Do you want to improve your nonfiction writing skills? I offer a 6-week writing workshop to do just that. You’ll learn how to write faster and better, all while educating, influencing, and entertaining your readers. (That’s a big part of how you sell your nonfiction ideas.) And if you write, I’ll offer you feedback so […]
Some facts that make me a little sad: Social media is more and more splintered. Sites that used to be enjoyable became tolerable. Then, they became intolerable. Worse, the algorithms decide whose posts I should see and whose I should not. If you have not read any of Cory Doctorow’s writing about enshittification, I strongly
It must be the season for “research” on social networks. Just this past week, I received several requests to share my stories with researchers—as if my experience was research. Some of these researchers are graduate students. Others are consultants. All of them share these goals: They want to write a substantial document, incorporating their research.
Brian Okken interviewed me on his Test and Code podcast here: Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer. We spoke about writing in many forms: books, blog posts, and how to start. We discussed many writing topics, but I had a small rant about waiting to edit when you’re cooled down. No! Write, edit, and publish when
Several people have contacted me recently about “missing” articles on this site. They say, “Here’s a URL and why isn’t the article there?” The article isn’t there because I didn’t write it. Yet. But the people contact me because the LLMs (Large Language Models) claim I have written these articles. How did the LLMs do
Very few writers—nonfiction or fiction—sell a lot of books. That means they don’t make money from their books alone. What’s a writer to do? Take a look at the 2023 Write Stuff bundle. The bundle will help you see where you might improve your craft and your business. Most of the books apply to all
Many nonfiction writers start books with outlines. I’m not big on outlines because they shortcut the writer’s thinking. (Nonfiction writers think and learn as they write.) However, some writers go off on tangents without outlines. Or, some writers (raises hand) are prone to put everything she ever learned about this topic into one book. Either
When I published Writing Secret 9: Keep Your Writing Clean As You Write, the feedback surprised me. Many of my fellow nonfiction writers write a lot before they get internal feedback. That might be right for them. It’s not right for me. I finally understood why I write differently. I think of each iteration as
Some writers suggest you write sloppy, “vomiting” the words onto the page. They think all writers need to start with “shitty first drafts.” But sloppy writing means you need several drafts to clean up the sloppiness. To me, that’s like waiting until the end of coding to write and run any tests at all. (Been
Back when I wrote Writing Secret 5: Decide on One Ideal Reader, I suggested there was one primary reader and other secondary readers. That’s not wrong, but it’s incomplete. Nonfiction writing causes people to decide, rethink, or change their actions, all a change of some sort. That means the ideal reader for a given piece