There are 3 things that make Get it Done: From Procrastination to Creative Genius in 15 Minutes a Day, different from other productivity books. Firstly, unlike classics like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People or Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity, it’s not about setting up systems that it’ll take a while to get […]
The question of how to have ideas isn’t just for people working in explicitly creative roles: if you’ve got a job, any job, sooner or later someone will expect you to think stuff up. When I was at school doing my ‘A’ levels, I worked as a hospital cleaner. My manager was always asking me […]
Writing’s hard. And, unfortunately, nothing’s ever going to take the place of putting your bum in your chair, your fingers to your keyboard (or pen to paper), and getting the hell on with it. But there are writing tools out there that can take the weight off, and help you produce more polished prose. Here […]
Why read science fiction? Perhaps surprisingly, it’s not about science. Given that so many of us have been reading science fiction for years, you’d think the answer to this question would be obvious, wouldn’t you? Especially as my new year resolution for 2017 is to read more contemporary sci-fi. It’d seem strange if I didn’t […]
Have you ever listened to a speech so rambling and tedious that you felt a tidal wave of relief when it finally ended? Yup, me too. These speechwriting tips will make sure that you never subject anyone to anything that torturous. They’ll help you engage, entertain and delight your audiences. (Instead of making them feel […]
When it came to deciding what to call their copywriting business, Mish and Rob Slade went for Mortified Cow. (Unfortunately there’s no entertaining story about how it happened, because the couple just ‘pulled it out of the air’.) Mortified Cow’s a strategic choice. A take-no-prisoners kind of name that bangs a drum while yelling, ‘if […]
Whatever you’re working on, you too can write excellent introductions by rethinking your writing process, and by taking a tip from journalism. 1. Write Your Introduction Last Seriously. That’s because I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen writers stuck at the first sentence because they’re trying to write the introduction first. But […]
No, it’s not about your (or my) favourite pasta dish. Macaronic is a term referring to mixed language. You hear a lot of it around diaspora peoples and their descendants, who have a habit of peppering one language with terms and idioms in another. Here’s the definition from my Chambers dictionary app: Now, without further […]
Lists of Christmas presents for writers often give the impression that all the wordsmith in your life wants is a: notebook fancy pen mug or tote bag with a picture of a typewriter on it mug or tote bag with a literary quote on it mug or tote bag that demands you leave them alone […]
So what is a commonplace book? Well, it’s kind of like the bullet journal’s much less hyped distant cousin. It’s not a productivity tool, more of a writing-based scrapbook. A place to collect the wit and wisdom that you’d usually stumble across and think, ‘that’s great, I must make a note of that’ only to […]