Tag: Professional Writing
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How to Edit Your First Draft
Your fingers hover the keyboard. You inhale deeply. Then you do it: you type the words “The End.” You exhale. You blink back tears of joy. You’ve finished the first draft of your story! It hasn’t been easy, but you’ve pushed through. You’ve done the thing. You finished your draft. Then you think, “Now what?”…
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The 5-Paragraph Essay Will Be Your Best Friend in College
There’s a rampant hatred of the five-paragraph essay among academics and writing instructors, and I’ve heard many a teacher express the desire to do away with it completely. The arguments for its destruction usually revolve around students’ stunted writing abilities, especially in terms of writing for a specific audience, but every criticism I’ve found is…
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You’re Saying More Than You Think You Are
This is not about body language. It has nothing to do with tone of voice or eye contact or facial expressions. This is about the unconscious linguistic associations that people will make while reading your writing, and why ignoring things like etymology and prosody makes you a really bad writer. But first, What is prosody?…
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The Best Day Jobs for Writers
There’s no right way to write professionally. The only necessities for the writer’s life are to care about the craft and put in the hard work. Everything else is more of a whatever-works-for-you type of thing. That being said, working on a novel doesn’t pay the bills. Submitting poetry won’t reliably get you groceries. So…
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Stop Using the Word “It”
It’s absurd to tell you to stop using a pronoun, especially one that’s so ingrained into our language, most writers don’t even realize when they use it. It is a useful word, standing in for long referents, keeping you from awkwardly repeating yourself, introducing Mario. But it is also a crutch. Nothing will weaken your…
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Five Tips For Aspiring Professional Writers
So you want to be a published author? These past few months, I went to a few aspiring author workshops at my local library and historical center. Two brilliant writers with endless wisdom, Cinda Williams Chima and Vivien Chien, were there to discuss tips and tricks. Here are a few tips and tricks I’ve learned…
The Lit Nerds 