Career advice for the pre-AI era looked like this: Work as creatively and productively as you can. Solve not just the problem put in front of you but the broader problems it reveals. Learn to use the most modern tools that can help you do your work. Carefully check your work; assume there are errors,…
Airbnb gets a lot of snark these days for people’s perceptions of the extra things they are supposed to do. They go in thinking they are getting a bargain, and then find themselves doing the host’s housework. If this is you, you are using it wrong. How to evaluate an Airbnb stay I am in…
Here it is in a nutshell. Use AI do to tedious crap you’d rather not do yourself. Check everything it comes up with. Trust nothing. Use your own judgment to make decisions. It helps, but it can’t replace you. The smarter you are, the more you can use it to help — and the more…
Newsletter 101: Why writers puff up prose, and why it never works. Plus, an open letter to publishers, AI-generated books that never appear, three people to follow and three books to read. The superlative trap Hey, everyone! I’m the greatest, most talented, most super-accomplished writer that you’ve ever encountered. 🥳🎉🥳🎉 Admit it. You read that…
If you hire me as an editor and your work has problems, I’m going to tell you. And I’m not going to sugarcoat it, either. These are the kinds of comments I frequently make: I sometimes wonder why people don’t fire me, but so far, with more than 100 clients, no one has told me…
Writing is never finished. Only abandoned. While there’s controversy about who said that first, it’s absolutely true. Books go to the publisher at the deadline, and always with authors regretting they don’t have more time to work on them. The key to ensuring that what you turn in is the best it can be is…
Newsletter 100: A smarter way to go on holiday. Plus, Anthropic’s training on books rules “transformative,” defamation by blurbs, three people to follow and three books to read. How to go away Everyone needs time off. And people tend to disagree on how to do it. There’s the “disconnect entirely” camp. They don’t check email,…
Last week I woke up at 4:00 am with a brilliant idea of what to write for the opening of a book proposal for a client. Every sentence was clear in my mind — at least to the extent that one can have clarity of mind at four in the morning. Was it worth getting…
Here’s how to cure one of the world’s most common writing problems. You’re writing an essay, a blog post, or part of a chapter . . . and something is just wrong. The words are somehow off. The logic isn’t persuasive. The point seems pointless. Writing more seems nauseating. Why write more when you’re disgusted…