Power Writing

Reading time: About 1 minute Today, I’m saying thanks to my readers and asking for a bit of special help (not money!) in return…. This post marks my 935th blog and my 18th year as a blogger. Where the heck did all that time go? If you’re a long-time reader, THANK YOU for your perseverance […]

Reading time: About 3 minutes It’s sometimes surprising how much we can learn about writing from our animal friends… My husband was in our back yard last week doing some gardening when he spotted a cat-sized, big-eyed mammal. It spotted him, too, and it quickly dived under our deck. “Whoa,” my husband said. “That isn’t

Reading time: About 3 minutes If you don’t learn how to tell better stories, you’re at risk of losing your clients to the ChatGPT monster… We had 13 people over for a big, celebratory dinner last night — the most I’ve hosted since the start of the pandemic — and we wrapped up the evening

Reading time: About 2 minutes A broken treadmill doesn’t help anyone. But fixing that treadmill can teach you a useful lesson for later in your writing life… My favourite piece of writing equipment is not a special pen or notebook or even keyboard. It’s my treadmill desk. I get 20,000 steps most workdays (that’s almost

Reading time: About 3 minutes Some tasks — like writing — can be hard to do. That’s why it’s important for you to start feeling comfortable with discomfort… Does the act of writing ever make you feel uncomfortable? Perhaps it bores you just a little. Maybe it makes you feel frightened. Possibly, it frustrates you.

Reading time: About 3 minutes Writing can be difficult work. But you can make it more palatable if you always start with the easy stuff first… An arresting — and amusing — argument rages in the productivity community. It’s all about how we should tackle our work — whether writing or anything else. One side

Reading time: About 4 minutes Thoroughly blocked with your writing? Here’s how to write when it feels impossible… Earlier this year, the New York Times ran an article about exercise under the headline, “I want to work out more BUT…” So, today I’m going to borrow their concept, as well as their nifty sub-headers, and

Reading time: About 2 minutes Do you keep writing yourself dry? The next time you sit down to write, take some important steps to protect your future self… Do you usually try to write yourself dry? Stop it! But perhaps you don’t even know what I mean by that strange turn of phrase… When I

Reading time: About 3 minutes If you’re not writing to the point of pain from time to time, you’re probably not pushing yourself hard enough…. My husband and I went to Phoenix the last week of January — our first get-on-a-plane holiday since the pandemic. Part of the reason we’ve reduced air travel is not

Reading time: About 3 minutes The word failed makes us feel like, well, failures. But reconsidering your failed New Year’s resolutions can yield some hopeful results… By mid-February, many people have collected an assortment of failed New Year’s resolutions. Especially if those resolutions involved exercise or writing. But instead of feeling downhearted or discouraged with