Writing

When I was writing my first nonfiction book, I researched how my favorite writers structured their books. I was interested in discovering two levels of structure: the book-level structure (I call this the macrostructure) - how the book itself is laid out the chapter-level structure (the microstructure) - what are the building blocks of each chapter? Here’s the structure I created to guide me in 2014. Since I made it my life’s mission to create my personal publishing empire, I will be needing the content in this article myself. »

Business needs more storytelling. It needs more storytellers. This book has taught me the basic elements of a story, and it gave me specific examples of the situations and the kinds of stories a business should tell to inspire change. The book is written as a parable itself. It’s a story of how squirrels wanted to switch to nut storing, instead of starving every winter. So, with this book you get 2 things in 1: the actual story, and the explanation why the story worked, and how it worked. »

This would be a good first book to read on the subject of writing for business. The book has got the right mix of writing advice, grammar tips, links to tools, and inspiration. Probably the book that inspired me to create my writing credo I call “Data, Proof, Examples” for writing persuasive, human-centered content. What My Book Reading Notes Are About I’m a compulsive note taker. I can’t read a non-fiction book without taking notes - that’s why it takes me so long to finish a book. »

About This Book Very practical book, with plenty of examples - it’s the examples that make this book worth buying. The book taught me how to edit my own writing, cut it short, say it more clearly. Most importantly, this book taught me what it really means to “show, don’t tell” in writing - the book showed me, rather than told me. What My Book Reading Notes Are About I’m a compulsive note taker. »

I got an inspiration to write this as I was examining my deeply held, possibly limiting, beliefs about marketing and writing. The you, you, you mantra I’m talking about is this one: You should use lots of you, you, you in your writing, instead of me, me, me. This popular writing advice falls in the category of “writing customer-centric content”. Unfortunately, this advice often fails to generate customer-centric content. »

It was time for another change. The first reincarnation of this blog was built with Python and Django in 2009. The second reincarnation was built with Ghost.org in 2014. In 2016, I built this version 3.0 with the Hugo Static Website Engine. So far, I love most of Hugo. I Miss Writing on My Blog I realized that I haven’t written anything since 2014 on my blog. I need to write. »

I ran into these two tweets the other day: I was immediately like: OMG this guy is totally right! Do my articles come off as condescending and as patronizing like that too? Gosh I hope not. How do I make sure I don’t patronize my readers and still get my message across? As someone who writes educational content for a living or, to be honest - who only recently started to write for a living - not being able to teach people important stuff is kind of a biggie. »

I hate writing. I love having written. - Dorothy Parker I published a book. I’m an author. On June 9th 2014 I pressed Publish on Leanpub and the book Recurring Revenue For Web Agencies with my name on it appeared online for the world to read, buy, appreciate and critique. I wanted to publish a book since 2012. It didn’t happen then for a number of reasons. This post explains what I changed and who or what helped. »

Want to write for a living? You can. You just can’t put a $2.99 price tag on your book if you want to eat. I’ve been ranting about pricing for the past five years. Charge more. Just fucking do it. That’s what I’ve been telling my fellow web developers and web development company owners. That’s what I’ve been training myself to do. Now that I am finally ready to finish writing a book, I see that the same web development lessons about pricing apply to publishing books as well. »

My blog has a new home. I moved my domain luckyisgood.com to Ghost.org Hosted Service platform. I decided to do this mostly because I needed a better publishing platform which would help me publish more good stuff more often. I’ve known for some time that the choice of a writing tool has an effect on me. Ghost editor supports Markdown syntax and Markdown is currently the most productive way to publish directly to the web. »