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Suggested Articles

Freelance Writing

  • The Skills You Need to be a Freelance Writer
  • Successful Freelance Writers are Surrounded by Terrible Freelance Writers
  • Formatting a short story for submission to a potential publisher
  • How to write a query letter
  • Avoiding Poetry Contest Scams
  • Why they Rejected your Perfectly Good Submission
  • What a freelancer should know before querying a magazine
  • How to Talk About Yourself in a Query Letter

Writing Business

  • Can you make money writing novels?
  • How to Calculate Potential Book Profits
  • Glossary of writing careers
  • Average Salaries for Writers and Editors
  • Reselling Articles
  • How to Calculate Potential Book Profits

Education for Writers

  • How to Choose a Major and Minor for a Career in Writing
  • College majors for aspiring writers
  • What major/degree is required to become a technical writer?

Building Characters

  • Building characters through adversity
  • Exploring characters through their possessions
  • Creating a character biography
  • Building Characters by Brainstorming
  • Using interviewing to create fictional characters
  • Using a normal day to define your character
  • Building a character from multiple perspectives
  • Basing characters on real people
  • Twelve questions that will help you create your character
  • Creating a role-playing character biography
  • Character Bio Sheets

Novel Writing

  • Developing an idea into a novel
  • Mapping out your novel’s characters
  • Creating a believable world
  • Are Your Characters Well Spoken, or is it Just You?
  • Building Better Novels Through Conflict
  • How Good is Your Bad Guy?
  • Plotting by Elimination
  • What to Do Once the Crisis is Settled
  • How Setting Influences Story
  • Maintaining your Novel’s Pace-Time Continuum
  • Questions you should ask yourself when you are describing things for a story
  • Six quick ways to jump start a stalled novel
  • Six Quick Tips for Writing Descriptions
  • Six Quick Tips For Starting Your Story
  • There is no right way to write a novel
  • Deciding on a Narrative Voice
  • How to Write a 50,000 Word Novel in a Month

Editing

  • Starting the revision process again
  • Finding someone to read your novel’s draft
  • Editing your novel with an eye toward continuity
  • Adding and revising scenes in your novel
  • Creating a new roadmap for your novel
  • Sample information guide for your novel
  • Creating an information guide for your novel
  • Editing your novel as you read it
  • Creating a chronology for your novel
  • Performing a light edit on your novel
  • Reading through your draft
  • Writing an Action Outline

Article and Essay Writing

  • How to Create an Article or Blog Idea Log
  • How to Send an Effective Press Release
  • How to Write a How To Article
  • Essay paper writing guide
  • A List of Essay Writing Don’ts
  • Eight Tips for Writing a Division Essay

General Writing

  • Fifteen craft exercises for writers
  • Improving your imagery
  • Explaining the unreliable narrator
  • Dialogue (Dialog) Exercises for Writers
  • Developing your writing voice
  • How to Express Yourself Through Writing

Usability

  • Usability: Think in terms of scenarios
  • Usability: Surfing for User Comments
  • Usability: Brainstorming User Issues
  • Usability: People really don’t like surprises
  • Usability: Do you want the data or the conversion?

Humor

  • 7 Easy Steps to a More Pretentious Poem
  • Writing Your Way Out of a Wet Paper Sack
  • 10 Ways to Annoy the Hell out of your Writers’ Group

Poetry Writing

  • Poetry writing tips
  • 7 Ways to Be the Victim of a Poetry Contest Scam
  • Write poetry as often as you can
  • The challenges of imagery in your poetry
  • The poem is in the details
  • Six Tips For Writing Poetry About Difficult Subjects
  • Say what you want to say and let your readers decide what it means
  • Read poetry if you write poetry
  • Leave love out of your poem’s title
  • Four things poets can learn from George Carlin
  • Feel free to write a bad poem
  • Don’t explain everything in your poem
  • Don’t include any word with a single “A” in it, but do include at least one word with two “A”s in it
  • Four Ways to Publish Your Poetry

Poetry Prompts

  • Poetry prompts
  • Write a poem about completing something
  • Write the final line of your poem first, then figure out a way to get there
  • Write a poem that includes one or more descriptions of sounds – 31p31d
  • Use an inspiration tool
  • Write the first draft of your poem in paragraph form and then change it into a free verse poem
  • Write a poem that begins and ends with the same word
  • Include a verb in every line of your poem – 31p31d
  • Write a poem that discusses a real moment in your life without discussing its larger meaning
  • Break the rules – 31p31d
  • Write a three stanza poem that shows a progression with each stanza
  • Write a poem that begins a negative and ends with a positive – 31p31d
  • Write a poem that has a variable line length rather than a set meter
  • Include the words “formal” and “casual” at some point in your poem
  • Write a poem using a random source – 31p31d
  • Write a new poem an old subject – 31p31d
  • Write a poem that follows the three rules of the imagists – 31p31d
  • Write a poem that uses at least two different forms of repetition – 31p31d
  • Write a poem that doesn’t use your standard process – 31p31d
  • Write a poem using syllabic verse – 31p31d
  • Write a poem in the first person that makes a definitive statement – 31p31d
  • Write a poem with meter and without meter
  • Write a poem using a specific meter
  • Write an Elegy – 31p31d
  • Write a list poem that uses a single line for each item on the list – 31p31d
  • Meditate and then write a poem
  • Write a Persona Poem – 31p31d
  • Write in a new place – 31p31d
  • Write a poem about something trending – 31p31d
  • Write about changing your opinion – 31p31d
  • Write a poem about something you gave away as a child – 31p31d

Poetry Forms

  • How to write in the acrostic poetry form
  • How to write an epistle poetry form
  • Writing the Cinquain Form
  • Write a definition poem
  • Writing tercet and triad poetry
  • Writing elegies and memory poems
  • What is a stanza?
  • Writing persona poems

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Welcome!

I am John Hewitt and this is my blog. I am a Content Strategist for a personal finance company. I also write fiction and poetry, which I publish here. I enjoy a lot of television shows, movies, and books which I also post about from time to time. I have a life and sometimes write about it.

This is my spot to talk about whatever I want, no matter how controversial or mundane.

About this blog

This is my personal blog. It reflects my thoughts and opinions and not those of any employers (past or present) or other affiliated parties. Any endorsements I make are my own.

I don’t use an ad service, but I do have affiliate links to Amazon if I talk about a book, show, or other item.

Also, I have no editor, and I sometimes make typos or otherwise write badly. Yes, I am a professional writer. Yes, I also make mistakes.

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If you don’t like my views on politics, writing, or anything else, please unfollow me. If you don’t like the way I write, please unfollow me.

There’s no need to let me know. It won’t change anything about me or you. I don’t care how much traffic I get, so you aren’t hurting the site if you leave. Everything is fine. Just go do something you enjoy more than reading my thoughts.

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Unless otherwise attributed, all work on this site is my own and comes under general copyright. Please use attribution when quoting from my site or republishing any images.

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Other than what Google Analytics tells me about my traffic in general, I do not collect information on users and I would never resell people’s personal information. I also use Disqus for comments. You’ll have to register with them if you want to comment, but they get your information, not me.

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