One of my role models is Cory Doctorow.  Cory’s the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of Little Brother, a teen sci fi adventure set in San Francisco in the near future. I love Cory because like me, he has about ten jobs, and I admire him because he’s made a…

Every semester I agonize over how to help my students learn to write more meaningful, interesting papers. Not just in my class, but altogether. Writing well is a key skill in today’s information-heavy society, and above all else my job is to help prepare students to become active participants in the society we live…

It’s no secret I am a fan of online word processors — computing in the cloud is just the thing for a guy like me who (I’m told) is apt to find his head in the clouds as well. I’m writing this on Google Docs, and have made no secret of my love for…

Gerald M. Weinberg has written dozens of books and hundreds of articles on computers, technology, consulting, and the craft of composition.  Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method is an excellent survey of the methods he has used in order to produce this voluminous output.  The comprehensive table of contents provides the reader with a clear…

Did you say you were going to start writing that book this year? If you’re looking for a way to honor your word(s) and put your writing life in action, starting a writing critique group will catapult your accountability and get you in community with your peers. It will also sit you next to writers…

Years ago, Reginald J. G. Dutton created a shorthand writing system that shortened common words, and called them Speedwords. With this, maybe overly confusing, system, words like but, you and because become b, v and zi, respectively. If you’re interested in implementing such a system in your shorthand lexicon, check out Jonathan Aquino’s Cheatsheet for

The great thing about the Firefox browser is when you have a problem, there is usually a solution in the form of an extension. As a blog writer, I’ve been using a few that smooth out the experience and get rid of a few annoyances. Here are a few suggestions. Collecting Google Notebook – Highlight the…

Generally, I think this many tips on writing strategies is too much. However, I like lists like this because, depending on what kind of writing you actually do, you can choose the tips that suit your work and adapt. Two years ago, we have covered Fifty Tools which can help you in Writing by…

Something that almost inevitably happens to bloggers starting out their own niche site, is they run out of stuff to say. Generally, as a new blogger, you can shoot for around 3-4 months of solid content until the ideas begin escaping you. This could possibly be caused by the lack of one or more of these: 1…

Competition is high on the internet, due almost entirely on volume. So having your writing stand out is no easy task. PickTheBrain runs through five simple steps that should put you in the right direction. 1. You write what you read. Stop reading the same meaningless, repetitive writing everyone else reads. Quality of output directly correlates to…

Although you can write your articles in Microsoft Word or any such software, you might want to test the waters for some alternatives. Online and offline, there is a plethora of options in the blog editing/word processing field. ScribeFire Previously run at Performancing.com this editor runs within your Firefox browser as an add-on. There is…

Since I was seven, I’ve told people that I was a writer. I used that as a primary identification all through my formative years, and in High School, I was one of the top writers in my school. I loved it. I ate it up. And then? I didn’t write much. “Writer” can be a deadly…

I do a lot of writing about productivity, self-improvement, and creativity. Some of it, I put here. Some of it, I put on my own site, and then some more, I put over at D*I*YPlanner.com, which is a great site with all kinds of great stuff, like downloadable planner pages for your paper planner of…