I do a fair amount of work for free or below market rate. It’s usually working on committees that are creating useful things. Here are my criteria: It’s pretty simple. If it fits these criteria, I enjoy the work, I enjoy the people, and I can look back on the work I did and find…
A mensch (from the Yiddish, rhymes with wrench) is a person of high integrity; a serious, dependable person. While it originated as a gendered term, it’s gone beyond that. There are plenty of women who are mensches and plenty of men who are not. If you are a mensch, and you ask for my help,…
Newsletter 157. Calculators give wrong answers all the time, just like AI — there’s a lesson in that. Plus, creating a media empire from your IP, AI steals your voice, three people to follow, and three books to read. Is the answer right? We’re focused on getting answers. We should be more focused on whether…
If you’re writing a nonfiction book, ask yourself two questions. Is your idea unique? What do you know that nobody else knows? If you can’t answer that question, you don’t have a book (or if you do, it is not worth writing). The unique qualities of your book could include: Here’s a complete list of…
If you are an editor or ghostwriter, you need to protect yourself. AI-generated text from your clients creates both risks and extra work for you. You are within your rights to refuse any such material altogether. However, if you do deal with it, you must protect yourself. Below are some clauses I recommend including in…
I have many clients and many professional collaborators. I have few true partnerships. Here’s how I pick them. My clients pay. That’s not really a partnership. A client is someone who I help for a fee. It’s popular to describe people in a commercial relationship as partners. That’s not really right. When money changes hands,…
I have coached or edited more than 50 nonfiction authors. Only two or three authored most of they wrote with AI. The rest wrote their manuscripts themselves. Every one of these authors who wrote the books themselves had problems. They were rambling, self-centered, disorganized, unaware of basic grammar rules, addicted to em-dashes and exclamation points,…
Newsletter 156: Writing is hard, which is why it is essential. Plus, a paean to corporate jargon, why personas are more than chatbots, three people to follow and three books to read. Writing is supposed to be hard For the last two years I have done strength training with a personal trainer three times per…
The writing teacher and author John Warner just posted an essential response to the questionable idea that LLMs can provide writing feedback that’s just as useful as comments from a human editor. Here’s what prompted him to comment: There is a study out of Stanford Law School that says in a blind evaluation, law professors preferred the…