Power Writing began as a weekly newsletter in April 2006. Its purpose? To give tips and advice about writing, to tell interesting stories and to help writers everywhere work faster, better. I distribute the newsletter by email to thousands of readers around the world every week and, since March 2012, it has become the Tuesday entry of my blog.
You can read many Power Writing entries here – I back-entered all columns until the beginning of 2009, and a handful of ones that were earlier than that. But I hope you’ll consider subscribing, too. Just enter your name and email in the box next to my photo on the home page of my website. If you do that, you’ll not only receive Power Writing by email each week, you’ll also automatically get access to a 10-minute video on how to unblock your writing.
Reading time: About 5 minutes Need to work with difficult editors, whether they’re annoying, angry or thoroughly inept? Here’s a primer on how to accomplish that challenging task…. I once worked for a difficult editor at the daily newspaper where I cut my teeth. He started screaming at me in my first job interview, and […]
How to work with difficult editors Read More »
Reading time: About 5 minutes If writing is making you miserable, don’t be loyal to your suffering! Here’s what to do instead…. Are you one of those writers who expects writing to be difficult, challenging, boring and — most alarmingly — unsuccessful? I’ve worked with people like that and I’ll never forget the client, a
How do you stop being loyal to your suffering? Read More »
Reading time: Less than 4 minutes I know this may sound crazy, but, for writers, the benefits of boredom outweigh its downsides…. I’m going to ask you to do something difficult. I’d like you to stop seeing boredom as automatically undesirable, bad or negative. Instead, I ask you to see it as neutral — and
The benefits of boredom… Read More »
Reading time: About 4 minutes The tuxedos, the fancy ball gowns and the red carpet: what else could it be but the peak of the awards season, the Oscars? I’m not wearing Swarovski crystals to present these awards for the best articles or pots I read this month. But on the upside, there are only
PubCoach Top 10: February 2020 Read More »
Reading time: Less than 5 minutes Do you find music helps you to write or are the sounds of silence more golden to your ears? Here’s what science has to say about background music while writing…. When I was a child, my mother strictly limited our television viewing. In the days of those ugly black
Are the sounds of silence helpful or harmful to writers? Read More »
Reading time: Less than 5 minutes Do you work at beating bad writing habits? Don’t just ignore them! Instead, deal with them promptly — before they become deeply engrained… I was sitting on a bus last week —one of those long painful rides that seemed to be taking almost a century — when I turned
Is a frozen shoulder killing your writing? Read More »
Reading time: About 5 minutes Have you ever read a book that had an all-out-of-proportion impact on you? Today’s post gives you 10 books that changed my life. The New York Times last week ran an article under the headline “the book that changed my life.” The paper had asked its readers to pick a
10 books that changed my life Read More »
Reading time: About 7 minutes In the season after Christmas, when life seems flat and winter feels cold, dark and endless, I like to settle in by the fire and wrap my fingers around a steaming cup of fine reading. Here are my 10 favourite articles or posts from last month, culled from more than an entire
PubCoach Top 10: January 2020 Read More »
Reading time: About 4 minutes Do you usually struggle with your annual self-improvement plans? Here’s a better way to view New Year’s resolutions for writers…. You may wonder why I’m writing about New Year’s resolutions on Jan. 6. Haven’t I missed the deadline — the biggest scariest, most important deadline in the entire year? Actually, no.… I’m
The truth about New Year’s resolutions Read More »
Reading time: Just over 4 minutes Here is a brief summary of the top pubcoach blog posts for 2019. Happy New Year to all my readers! I write each installment of Power Writing with high hopes about how it might interest — and help — my readers. Some topics, I can tell, are right on
Best Pubcoach blog posts for 2019 Read More »
