Newsletter 42: Make an effort or fade away, labelling killer foods, don’t trust NPS braggarts, plus three people to follow and three books to read. The effort is the point Everything about our modern world — at least in the prosperous part of it where you probably live — is designed to make things easier….
Newsletter 41: When you subtract AI from writing, what’s left is creativity; ending garbage books; remembering Daniel Dennett; surprising truths about book sales; plus three people to follow and three books to read. Soon, only creative writers will remain. Huzzah! There are things AI excels at. Summarizing long documents. Finding patterns. Turning formulaic content into…
Writers need to grow, or else the work gets boring. You’ll be more versatile, more employable, and happier if your always looking for ways to expand your capabilities. Seek opportunities to grow your experience in these four dimensions: Pivot and grow based on what you’re comfortable with Work can be simpler if you hold one…
I’m happy we had the time to sit down and talk. What’s on your mind? I’m in college now and I want to be a writer. Wow, that’s great. What kind of writer? Well, I like writing both fiction and nonfiction, and I want to make a living writing books. Awesome. I’ll be honest, it’s…
If it’s your ambition to ghostwrite books, what do you need to know, and what do you need to do? To start, here’s an inventory of the skills you need for nonfiction ghostwriting (with some notes about fiction at the end of this post): Whew! That’s a lot to know. But you also need a…
Writers may at any time get called on to write anything from social media posts to instructions to research reports. The more versatile you are, the more valuable you are. I’ll illustrate this with examples from my own career. While it included a lot more than writing, you could easily describe many of my jobs…
You say you’re a writer? Good for you. But if you really want to be valued (and paid more), you need to constantly increase your versatility. You need to be a full-stack writer. Full-stack developers are valuable A full-stack application developer is one who is adept at all elements of creating software, including both front-end…
I’ve been playing around with ChatGPT, an AI writing tool from Open AI. It is amazing. In contrast to previous AI writing tools, which were transparently awful, this one is quite good. I am not an AI expert, so don’t ask me how it works. I am a writing expert, so my question is this:…
I give writing workshops. Some clients find them awesome. For others, they are less effective. Since I am usually delivering similar content, what accounts for the difference? The value often depends on the way the client has positioned the workshop and the way participants engage during the session. So here’s some advice on how to…