Craft Your Content - There goes weekend!

Welcome to The Writing Rundown, a weekly newsletter that offers advice, short essays, and reading suggestions to help driven writers (like you!) improve their writing craft. It's nice to see you here! If someone forwarded you this email because they love your writing, you can subscribe here.

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

“It’s not the thing itself, but how you use it.” ― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

Wow. What a great response to our weekend toolkits sale! I only have two spots left for the $99 Two-for-One toolkit extra (a writing coaching session with me) and The Writer’s Toolkit sale ($49) is going like hotcakes.

Excited to see so many folks who dare to commit to their writing this year!

CYC Elsewhere…

Other places we’ve popped up around the interwebs.

• In February I’ll be sorting through hundreds of headlines from 2022 as a judge in the ACES Society for Editing Headline Contest. Deadline for entry is January 31st, 2023 with a $300 grand prize.

In Other Reading This Week …

Need more insights and inspiration for your writing and mindset?

• Always wanted to know how the heck to use a semicolon? It’s one of the best punctuation marks you can add to your writer’s arsenal, and this quick Twitter thread will help you to use it more.
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• Want to know what it is gonna take to become a successful creator in 2023? This piece from Nicholas Bouchard breaks down the best advice from creator Jay Clouse’s proven framework on The Leap.
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• Let’s be real, big changes are hard. Why not try micro changes you could do this weekend (or start doing) to see massive life-changes, as shared by Adam Bulger, sooner rather than later?
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• ​I, Hyphen, or T — do you know the shape of your skills? On Ness Labs, Dr. Hannah Rose shares the different talent archetypes, and how knowing yours can shape your creative future.
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• We’re going to be hearing a lot this year about the fall of the creator economy, but the movement is far from overblown. As the brilliant Rand Fishkin shares on SparkToro, the creator economy is just now starting to hit its stride (and hey, you are probably part of it!)

Weekly Writing Tip …

A quick chance to learn from the masters.

“It's best to have your tools with you. If you don't, you're apt to find something you didn't expect and get discouraged.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Untranslatable …

Exquisite words from other languages.

Kombinować [COM-bee-nah-vwatch] (v.) – This Polish term is the spirit of a culture, from the days of oppression and political unrest. It generally means to find your way around a rule or problem. Often it is associated with someone having limited resources or knowledge, and working to find a creative solution. Sorta synonyms: finagle, circumvent, work around, figure out, disentangle

This Week’s Writing Prompt …

We often do our thinking when we write.

Do you have any templates or tools you use regularly in your writing practice? To organize your thoughts or process, or to share ideas and information with others?

For the Upcoming Week …

Because we all need a good chuckle to start things off right!

Sure, it’s important to know how to get yourself through life. But also, there is a lot of information we could learn about trees!

Till next time!