a great time. The problem is that I’d probably lose my readership. This left me at a bit of a loss for blog topics. Recently, I bought a second pack of colored…