Today we’re announcing the winners of the Damn Fine Words writing contest… but boy, was it EVER tough to choose just two submissions. 25 people fought hard to win a chance to get into the Damn Fine Words writing course and learn effective techniques that would change their life. Some posts were straightforward. Some were [...]

Heard you need constant improvement to become a master? Heard you need those 10,000 hours of practice? It’s hogwash. A goal of ‘constant improvement’ won’t lead to success. I learned this when I signed up for Damn Fine Words, James Chartrand’s writing course. Signing up excited me. I was excited because I was taking action [...]

You’re invited to a very exclusive event. How to find the time to write. That’s one of the biggest complaints I hear from busy businesspeople, freelancers and entrepreneurs. (Even writers complain they can’t find the time to write!) There aren’t enough hours in a day. There’s so much going on. You’re barely keeping up. You’re [...]

Your website content may be utterly useless. Sure, it’s interesting. It’s often funny. It’s accurate and informative. But it’s probably repetitive. Your website content most likely repeats several sentences throughout your site. Worse, it might even repeat sentences on the same page.

A lot of people have been telling me they wished they could register for the Damn Fine Words writing course. They say that if they could just take this course… They could finally start that online business, because they wouldn’t feel like they had to put off writing for their audience. They could improve their [...]

Have you ever looked over a piece of your writing, only to realize that something’s missing? It’s so easy to get caught up in all the tips, tricks and techniques: Write a great headline – a number, adjectives, a clear promise Have a gripping introduction to draw the reader in Make sure you spell out [...]

You know that writing content – no, writing great content – is crucial to your business success (no matter what business you have). All the pros tell you to write – and write lots, too. Write compelling website copy to land clients and sales. Write informative articles that show your expertise. Write engaging blog posts [...]

The worst piece of writing advice I ever heard was to write the way I talk. The next time you have a conversation, listen to yourself. If you wrote the way you talked, your writing would be riddled with space-filler words and phrases such as “like” and “um” and “you know what I mean?” You’d [...]

Hunter S. Thompson was the creator of Gonzo Journalism – or as he called himself, “the doctor of journalism” – and the writer of the infamous books Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga, and The Rum Diary. Thompson was known for his drug frenzy-filled stories, his use of powerful verbs [...]

We are our own worst critics. One of the most daunting tasks facing writers is the task of finishing the rough draft. For many writers, the rough draft is the hardest part because they don’t know how to shut off the critical part of their brain and just finish it. Instead, they nitpick. They rewrite [...]