The best class on writing I have ever taken -- bar none -- was called "Sentence Power." It was taught by a man named Ed Perlman in the part-time graduate writing program at Johns Hopkins and it changed the way I think about revision.
Ed's class was all about understanding the power of individual sentences. I can't even begin to do the curriculum justice, there was so much amazing material, but one of the key points was the power of the final revision. He had us pick individual sentences and... Read Full Story
A few months ago, I did the unthinkable. I started cheating on my Moleskine with a Nomad Adventure Journal.
It started the way these things always start. An innocent Google search. I was just looking. Just wanted to see what was out there. I never intended for it to go beyond looking. I swear.
Of course, it did.
For several years, I've used a Moleskine
journal when I'm working on stories in the field. It's durable and highly portable and I've
dragged Moleskines on all kinds of... Read Full Story
Kivi Leroux Miller over at Non-profit Marketing Guide tagged me with a meme today and totally caught me reading about GIANT SQUID.
Everyone else has these profound books in their memes, Social Butterfly has one on "What I know now: letters to my younger self" and Kivi is reading the Metaphors Dictionary, which sounds so cool I'm going to have to order one from Amazon as soon as I finish this post.
Me? I'm reading about Architeuthis (pronounced Ark-i-tooth-is) in a book called "The Search... Read Full Story
I admit it. I'm on the Twitter bandwagon. And I sometimes find myself obsessively hitting the refresh button just to find out what's going on. I've found so many interesting new people and blogs from a just a couple of weeks reading Tweets from the few people I follow. Just 68 (as of today) -- I am not even a bug on the windshield of the Twitternaut.
(Quick aside: If you came here looking for a post on "How to use Twitter" or even "Why I should use Twitter," I'm sorry I won't be much help... Read Full Story
I'm having a crisis. Well, I'm having severally actually, but this one is potentially relevant to other people so I'm going to use it for blog fodder. Consider yourself warned.
It all started with a little yellow bird that zipped past my office window while I was helping my third-grader with his math homework. Kids are dangerous to your peace of mind, in case you didn't know. Mine is prone to asking unanswerable questions like "why does 'answer' have a 'w' in it?" and "why do we only get... Read Full Story
On deadline this week so the posts will be short. I'm working on messaging projects and thought I'd share the filter I use to test message effectiveness (and to keep everything on track) because nothing can get out of control faster than messaging projects.
I use The 5 Questions to develop and test messaging through all stages of the process, from the beginning drafts to the final polish.
What is the issue? [What you are talking about and why you are talking about it. Try to make this as... Read Full Story
Don't hate me, but I don't usually get Writer's Block. After so many years of writing for a living, I discovered that I only tend to get blocked when (1) I haven't done enough research or (2) I don't have a deadline.
Deadlines can be a great antidote to Writer's Block, but not always. Like today, for example. This morning, I was trying to write a longish case statement on water conservation that's due on Monday. I had plenty of research, some great quotes, everything was properly organized... Read Full Story
Direct mail. Everyone loves to trash it (literally and figuratively), but there's so much of it because it can be very effective.
Is yours as effective as it could be? Beyond writing a really good direct mail piece, there is one simple thing you can do to get even more leverage out of DM: make sure it is connected to and enhanced by related content on your Web site.
Two blogs this week convinced me that many non-profits are missing huge opportunities to engage their wired donors. Jeff... Read Full Story
You know your life is veering dangerously off course when you find yourself obsessing about the Colbert Report. I saw this a couple of weeks ago (damn my insomnia) and have been mulling it over at odd moments ever since. When Stephen Colbert looked at Mark Moffett and asked, "Why should I care? Why should I care about frogs?" I sat straight up in bed to hear the answer. And then I laid back down again and put a pillow over my head when I heard the tired, "Frogs are the canary in a coal mine... Read Full Story
Be honest now. Did you read this text first or did your eye automatically go to the image? (What's that a picture of anyway?)
If your eye went straight to the image, congratulations, you are perfectly normal. (At least in this). Most people are drawn first to movement, then to color, and then to image.
Ad agencies and other marketers have long known that people tend to read headlines, then captions, and then body copy. This was brought home to me a few years ago when I was sitting in a... Read Full Story
