writing tips

Writing Skills: Steal My Efficiency Hacks to Hit Your Target Word Count

Are you tired of trying to draft a 1,000-word article, only to find your first draft clocks in at 3,000 words? Then it’s time to gain some new writing skills and learn how to write to length.

A reader recently asked me if I had a resource on how to hit your word count, and I realized I didn’t.

Which is silly, because I had to write to assigned length on 3-4 print stories a week for 12 years, as a staff writer. Not to mention the hundreds of short blog posts I’ve written for clients since I got back into freelancing in 2005.

And then there was that one hard-ass editor at Entrepreneur who would refuse to read my draft if it was more than 10% over assigned length. Period. THAT schooled me, for sure!

Got some writing tips to share with you on how to avoid time-wasting and overwriting in your writing process.

Ready for a simple system to avoid overwriting? Let’s go! Here are 10 key steps to cut the blather and make sure your first draft is close to target length.

Tagged with: article writing, productivity, writing skills, writing tips

Writing Tips: 30 Freelancers Share Their Secrets in 30 Seconds or Less

Posted by: Editor — 20 Comments ↓

Need writing tips and advice, but you’re in a hurry?

There’s nothing wrong with poring over your library of books on freelancing for the best writing tips, techniques, and business practices.

But what if you’re perpetually short on time? There’s a good chance you don’t crack those writing books for another day, another week…

And that’s a problem if you want to ramp up your freelance writing business fast, need a shot of motivation, or a writing tip related to a current client project.

When I was fresh out of school, only a novice at my day job, I decided to be a writer. No marketing experience. No niche knowledge. Heck, I hadn’t even written a single word of business writing.

I needed a lot of writing tips and advice…fast. So I asked writers in my network a simple question:

If you had 30 seconds to give a new writer just one piece of advice, what would it be?

And they delivered a pay-dirt pile of advice about freelancing. Looking for writing tips to put you on the fast track to move up and earn more? Here you go:

Tagged with: guest post, networking, writer success tips, writing advice, writing tips

Writing Tips: 10 Productivity Secrets From the Author of 1,000 Blog Posts

Posted by: Carol Tice — Comments Off

I’ve got some writing tips for you today, on how to crank out volumes of useful posts that draw a crowd. What’s the occasion? Well, in the past month, this blog hit two milestones: We published our 1,000th blog post, and hit roughly 1 million annual readers.

I wrote the vast majority of these posts (for several years, at the rate of five posts a week).

It isn’t just the posts here that I’ve written over the past decade, either. I also wrote posts daily for a year for BNET (remember them?), wrote 3-4 times a week for Entrepreneur.com for years, and contributed 165 posts to my Forbes channel, to name just a few of my paid blogging clients.

In all, I’ve written thousands of blog posts, since getting back into freelancing in 2005.

If you have trouble pushing ‘publish’ on your posts, and wonder how to produce volumes of quality work, here are my writing tips for maximum productivity:

Tagged with: blog-based business, blogging, productivity, writing tips

How to Improve Your Writing: My Top 7 Fast-Acting Methods

Posted by: Carol Tice — Comments Off

It’s rare that I meet a freelance writer who thinks their writing is good enough. It’s not just that you want to know how to improve your writing, either — you want to know how to do it in a hurry.

Ideally, quick enough to get you some better-paying freelance writing gigs, real soon.

It seems no one wants to become a strong writer the way I did it — namely, to file 3-4 stories each and every week, like I did for 12 years. Or to write 72 blog posts a month, like I did when I got back into freelance writing in 2005.

Everybody wants a shortcut. OK then! I think there are a few.

Here are my top seven ways to quickly improve your writing:

Tagged with: article writing, Article Writing Masterclass, writing tips

Article Writing Secrets of a CIA Analyst Turned Freelancer

Posted by: Editor — Comments Off

If you want to improve your article writing skills, the Central Intelligence Agency probably isn’t your first place to look.

Yes. I’m talking about that CIA. The organization that feeds the President and senior officials information to keep us safe. I was an intelligence analyst for the CIA for 8 years, and spent most of my time writing for top policy makers.

Ever wonder what happens behind the scenes at the CIA?

It’s not exactly like living in a Jason Bourne movie. But there is a lot of information that requires article writing skills to keep people informed. Along the way, I uncovered article writing secrets at the CIA that helped me go from analyst to full-time freelancer.

It wasn’t easy. In this high pressure environment, I quickly learned to kill my purple prose, prioritize readability, and create impeccable work under pressure.

Want to improve your article writing skills, land better clients, and earn more?

Here are a few tips from inside the CIA to help you be a better freelance writer:

Are You Looking for More Writing Motivation?

Posted by: Carol Tice — 22 Comments ↓

If you find it tough to get psyched up to write, this post is for you. I recently received a letter from a new writer hoping I could help her find more writing motivation:

I’m Sherin from Indonesia, it’s such a pleasure to find you as someone I can look up to. I’ve been saying to myself that, I really want to be a writer. And I’m very passionate about being a freelance writer, especially in content writing and maybe in proofreading. I know I need to plan how am I going to do that, but I feel lack of confidence and I don’t really know where to start.

I think this will be a good opportunity to make my own income too. I’m still a student supported by my parents. But I just love the image of standing independently. Anyway, I am so sorry to bother you. I know that I need to have some good skill to become a freelance writer, and to become skilled, I need to learn and practice. And I don’t know how to do that.

Can you give me some tips or maybe some motivation?

Letters like this make me want to cry. Because I’m dedicated to helping freelance writers earn more!

I want to have tips and useful info for you. (And ESL writer or not, writers write in every language and there are clients all over the world, so any grammar errors you spot above are not important here.)

What’s the trouble then? When you ask me to give you some motivation, I’ve got nothing.

Tagged with: motivation, productivity, writing advice, writing tips

writing tips

Writing Skills: Steal My Efficiency Hacks to Hit Your Target Word Count

Writing Tips: 30 Freelancers Share Their Secrets in 30 Seconds or Less

Writing Tips: 10 Productivity Secrets From the Author of 1,000 Blog Posts

How to Improve Your Writing: My Top 7 Fast-Acting Methods

Article Writing Secrets of a CIA Analyst Turned Freelancer

Are You Looking for More Writing Motivation?

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