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...
How to use an assignment brief to make any business writing project 10x easier
When I worked for a PR agency, I would occasionally get a writing "assignment" in the form of a one-line Slack message or a very short email. Sometimes, it...
The craft of content creation: A conversation with Sam Diaz
Sam Diaz is a Senior Vice President of Digital Content at Burson, a role that draws on his background as both a longtime technology journalist and a...
'People will always pay for good stories': A tech journalist's perspective with Rafe Needleman
Rafe Needleman has been covering technology for over 25 years as a journalist and communications leader. Needleman's technology journalism experience started...
Message Lab’s Ben Worthen on the enduring value of a great story, well-told
This week, I'm excited to share an interview I did recently with Ben Worthen, founder of content agency Message Lab. Ben's one of my role models in the...
21 speechwriting resources from the world conference of speechwriters
Last month, I attended the Professional Speechwriters Association's World Conference in Washington, D.C. I also attended the PSA's one-day Speechwriting...
How content builds trust: A conversation with Osano’s Julie Polito
Julie Polito is the Head of Brand + Content Communications at Osano, a leading data privacy SaaS company. I’ve known Julie for many years now. In her career,...
What matters now
As I sit at my desk this morning, I am thinking about what really matters. Peace. Honest, clear communication. Showing respect for all people, and making an...
Quentin Hardy on helping companies find ‘story-market fit’
Quentin Hardy has written about business, finance, and technology for some of the world’s leading publications and served as head of editorial for Google...
Beyond spellcheck: Alex Sventeckis on the value of AI and good editing
As a writer and consultant, Alex Sventeckis has crafted compelling content and built expert content teams for companies in B2B tech, physical/cybersecurity,...
Self-portrait with eyes closed
This is a self-portrait I drew in a minute or so with my eyes closed. I made this a couple of years ago during a group Zoom activity at work. (We were also...
Write with me!
Over the next three months, I am offering a series of writing circles designed especially for people who write at work: journalists, PR pros, marketing...
Storyline: Deepfakes and deep mistrust
I'm thinking about a storyline that has come up multiple times this summer: How the mere existence of AI sows distrust. If I were pitching a news story or...
What is a storyline?
When searching for a name for this newsletter, I kept returning to “Storylines” because I felt like it reflected the essence of my work. My favorite jobs...
8 generative AI prompts to help you write better
Last week I wrote about how I use AI for writing. This week I’d like to share some detailed tips and prompts that have worked for me and other writers. The...
I'm thinking about starting a community
Would you be interested in joining a community of Storylines subscribers? This would be a place for writers, editors, and potentially creators of all types...
How I use AI for writing
A burning question for anyone in the content business is this: Will AI replace me? In the short term, it’s certainly having a sharply negative effect on...
Don't panic.
It’s July, and things are moving slowly in my neighborhood. The sun came up right on schedule this morning at 6:03. I know it happened, because I was there,...
Embracing the Zen of collaborative writing
I jumped into a writing career right out of college because I was jazzed about the potential for self-expression, and because I was getting hooked on the...
Writing together in series and parallel
Originally published June 13, 2024 on CoAuthored by Foster For me, the word “writer” has long called to mind the archetype of a poet in a lonely garret,...
25 things I learned in 25 years of newsletter publishing
In today’s writing circle, fellow writer Alicia asked me if I had just recently launched my newsletter. “No,” I said, “I’ve been publishing it in one form or...
The top tools for collaborative writing, part 2: Project management and publishing
In my previous post, I talked about the top tools content pros use for writing and editing. But collaborative writing goes beyond the mere creation of...
The top tools for collaborative writing, part 1: Writing and editing
What tools do you need to make a collaborative writing project successful? At the most basic level, the minimum requirements are a word processor and some...
Blogs are alive and well, survey data shows
If blogging is dead, there’s no sign of its demise among content creators. Over 80% of professional content creators are busy writing blog posts for our...
The spiritual crisis of white men
The Good Men Project first published this article on May 2, 2024. For many of us, life hasn’t turned out quite the way we expected. Granted, this is true for...
How to measure content effectiveness
The final step in my six-part POWERS process for team-oriented content production is to study the results. If you don’t pay attention to the effectiveness of...
Notes from a totality
Today’s solar eclipse was far from total where I was. In Northern California, the Moon blocked at most about one-third of the Sun. Of course, I watched it,...
Release management for content products
If you’ve been following along the past few weeks, I’ve been going through the stages of the POWERS process for creating and publishing content as a team....
What does an editor actually do?
A few weeks ago, I used an image in this newsletter that I wish I hadn’t. It was a picture of a little sign on someone’s desk that said, “Write without fear....
Avoiding that "Untitled document" feeling in Google Docs
You know that feeling when you're staring at a brand-new Google Doc, and it's completely white except for the blinking cursor in the upper left? Sometimes...
How to write - and how to avoid writer's block
If you’ve been following the team-writing process I outlined a couple of weeks ago, you’ll reach a point where you have an assignment brief (however brief it...
Three ways to write an outline - plus one that is better than all the others
The heart of a well-organized writing project is an outline. This is a surprisingly controversial statement. I know many writers hate working with an...
How to start a writing project with a team
I’ve been doing a lot of freewriting lately, taking inspiration from creativity teachers like Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron, and Lynda Barry (Lynda Barry!...
The POWERS process for effective team writing
Most people think of writing as a solitary activity undertaken by lone geniuses operating under various degrees of inspiration and sheer tenacity. But...