Never let AI write your first draft
One prediction, one AI prompt that will help you write better, and some highlights of my (non-AI-generated) work in 2025.
The magic of magazines
The cover of Mayfield’s Future of AI magazine tl;dr: I helped make a magazine! –> Download the Future of AI here I fell in love with magazines as a young...
Haiku changed my life
Haiku taught me to be a better writer, editor, and listener. I'll share how it can help you too, in an upcoming workshop December 7.
Collaboration and photography
Notes from a "satellite contributor" to a photography residency.
It's Clippy's world now
There's no avoiding the AI assistants anymore. Except for this one weird trick!
How to write like Neal Stephenson
I was standing in the futuristic, multi-story atrium of NVIDIA's "Endeavor" building when I saw Neal Stephenson leaning against a railing. "I bet you're not...
What it's like to attend a Renaissance Weekend
Last weekend, on a sunny balcony overlooking Monterey Bay, with cocktail chatter in the near background and sea lions barking in the distance, I talked about...
When listening and poetry collide
This summer, I took a five-week course from The Good Listening Project to learn the craft of listening poetry: poetry that arises from deep listening in a...
Good listening leads to better thinking
A fellow consultant recently asked me for advice on writing and publishing more consistently. He wasn’t asking me to ghostwrite for him or to edit his work,...
Writing with (and without) AI
Artificial intelligence complicates things for writers. It's complicating everything for everyone these days, sure. We all have AI in our faces all day long,...
What is content? What is writing?
Like many writers who take their craft seriously, I had an uneasy relationship with the word “content” for a long time. Once, in the late 1990s or early...
Rewrites to infinity: David Strom on the reality (and dangers) of content collaboration
David Strom is a veteran technology journalist and content strategist who has been covering enterprise technology for over three decades. He has held...
Webinar: Secrets of content marketing and content creation
Last weekend, between cleaning up weeds in our backyard and grilling veggies on the Weber, I spent many hours reviewing and writing up the results of my...
How giving speeches can make you a better speechwriter
I arrived at the conference a little late. Everyone had their coffees, and most of them were already at the tables, chatting amiably with old friends. The...
Into the labyrinth
On the fourth day, we walked slowly into the labyrinth, step after step, walking around one loop, turning, and returning along another, when tears started...
Andy Raskin on the art of strategic narrative
Andy Raskin is a legendary strategic narrative consultant whose clients have included Salesforce, Uber, Square, Yelp, VMware, Intel and General Assembly, as...
Your invitation to contribute to the 2nd annual State of Content Creation
Last year, I published the results of a small, qualitative survey on the state of the art in content creation. Despite the small sample size and the relative...
How the WE model can help you write better
Last week, I gave a copywriting workshop in Alpharetta, Georgia, to a marketing team of about 80 people. It was my third workshop so far this year and the...
Why empathy is crucial for creating content: A chat with Nick Adams Pandolfo
Nick Adams Pandolfo is a content creator and strategist, executive comms specialist, ghostwriter, and general storyteller. After spending much of his...
What Eminem taught me about SEO and authenticity
Years ago, I wrote a column about copyright on the Internet that became one of my most popular posts, drawing ridiculous traffic to my website for years. It...