TakingDictation

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How to Balance How You Talk and How You Write

Image via Pixabay Stop for a moment. Listen to some conversation around you. Does it sound at all like how you write? It probably doesn’t.  This is normal. But if you want to be a...
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5 Genius Ways to Pace Yourself as a Writer

It's critical that you pace yourself as a writer. Doing so helps you meet deadlines, look professional and crank out a maximum number of projects that can produce income in a healthy way without burning...
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Why “Be Patient” Is Crappy Advice for Writers

One of the quirks of being a writer is that you often have to wait weeks or even months to get a response back from editors or their assistants. This isn’t all their fault. Many...
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Pay-to-Read Websites Stink. Here’s Why

I bet you’ve done it--click on a link to a site like The New York Times or Medium, only to have it tell you in a classic pay-to-read setup that you need to buy a subscription to keep...

How Writing Can Heal and Change You

Image created by Wanda Thibodeaux on Canva Most writers say that writing helps them manage anxiety, practice gratitude or thankfulness, and express themselves in a way they otherwise wouldn’t be able or know how to...
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3 Things to Never Say to a Writer

I’ve been writing professionally now for more than 16 years. So trust me when I say you do need to hear some constructive criticism if you want to improve and be successful in this craft....

5 Unique Ways to Know You’re a Good Writer

Image created by Wanda Thibodeaux on Canva Writers always want to know if we’re any good. But we have a dilemma: We know the publishing industry has its biases and is profit-oriented. Yet, we also assume that...
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Writing Workshops: What Should They Really Teach?

If you want to get better at writing, just sign up for writing workshops, right? Maybe not. How writing workshops meet the need for a little pain In an article for The Practical Writer, Dan Barden argued...
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The Burning Question: How Far Would You Go to Save Your Writing?

I come across intriguing and surprising things on social media just about every day. Today’s prize? This gem from the BBC: Now, this piece is a few years old. But it showed up again on Twitter...
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Critical Things You Should Be Writing (But Probably Aren’t)

As the world grows more commercial, there’s an increasing tendency to label only certain types of writing as valuable: People encourage others to write books nearly as a right of passage. Professionals apparently aren’t professional...