writer | coach | consultant
(*cue dramatic, rousing, optimistic, exciting musical jingle-thingy for the...*) Special Deal - 10 spots available till December 22nd, 2018 New Coaching Program for New Freelance Writers to start a freelance writing business in the New Year Hey! This program has not even officially been launched yet - but WHY NOT do a little warm-up before… Continue reading 30-Day-Coaching Program: Get Ready to Land Your First Freelance Writing Gig!
Can you spare five minutes? Great! Five minutes a day, that is what this exercise requires. Five minutes to help you with your writing. To help developing new ideas. To jot down a fleeting thought that someday might grow to become a plot. To help overcoming the menacing ... (*whispers*) Writer's Block. Productivity for Writers… Continue reading The 5 Minutes Writing Exercise
You haven't? Well, neither have I, especially when it comes to English. So, here's another Ted-Ed video, one of a series of Ted-Ed lessons on how to "Perfect your punctuation". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHnl1O3NGJk
I am actually old enough to remember the times when people used to express their concerns about e-mails supplanting the writing of letters, and the lost art of letter writing. Then, it seems, everybody started to chat and whats-up-and-what-not, so the idea of a carefully crafted e-mail might almost sound like a piece of nostalgia.… Continue reading E-Mail Etiquette – not only for Writers
Usually, I am rather confident about my grammar and spelling skills. But it seems, particularly as a bilingual writer, there is always - ALWAYS - something left for me to learn. And since I figure that I am not the only one: Here is a simple example sentence by Noemi Tasarra-Twigg on freelancewritinggigs.com: I had… Continue reading A Handy Guide to Punctuation Marks
Have you ever been in the situation to introduce two people to each other via e-mail? Yes? Well, the people over at Quartz suggest that we are... ..."probably doing e-mail introductions wrong" Or - as The Atlantic puts it on Facebook: You might not even be aware of it, "...but you're being a jerk." Are… Continue reading “Ummh… may I introduce…?” (E-Mail Etiquette)
If one works as a ghostwriter or writing mentor (like yours truly), you often get to hear a question - something along the lines of: "I want to tell a story/write about [insert writing topic here] - but would a publisher be interested in that? And if yes: Which publisher?" Ghostwriting and the Search for… Continue reading “Would a Publisher be interested in the Subject of my Manuscript?” Well, let’s have a look …
A TEDx Talk by Nathan Filer ... which reminds me: I DO have some writing to do 😉 So I guess I leave you with this for now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMQGa6grfeE
Writing a great dialogue is not that easy! I am not even sure if there is a method (as in a formula one could learn) of how to do this. Granted, there are quite a few writing-related skills and qualities (grammar, structure, plotting devices ...) you can learn from books and courses. But I think,… Continue reading Writers: Do your Dialogues sound natural?
If you like this video, take a closer look at TED-Ed here ... https://youtu.be/j0_u-lourd0
...sometimes it also matters where you place them! "She told him that she loved him." You might want to have a look at this suggestestion from "The Writer's Circle" - it is a great exercise, especially for writers! 🙂
This is my newest find, fresh off a job board for freelancers: "$0,004/word. 2-5 News Article Rewriting" Seriously. SERIOUSLY????
Imagine you are the chef and owner of a rather decent restaurant. One day, you read a post by somebody who is looking for a good meal, a special multi-course meal. This somebody, they have a rough idea about what they want to eat, they even have drafted a recipe but need a pro to… Continue reading All within Reason (aka “The Ripoff-Artist”)
Darren Rowse from Chris Guillebeau on Vimeo.
A great and simple method to test and visualize the tension curve of your novel: Rising Tension.
I have just stumbled across this on "Freedom with Writing", which is about to become one of my favorite writing websites, and it seems like an interesting read...
...and she has written it down over at "Authors Publish", one of my recently discovered "haunts". And in case you are wondering... yes, it seems they accept submissions as well.
Sigh. Zoella & Co. Quote: "By churning out ghostwritten stories and slapping a famous face on them, publishers are doing a disservice to the industry, authors and readers." ...an interesting article by Kathryn Lindsay, and a topic that is probably not without controversy... I daresay it is written in xoJane's column "Unpopular Opinion" for a… Continue reading About Authors and Internet-Stars…
What does the fabric consist of that makes a good writer? I daresay, one ingredient is the love of language. Having said that, I really like this article and the way the writer defines (and finds) poetry…
About 15 years ago, as I worked on the final stages of my dissertation, I often got stuck (as people working on dissertations tend to). Sometimes days would pass without my producing anything. But eventually, I would remember my foolproof method for getting unstuck: reading and writing poetry.
Let me note for clarification that poetry had nothing to do with my dissertation subject. I wrote a very social-sciency study of students in a freshman composition class. From a semester of observing, reading papers, and interviewing students, I crafted a set of case studies trying to explain why some of the students gained more than others. My final product reads way more like anthropology than it does like Nikki Giovanni.
Nevertheless, I turned to poetry while I wrote, as I have turned to it many times before and since. And wherever I see brilliance in writing, I find elements of the…
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susa(nne) wagner 