I wish I’d known that you can’t build a serious amount of writing into your business without redesigning your working life.

It’s my birthday and I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learnt about business and about writing, to remind me how far I’ve come. And I’ve written down some of the lessons I keep learning over and over again, to remind myself to keep at it. Some of them might resonate with you. I’d love to know which ones.

Knowing your ‘why’ has become the holy grail of marketing. But for a solo business owner, or a micro business, capturing the ‘why’ can become a stumbling block. Here’s how to overcome it.

What do you do when the words don’t flow? When you can’t keep the goal in sight, you get lost in the document and it’s all an exhausting and frustrating muddle?

Whether it’s due to stress, tiredness, or illness, for most of us there are times when writing doesn’t come easily. So how can you write when you’re not feeling your best?

We worry that no one’s going to want to read what we’ve written. And we worry that if our writing lacks personality, that people will think we’re boring too. It’s a horrible confidence sapping feeling. Here’s how to improve your writing.

Developing your own writing rhythm is one of the very best things you can do to ensure that you create the content your business needs. Here’s how I created mine (plus some ideas you can borrow for yours).

Just like devouring a bag of salty crunchy crisps, or savouring a bowl of smooth vanilla ice cream, sometimes writing is so delicious, that you can’t help yourself going back for more.

How do you make your writing tastier so that people keep on reading?

Sometimes writing is easy. The ideas and the words just flow. You don’t even notice the time passing. Most of the time it feels like work. Eliminate distractions and get into a flow and it goes okay.

However sometimes it feels completely impossible. You have the time and the space, but you don’t have any ideas. Or motivation. Or anything.

This is for that time.

I’ve been having lots of conversations recently with people who are feeling overwhelmed. Whether it’s lockdown, work, lack of work, family dramas, fears about the future, there’s something about the restricted way we’re living at the moment that is prompting an uncomfortable feeling of overwhelm. Here’s how to counteract that, and write with kindness and clarity.

If I could bottle something and give it to my friends and family it would be confidence. The fairies in Sleeping Beauty missed a trick with their gifts of Beauty, Grace, and Dance. What’s really going to protect you in life is the gift of confidence.

People have always named ‘finding the time’ as the biggest barrier to creating content. There are always so many other things to do when you’re running a business. ‘Finding the time to write’ slips all too easily down the to-do-list. Ideas to help you use your writing time to your best advantage.

Imposter Syndrome is everywhere, and it’s got some new guises. There’s the ‘anything I say right now feels irrelevant compared to what’s going on in the world’ version. There’s a debilitating ‘I’ve lost all my confidence’ strain.

If you’re thinking ‘there are real heroes emerging all around us, I’m not expert/brave/important enough to add anything worthwhile’ I’m not surprised that you’re finding it hard to write anything at all.

This might help.

Our words are a proxy for everything we can’t do at the moment.

We can’t meet people; touch them, hug, laugh, persuade, smile, show, flirt, reassure, explain, commiserate, calm. We can’t just be with each other, passing the time doing nothing in particular, sharing the everyday mundane things that connect us - but our words can do at least some of that for us.

Here’s how to make your writing feel more immediate and alive while you’re isolating.

Good writing is at the heart of good communication.. And in many ways being an introvert is a position of strength for a writer. More observant, more reflective, and happier to sit down alone to write.

Here’s why being an introvert could be your writing superpower.

My new website is like the first few hours after a snowfall. The landscape is pure and white, and I can see exactly when people have stepped out into it and the route they’ve taken because their footsteps are starkly visible in my analytics. 

Did that headline get your attention? I hope it did. Writing effective headings is not easy. This one is very much of the “it does what it says on the tin” school — and that’s often no bad thing.

But when your audience is skimming through hundreds of emails, posts, tweets and blogs, how do you write headlines that grab their attention?

You want your writing to feel like the conversation with a friend, not a lecture from a distant expert. So how do you do that? How can you write so that readers stick with you?

Having a few metaphors up your sleeve is a short cut to making your writing warmer and more memorable. But how do you write a good one, and how do you use them to best effect in your content?

Being able to say what’s needed in a few good words is a skill that will help you communicate more easily.  Not every piece of writing needs to be short, of course, but in many places short copy is vital.