THERE’S NO ARGUING with the fact that we are all moving towards a more digital world. Most of us communicate almost exclusively through digital means when we aren’t face-to-face. We get our news, follow our favorite sports teams, and ask questions in the digital realm. Which leads me to a […]
A FEW WEEKS AGO, I tried to cut off the tip of my left index finger while slicing vegetables for a breakfast omelet. I keep my knives very sharp, and so the cut was clean but also very deep, and the tip of my poor finger was barely attached. Before […]
A few years back, at a meeting of my local writing club, a man came up to me and said, “I don’t believe you have to know all that grammar crap to be a writer. That’s what editors are for, right?” He grinned at me, expecting me to agree with […]
SO YOU STARTED THE YEAR OUT STRONG. You created your big rock goals, developed an action plan for accomplishing those goals and scheduled time on your calendar. You review your plan frequently to keep yourself motivated. Sure, you’re not perfect, but you’re making progress, and that’s what counts. In fact, […]
WRITING REQUIRES WRITING TOOLS. Sure, those tools can be as simple as a notebook and a pen or pencil, but for many (if not most) of us, our writing tool belt also includes word processing, note-taking, and journaling applications, as well as programs that assist with other writing tasks from […]
DO YOU READ EBOOKS? If so, do you use many of the features ebooks offer, such as highlighting phrases and passages you like, creating notes about your impressions, searching for key ideas, and bookmarking? I know I do. These are useful tools for research — or simply for thoughtful reading. […]
IF YOU’VE BEEN WRITING ANY LENGTH OF TIME, you’ve probably heard of Scrivener. And if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know I’m a big fan. I use Scrivener for pretty much all my writing these days: blog posts, short works, such as essays and […]
ONE OF THE BENEFITS of having learned to use Word’s Styles is that now you can quickly insert and update tables of content (TOCs). Just think—no more manual typing of chapter titles and tedious checks and rechecks to make sure you got the pagination right. It’s easy to add and […]
ONE MICROSOFT WORD SKILL you will never regret taking the time to learn is how to create and use templates. Templates are files that contain ready-to-use formatting and styles. You simply add the content. You may already be aware that Word comes with loads of stock templates for manuscripts, research papers, cover […]
DO YOU WANT your writing to take hold of your readers and pull them from one page to the next? Do you want to imbue your writing with more tension, movement, and power? One of the most potent ways to strengthen your writing is to use strong, precise, and active verbs […]
LEARNING HOW TO MANAGE IMAGES in Microsoft Word is an essential skill, yet it is not a skill that writers need or call upon every day. After all, writing is all about creating pictures with words. Still, there are times when you’ll need to be able to include pictures in […]
THIS IS NOT what I had planned to blog about this week, nor had I planned to be out of town for the weekend without my laptop, which I usually drag with me if I’m going to be away from home overnight. So, the release of Scrivener for iOS this week […]
