Essays on writing

on the craft of writing and rewriting.

February 25, 2022

Vancouver Tech Journal's Nathan Caddell on Proofreading

"Read through stories twice."

Local newspapers are an endangered species, threatened both by larger national newspapers and declining print subscriptions. Yet email newsletters—in part, thanks to Substack—have been a bright spot as a way to build a l…

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February 23, 2022

Community is what you put into it.

How to start a new community from zero.

An overflowing inbox means something’s working. Chatter. Questions. Complements. Complaints, even, mean people care enough to complain. Better that than passive indifference. You know something’s working if people are re…

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February 22, 2022

Matt Gemmell on Proofreading

"Always let the work sit for a while after it’s written."

It’s the best feeling when you’ve finally written the last word, added the final stop, shut the laptop, and walked away. You’ve created something new, turned the blank page into something meaningful. Time to celebrate. T…

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February 16, 2022

People are curious. That's why you should write.

A case for content marketing.

Humanity is insatiably curious. Libraries and bookstores and Google and even dusty old encyclopedias have their magnetic pull because deep down inside, we all have an insatiable desire to learn more. Figure things out. A…

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February 15, 2022

Notes apps are where ideas go to die. And that’s good.

Insurance for your mind.

We don’t write things down to remember them. We write them down to forget. Like a hunter/gatherer stashing their prey, the ideas and the links we stumble upon feel valuable, rare, something worth saving. We ascribe value…

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February 14, 2022

What you shouldn't write

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

There are some things best left unsaid—something oft-forgotten in a world that moves at light speed. You could publish anything on your site, make the boldest claims and grandest promises. You could take down your compet…

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February 10, 2022

How to get unstuck when writing

5 tips to overcome writer's block.

Blinking cursor. Blank page. The tyranny of words that won’t get out of your way. There’s something you want to write, need to publish. There’s something else that’s holding you back. Maybe you’re writing your magnum opu…

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February 4, 2022

How to get people to search for your product

or rather, how to figure out what people are searching and get your product to show up there.

People don’t want your product. They sure didn’t want Zapier, an app automation tool, which on its own is about as useful as a gear—indispensable as part of a machine, merely dead weight without the other parts. They did…

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February 3, 2022

A Markdown Cheat Sheet

Markdown italics and bold text and code blocks and checkboxes and more

It all started in 2004 when John Gruber introduced Markdown as "Email-style writing for the web." Computing started with plain text, typewriter-style, with letters and symbols and little else. You couldn't bold or strike…

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February 2, 2022

How to write a really good roundup.

How the Zapier team wrote software roundups that brought in millions of views, every year.

You don’t want the second best, the runner up, the thing that’s good enough but not quite great. You want the best. So we Google “ best this ” and “ best that .” The teams that answer those questions stand to profit, wit…

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Write. Rewrite. Revise.

Reproof is the app to write until you get it right. Free forever for 10 documents. $10 a month or $99 per year for unlimited documents.

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Essays on writingwriting

Vancouver Tech Journal's Nathan Caddell on Proofreading

Community is what you put into it.

Matt Gemmell on Proofreading

People are curious. That's why you should write.

Notes apps are where ideas go to die. And that’s good.

What you shouldn't write

How to get unstuck when writing

How to get people to search for your product

A Markdown Cheat Sheet

How to write a really good roundup.

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Write. Rewrite. Revise.

Essays on writing

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