297 Flabby Words and Phrases That Rob Your Writing of All Its Power

Shane Arthur 188 Comments Last Updated Sep 15, 2016

You’re not stupid.

You know what writing is truly about.

It’s a never-ending battle for your readers’ attention.

Every sentence is a link in a taut chain that connects your headline to your conclusion.

And you are just one weak sentence away from losing your reader forever.

So you take your craft quite seriously.

You ignore all but your best ideas.

You work on each piece of writing for exactly as long as necessary to get it right.

And you edit until your words are crisp and clear.

But what if that isn’t enough?

What if weaknesses remain that are almost impossible to spot?
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Mistakes/ Writing

7 Cruel Ways Writers Torture Themselves

Glen Long 78 Comments Last Updated Sep 9, 2016

Seriously, what is it with writers?

You’d think they actually enjoy pain and misery.

After all, writing is hard enough without inventing new ways to make yourself suffer. But suffer they do.

Perhaps it’s the image of the writer as a tormented artist, or a form of occupational masochism, but something seems to make writers seek out pain.

Maybe without it, they don’t feel like “real” writers.

But what about you? Are you a misery magnet? Is pain your faithful muse?

Here are seven ways that writers torture themselves. See how many you recognize (and discover how to avoid them.)
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Writing

From Blog to Book: The Simple Strategy Smart Authors are Using in 2016

Cathy Presland 64 Comments Last Updated Sep 1, 2016

Don’t try to deny it; you’d love to write a book.

In fact, you’ve been dreaming about it so much you can visualize it.

Seeing your name on the front cover of a published book.

Revelling in the fame, fortune, and fulfilment that comes from being a successful author.

But then, you dismiss it.

“What me?” you think. “Who am I to publish a book?” Or some other variation of nagging self-doubt.

But it isn’t an impossible dream.

As a blogger, you already have everything you need to become an author.

You just need to start believing it.
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Writing

How to Get Paid to Write for Magazines – The Ultimate Guide

Linda Formichelli 93 Comments Last Updated Aug 18, 2016

But you’re just a little old blogger, right?

Why would popular magazines like Forbes, WebMD, and Redbook be interested in you?

You might be surprised.

Thousands of magazines appear on the newsstands and in readers’ mailboxes every month, and they’re constantly on the lookout for new writing talent. Yes, your audience as a blogger may still be small, but all those hours you spent slaving away on your content has probably honed your writing skills to where you could, in fact, compete with the big boys and girls to write for magazines.

And it’s SO worth it.

If you’ve been blogging for a while, let’s talk about why you should be interested in magazines:
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Tools/ Writing

The Ultimate Content Machine: How We Used Google Docs to Develop 307,000 Words of Spectacular Content

Glen Long 66 Comments Last Updated Aug 11, 2016

Know what’s tougher than creating great content?

Creating it at scale.

But that’s exactly what’s needed if you’re serious about building a popular blog.

And almost every successful blogger reaches a point where they realize they can’t do it alone.

(After all, how many large blogs can you name where the owner still writes every single post?)

Getting help means outsourcing at least some of your content creation to guest writers, but making the transition from a writer to the editor isn’t easy.

So how can you efficiently manage the content development process when you have dozens of different writers, each with posts in various stages of development?

How can you maintain your high-quality standards without becoming so overwhelmed that you begin feeling nostalgic for the days where you were doing everything yourself?

Truthfully, until a couple of years ago, I didn’t have a good answer to that question.
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