Post by Scott VanVoorhis I don’t care whether it’s a business memo, a marketing pitch or an article. In order to write fast, and, even more importantly, to write effectively, you first need to take a step back and consider the landscape. As a veteran newspaper reporter, I became known around the office as a fast writer. The compliment puzzled even as it...
Read MoreMy brother used to torture me with this little rhyme: “Pete and Repeat were out in the boat, Pete fell in and who was left?†Being the gullible little sister, I’d obligingly say “Repeat,†which he, of course, would do. Over and over and over. In writing it’s easy to fall into repetition, getting stuck using the same words repeatedly throughout a piece....
Read MoreThere will come a time when you are writing – for some it happens every time – when you are absolutely 100 percent sure that what you are writing is complete garbage. This especially happens when you are writing something long or something very important. You will hate it. You will wonder why you thought you could write in the first place. You will...
Read MoreWhen it comes to words, I’d like to think I know a lot. I went to college. I read. I write for a living. And yet, there are so many words of which I have never heard. These are English words, words that I could be using. Certainly my listener might look at me perplexed, but perhaps in the right context they would flow easily into the conversation and capture...
Read MoreThere are times when the words just won’t come. The idea is to big or the story too long and it seems impossible to even get started. You try a lead and then another and then another and nothing seems interesting enough. Or worse, you can’t even find a place to start and you’re starting to wonder why you thought you could write in the first place....
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