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How to be a better writer. (Hint: It takes work.)

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thAs a writing coach and creator of the Write A Blog People Will Read course, here’s a phrase I hear regularly: I want to be a better writer.

Most of us want the same thing – and those of you who don’t, i.e., those who think your writing is already perfect, are probably kidding yourselves.

Earlier this year I wound up offering advice to someone I encountered someone on a writing website. Specifically, I offered to give feedback on a couple of her articles. She was delighted and sent me several short essays.

Well.

 

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What’s the point of blogging?

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th(I’ve decided to re-publish articles now and again in honor of what the kids call Throwback Thursday. Enjoy.)

Some days writing feels more “like digging ditches than casting spells,” as author Chuck Wendig puts it. Today is one of those days.

A note I’d scribbled earlier saved me: “It’s amazing how the information that I read seems to come to me when I really need it most.”

That sentence came from a reader e-mail, and I wrote it on a scrap of paper because I knew it would come in handy.

It has.

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What I learned from writing ‘Your Playbook For Tough Times.’

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YourPlaybookForToughTimes3DFirst it was five months of researching, writing, self-editing, having friends read the manuscript and paying a professional proofreader. Next came weeks of tech glitches and waiting, waiting, waiting for review blurbs. But my long-simmering project is finally done.

“Your Playbook For Tough Times: Living Large On Small Change, For The Short Term Or The Long Haul” ate up a ton of my time, most of it in hurry-up-and-wait mode. By the time I hit “publish” I was nearly snatching myself bald-headed with frustration.

Oh, and then I had to un-publish temporarily. More on that in a minute.

But you know what? I’m going to do it all over again, probably within a few months. Knowing what might go wrong during self-publishing will, I think, make it easier the next time.

 

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A blogging anniversary giveaway.

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th3This is a post that could both inspire and reward you. My virtual buddy Revanche (love that name) has been blogging for 10 years.

A decade. How many people quit after six months?

What makes her persistence even more remarkable is the fact that during these 10 years of blogging she finished her education, supported her parents and a brother, paid off her family’s debts, built a career, got married and had a baby – all while enduring serious pain from a chronic illness.

Typical of the writer, she’s using her 10th anniversary as a chance not to brag on herself but to thank her readers – and to give away some pretty skookum prizes, including gift cards and a handful of resources that writers need.

 

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Some essential writing advice.

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th-1Kim Ann Curtin had writer’s block. Big deal, right? Anyone who’s ever called himself/herself a writer has likely had days when the creative well ran dry.

Except that Curtin had a deadline.

More to the point, she had a contract to write a book she’d researched extensively – and one for which she’d dialed back on her job as an executive coach. Every day she didn’t write was a day she wasn’t earning money at all.

In a post called “Why women need to stop asking themselves, ‘Who do I think I am?’,” Forbes writer Denise Restauri details Curtin’s biggest issue: She didn’t believe in herself.

 

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Win a ticket to FinCon16.

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th-1The Financial Bloggers Conference keeps getting bigger and better. Conference founder Phil Taylor (aka PTMoney) is giving back by offering a shot at free admission to FinCon16, which takes place from Sept. 22 to 24 in San Diego.

Last year Taylor gave away 15 such scholarships to new personal finance bloggers. This year all he’ll say is that the winners will number “at least five.” But it could be more.

Before you think, “But I’m not a PF blogger,” know this: The definition of “personal finance” is pretty broad.

 

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Should you hire a writing coach?

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th-1A while back freelancer Susan Johnston Taylor was stuck in a rut, feeling “uninspired” and unable to come up with ideas for her regular clients. Hiring a writing coach fired her back up.

Although she bounces questions off fellow freelancers and freelance forums, Taylor will still set up a coaching session now and then.

“Sometimes I find that seeking advice from one person I trust is better than getting a chorus of conflicting opinions, especially when it’s a more personal or complicated issue,” she notes in an article on Contently.

She quoted author and coach Rochelle Melander, who suggested at least two times a writer might want to reach out:

 

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Two essential tools for writers.

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th-1Long time no blog! Sorry about that. I’ve been working on a book.

Full disclosure: I’ve also been working on enjoying the Alaska summer, providing some fill-in child care, spending a week at a theater conference, hanging out with my life partner (he and I particularly enjoy the built-from-scraps greenhouse) and my BFF, being a writing coach and helping my daughter promote her book.

Both of us are personal finance writers, so it’s no surprise that both of our books have personal finance underpinnings. Abby’s is called “Frugality For Depressives: Money-Saving Tips For Those Who Find Life A Little Harder,” but it’s not strictly a PF how-to. She writes from painful personal experience about the ways she tried and failed to follow the frugal hacks with which she was raised, and how she (and later her husband) manage their money in the most sustainable ways.

My book also springs from painful experience, but in an odd way: To become a personal finance writer, I had to go broke.*

 

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A writer’s leap of faith.

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thRecently I attended the 8 x 10 Alaska Playwrights Festival, an annual event that showcases homegrown talent. Writers submit 10-minute plays for blind judging, and the best eight works are presented as an evening of short attention span theater.

The Fairbanks Drama Association reports that the number of entries grows each year. That’s exciting, but what I think is even cooler is the fact that several of this year’s winners had never written plays before. How’s that for getting out of your comfort zone?

Learning to write in a new medium might have been exhilarating, but I expect some terror was involved. Isn’t the roller-coaster ride part of being any kind of writer?

 

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You’ve been given a gift.

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thEver question why you need to write? Not want, need. According to Gary Garrison, it’s because you have “The Gift.”

That’s the name of a short essay that Garrison sent out to fellow members of the Dramatists Guild of America. A friend sent it to me because she found it inspiring and, well, true.

Although Garrison was referring to playwriting, his words apply to bloggers, short-story writers, novelists and others of that ilk. All of them “have the ability to create whole, intricate, dimensional worlds and to people them with infinitely interesting, complex beings.”

Wait…Bloggers create worlds?

 

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