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Posts Tagged ‘#writing’

Top 5 Writing Resources

Whether you write a blog regularly or your writing life is limited to work e-mails and an annual holiday letter,  we all could use a little help. Here are my top 5 writing resources to help cure writer’s block and improve your skills. I receive no kickbacks for recommending these books. All links go to the author’s website instead of an Amazon page, hoping you will support your local independent bookstore when purchasing these fantastic resources.

Here we go!

Everybody Writes by Anne Handley

This book is known as the “essential guide to becoming a masterful marketer, writer, and storyteller. If you are someone who falls asleep at the thought of grammar and sentence structure, this is the book for you. This author is known for her wit as well as her wisdom. She provides excellent strategies for planning in her chapter “Think Before You Ink” and “How to Hate Writing Less.” Handley teaches you how to develop your brand, avoid cliches, and write engaging copy.

No matter what topic you write about, you want your writing to connect with your audience. This is your book.

Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi

During the pandemic, I decided to get a professional certificate in digital marketing. My first class was on content marketing, and this was the textbook. Fortune Magazine calls it “one of the top business books of the year.” If you are responsible for generating content for your business or employer, this author talks about how to develop content and then recycle that content for different platforms, from e-mail to social media. Want to grow your audience? There is a section dedicated to expanding your reach through your content. I learned so much from this book. He just came out with a second edition, which, admittedly, I haven’t purchased yet. I already have the original, which cost me nearly $30. I’m glad I have it on my shelf, and I’m a little jealous of the people who don’t have this book yet. You get to buy the most recent edition, while mine is ten years old.

Totally worth it!

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

For those of us who are struggling bestseller novelists or memoirists who fight imposter syndrome and writer’s block, this book is my gift to you. She writes an inspiring and often humorous guide to the writer’s world. It’s my survivor guide for when I’m feeling like I don’t have an ounce of creativity left in me. She inspires me to write many shitty first drafts and reassures me that my voice deserves to be heard.

Perfect English Grammar, Grant Barrett

Gather up all of your grammar and punctuation questions and find the answers in this little manual. From spelling and formatting to abbreviations and pronouns, you will want to consult this guide before you hit send on that e-mail, publish that paper, or put out that press release.

Finally, I will get my geek on and tell you about my favorite resource.

How to Tell Fate from Destiny and Other Skillful Word Distinctions by Charles Harrington Elster

As an avid reader and writer, I’m a huge lover of the written word. While a thesaurus will provide 20 different words for convince, this book looks into the deeper meaning of those words to help you decide which words to use in what context. For instance, he writes, “to convince” means to “make someone believe something,” while “to persuade” means “to make someone take action.”

Isn’t that so cool?! No? Okay, I’m weird. I know. But if you are a word nerd like me, this is a must-have for your resource shelf.

Whether you enjoy writing or are required to write for your job and don’t know where to begin, I hope there is something on this list to help you. Good luck!

XO,
Elisa

Life Without A Manual: The Reboot?

When I’m asked about the name of my blog and its origin story, I immediately think back to a lousy parenting moment I had with my teenage daughter in the high school parking lot. You can read the whole story here, but in a nutshell, it was then that I truly wished I was handed over a parenting manual in the delivery room along with my baby.

And thus, a blog was born.

But now that my daughter is in college and my son is graduating high school this year, I feel like I need a new origin story or perhaps a reboot. Sure, there are still plenty of opportunities for me to embarrass my kids and feel bad about it, but maybe the focus should be more about my life than theirs.

Here’s the problem. I don’t know what that looks like or where I fit into the blogosphere. I continue to insist that I am way too young for AARP. I resent the fact that once I turned 50 last year, I automatically became a member of their target audience. I considered their invitation for a minute – complete with a membership card, magazine subscription, and all the retirement swag you can imagine. But, once I saw articles like “Putting Your Digital Assets in Your Will,” and “How Pets Influence Older Homeowners Real-Estate Choices,” I politely declined.

AARP must want me to join real bad. They won’t stop trying to win me over. For instance, the editors put Michael J. Fox on the cover of their magazine last month. Talk about a cheap shot! Sorry, but you can’t win me over with 80’s celebrities who were once pinned to my bedroom wall and are now pushing 60. Oy, the humanity!!

(Full disclosure: I still didn’t join, but I did read the article).

Back to my original thought, I hope this blog challenge will help me cultivate two things – a daily writing habit and, potentially, a new focus for my blog that allows me the space to write as my authentic self.

If any fellow writers have been through this kind of transition before, I’d love to hear from you and any advice you may have for me. And if you are just reading this now, what topics would you like to see me write about in the future? I look forward to your comments. I read and respond to them all. 🙂

Third Time Is A Charm!

A few nights ago, I was ready to give up on the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I had six posts left to write in three days, and I didn’t think I had it in me to finish. I proclaimed my defeat to my son, who looked at me and said, “I’m not going to let you do that, mom. You have to finish what you started.”

And he was right. Smart kid. Must take after me. 🙂

I’m happy to say that I have finished this blog challenge for the third time. While writing can be a lonely activity sometimes, I know I have many people cheering me on. So, without further ado, there are a few people I want to thank.

Thank you to my family, who reads and comments on my posts and supports my writing. You give me permission to write about everything (to a certain extent), and I appreciate you trusting me with your stories. And thanks for doing the dishes so I can spend more time writing!

Thank you to my friends at Philadelphia Writers Workshop and the Ultimate Blog Challenge community who inspire and encourage me to “blog on.” It is a pleasure and a privilege to be among kind and talented people like yourselves. Special thanks to my writing buddy and accountability partner, Heather. Someday, we will both be published authors; I can feel it!

And thanks to everyone who subscribed to my blog, read them regularly, and/or tweeted them out to their networks. And if you were only able to read one or two posts, I hope you liked them and will come back for more.

This month I tried something new and focused on one topic – my love for books. It turned out I had plenty to say on the subject. While I will return to writing about various topics, books will have more of a presence on my blog to inspire others to read and support their local bookstores.

I have also acquired a regular writing habit and will keep going with more posts all summer long. There is much to write about, and I hope you will be here for it.

In the immortal words of Sylvia Plath,

“Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

 

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