better writing

How to Get Better at Writing: 10 Ideas to Ignite Your Best Work This Year

A version of this story appeared in Total Annarchy, my fortnightly newsletter that helps you be a better writer, storyteller, marketer. Get it in your inbox; you’ll love it. * * * <Hand over heart; eyes to the heavens.> This year, you resolve to…. 1. WRITE THE FIRST DRAFT AS FAST AS YOU CAN. Get it out of your head. Get it onto the page. It’ll be lousy. It’ll be ugly. GOOD FOR YOU. You did it! Have a snack. ➡️ How to create that first draft: “Rework the horse.” 2. NEVER PUBLISH THE FIRST DRAFT. Rewriting sounds about as much fun as recovering from a Moderna booster. But please-please-please do it! Even if what you are going to publish is “just” an email. “Only” a LinkedIn post. “Merely” a marketing article. The difference between mediocre and not-mediocre is one more round of revisions. The difference between something you make excuses

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How to Build a Daily Writing Habit

A version of this story appeared in Total Annarchy, my fortnightly newsletter that helps you be a better writer, storyteller, marketer. Get it in your inbox; you’ll love it. * * * I’m typing this with one hand—let’s call it Lefty, because it’s my left hand. Righty hangs by my side, injured but itching to get in on the action, like a sidelined Olympian in Tokyo 2021. I had shoulder surgery two Thursdays ago for rotator cuff tears—four of them. (Caused over a year ago when I slipped and went down hard on a slushy Boston street. My right arm shot out and tried to be the hero.) I thought my cuff and I would bounce right back. I thought my arm would spend the weekend lounging in the summer sun like a lizard. And within a week—tops!—she’d be good to go. Maybe not quite ready for the batting cages. But

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How to Turn Editing Into the Best Part of Writing

A version of this story appeared in Total Annarchy, my fortnightly newsletter that helps you be a better writer, storyteller, marketer. Get it in your inbox; you’ll love it. * * * Long before I wrote books and your favorite newsletter 😊, I wrote for a financial newspaper about Federal Reserve regs and housing prices. A high point of my career there was a headline I wrote for a story about NACHA (the National Automated Clearing House Association, a US electronic payment regulatory system). The headline: “NACHA Business.” My pun game was strong even then. The headline. I loved it. The editor did not. (Still salty about it TBH.) * * * Eventually I went on to work for the Boston Globe, among other pubs. And while I left journalism a long time ago, writing for newspapers gifted me the biggest lesson of my career. The lesson: No one is

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Vivid Writing: How Do You Paint a Picture in the Mind of Your Reader? Add These 5 Things.

  Big Word Day is a day that encourages people to use king-sized words just to impress others. I love words. Sometimes I like big words. (And I cannot lie!) But using big words for the sake of using big words…? So. Dumb. The point of writing is to connect with other people. To be understood. To shed a little light on the world. (If that’s not the point, you’re writing a diary.) That’s why I’m always yammering on about clear writing. But even better than clear alone is clear buddied up with vivid writing in a recognizable style. What’s “vivid writing” mean? It means you add color and description to evoke emotion. One way to do that is to use some detail. Details make writing come alive. Details paint a picture in a reader’s mind. And that’s critical in Marketing, especially, where our goal is to ignite change. So

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4 Important Writing Tips from Warren Buffett’s Letter to Shareholders

Warren Buffett published his much-celebrated annual Letter to Shareholders yesterday. I noticed it was out while I was on a flight home from LA, just as JetBlue and I were 30,000 feet over Nebraska. Nebraska. Buffett. Me. Coincidence? I. THINK. NOT. (To quote The Incredibles‘ Bernie Kropp.) By the time I landed in Boston, analysts and commentators and journalists were all over it. Here’s a hilarious thing: Yahoo can’t seem to get its email client right. But even before the letter’s official release, Yahoo had produced a video highlight reel with Warren’s letter’s best quotes. And by “hilarious” I mean funny-eyeroll. Not funny-ha-ha. Let that sink in for a minute: A letter gets its own trailer. Yes, the letter is written by the world’s most famous investor. But still. Warren doesn’t care about any of them, though. Not the New York Times or MarketWatch or Yahoo’s letter-trailer. He writes his

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