It’s time to find the perfect gift for the writer in your life…but the only idea you can come up with is a pretty notebook. As writers who have spent our whole lives getting notebooks under the tree, we’re here to tell you: you can do better! The gift ideas for writers below range from […]
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Do you start wincing with anxiety when it comes to contracts for your freelance writing jobs? Or are you unsure about all that legalese from big-time lawyers at ginormous companies that sounds like you’ll be roasted over hot coals if you put a comma in the wrong place? Getting sweaty palms over freelance writing contracts […]
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The growing field of technical writing — the work of creating user guides for new products, capturing how a business brings aboard a new customer, directing a user step by step through installing new software and thousands of other tasks — is a lucrative one. I made the switch to in 2019 and wish I […]
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Often, it feels like humans are one bunch of totally unpredictable beings. So finding out the answers to questions about our behavior requires some serious measures. Would we go mad if we read too much bad news daily? Would we take the stairs over an escalator? Would we slow down on the roads if we […]
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So you’re feeling kind of funky and you want to lay it down. If you have never written in a funk style, or have never added any funky grooves to your songs, here are a few tricks that will instantly funkify your songwriting. Even though you could apply a funk feel to any type of […]
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My high school English teacher called them “deadwood.” I’ve heard them called “inflation words,” “filler,” “fluff,” “clutter” and “couch potato words.” You probably have another pet name for them. They’re the words you almost never need in a sentence. They occupy space, trip tongues and take readers down a long, winding path when a short, […]
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How to Write a Song in Three or Six Did you ever notice that the majority of songs in our culture have a four-beat rhythm? This is referred to as Common Time, which translates into four beats per measure. And when songwriters in western cultures start thinking about how to write a song, it is […]
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How to write a really good song REQUIRES indulging in a very PRECISE combination of ecstatic leg-squirming dances in EXACT combination with psychedelic drugs until your clay-like body falls to the ground, cracking angry blades of razor sharp grass into pieces with sorrowful sweat soaked hands as your hungry ears hear their feuding echoes between […]
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Who cares about the Oxford comma? The answer historically has been grammar nerds, Strunk & White and those who follow the infamous Chicago vs. AP writing style guide debate. After this lawsuit a few years ago, we added dairy driver to the list. That’s because an appellate court ruled in favor of Maine dairy drivers […]
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Whether you found yourself choosing the freelance life or getting forced into it, you probably had big visions. Being your own boss! Creating your own schedule! Earning money doing what you love! Only… a few months into it, freelancers sometimes find reality looks nothing like that picture. In reality, it can be hard to find […]
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