Finally, a book that shows how to vastly improve your writing using modern technology! This book lays out 7 steps that will enhance your writing. These proven methods yield superior results. As you apply them, you'll communicate better and achieve more influence. You'll learn how to better identify your readers' needs and write to capture their interest. You'll sense how to control the tone of your writing so it rings true with your readers. You'll understand how to collect and organize the information you need to be persuasive. This book shows you how to exploit the power of the internet, how to quickly find information, and how to use it to full advantage. You'll learn how to make interviews productive. You'll find tools to help you capture information so it's easy to recall and reuse. You'll discover how to brainstorm more effectively, whether you work alone or are part of a team. You'll come to know how to use mind-mapping software to spur your creativity. You'll see how to use Ishikawa Diagrams to structure your ideas. And, you'll grasp how to check your thinking for completeness. You'll be provided with dozens of techniques for organizing your thoughts and material. You'll learn approaches for analyzing problems, proposing changes, persuading others, explaining complex topics, telling stories, and generating powerful sales copy. You'll know how to capture attention, hold the reader's interest, and drive home your point. You'll acquire the ability to draft faster with better results. You'll see how to focus on what works. You'll pick up tips on how to better use voice recognition software to go for speed, control your tone, always have more relevant things to say, and write compelling summaries and conclusions. You'll learn how to edit with power and confidence. You'll realize how to spot and eliminate unclear themes, incorrect assumptions, lapses in logic, irrelevant information, and inappropriate amount of evidence--both too little and too much. You'll find simple explanations of grammar. And in doing so, you'll get the tools you need to craft sentences that really work to communicate your ideas. You'll gain the ability to keep your writing simple and clear. In addition, you'll learn how to check the sound of what you have written using text readers so it resonates with your readers. In short, you'll become a master of crafting powerful and persuasive language. In addition, you'll improve your ability to proof your work, so you are not embarrassed by making stupid errors. You'll be introduced to a sequenced approach to proofreading that minimizes your effort and provides the best results. And finally, you'll learn how to apply these many insights and tips to write better emails, letters, memos, reports, presentations, articles, blogs, websites, and business proposals. THE RESULT. You'll find the words to express your thoughts and feelings. And, your proposals, reports, and emails will get the attention they deserve. This is a book for people in business, government, non-profit organizations, and education. It's a book for those writing serious material for their jobs and their callings. This book contains everything necessary to improve your writing, and there's no fluff. In the time it takes to read this book--less than 4 hours--you can start becoming a stronger writer. After investing only 8 hours--one normal workday--in doing some of the recommended exercises, you'll see improvements in your writing. Is it magic? No. It's just good advice backed up by extensive research and decades of experience. You too can write better, even exceptionally well. 7 Steps to Better Writing will help you do it.

In this fresh approach to writing poetry, the coauthor of the perennially popular The Poet's Companion offers sharp insights into the craft of writing. "The creative process is just that," maintains Kim Addonizio. "Not a means to an end, but an ongoing participation." A widely acclaimed poet and finalist for the National Book Award, Addonizio meditates on her own process as she encourages writers to explore both their personal and political worlds, to seek inspiration from poets new and old, and to discover the rich poetic resources of the Internet. Lively, accessible, and informative, Ordinary Genius?provides wisdom gleaned through personal experience and offers a heady variety of writing exercises. Chapters on gender, addiction, race and class, metaphor and line invite each individual writer to find and to hone his or her unique voice. This is the perfect book for both experienced writers and beginners eager to glimpse the angel of poetry.

When you Read Like a Writer (RLW) you work to identify some of the choices the author made so that you can better understand how such choices might arise in your own writing. The idea is to carefully examine the things you read, looking at the writerly techniques in the text in order to decide if you might want to adopt similar (or the same) techniques in your writing. You are reading to learn about writing. Instead of reading for content or to better understand the ideas in the writing (which you will automatically do to some degree anyway), you are trying to understand how the piece of writing was put together by the author and what you can learn about writing by reading a particular text. As you read in this way, you think about how the choices the author made and the techniques that he/she used are influencing your own responses as a reader. What is it about the way this text is written that makes you feel and respond the way you do?