The Best Articles, Videos, and Newsletters in Writing

It’s not the end of the world if you use an unnecessary word now and then, write the occasional overlapping sentence, or tell us what you’re doing in a sentence before you do it. But the extra words…

«But your readers don’t necessarily need to follow the journey you took while you were drafting the document. They just need to know where you ended up.»

February 2020What should an essay be? Many people would say persuasive. That's what a lot of us were taught essays should be. But I think we can aim for something more ambitious: that an essay should…

«Useful writing tells people something true and important that they didn't already know, and tells them as unequivocally as possible.»

Even stories that start with brilliant strokes of inspiration too often fizzle out before we reach The End. Use this four-step method to develop your best ideas to their fullest.

«No matter your starting point—a love story, buddy tale, mystery, quest—you can do like the great innovators do: Bend it. Amp it. Drive it. Strip it.»

I have written and published one new article on this blog every single week day for the past four weeks. That’s 20 articles in a month. These are not diary-style posts where I talk about my daily…

Rules you can use to write anything you want to write — from a book to a tweet

I met Willow at a loom on a farm one late-summer day. She was amused that I thought she looked like Mary Shelley, in whose world I’d been immersed for seven years while writing Traversal. Nei…

Barry Manilow is still obsessed with craft. Ahead of his 55th album, the “Mandy” singer took a deep dive into modern pop. He wanted to take a crack at writing like artists like Billie Eilish, but he…

Has our culture’s begrudging acceptance of ghostwriting paved the way for everyone – not just the rich and famous – to offload the hard work of writing?

Anne Lamott and Neal Allen join us to discuss why embracing constraints can be the best way to find freedom in the craft.

A deep dive into the horror novelist’s archives reveals pedantry, penny-pinching, and a total redraft of Carrie

Psychologist and coach Nick Wignall shares seven of his favorite journaling prompts and reflections questions to overcome perfectionism

Lately, I’ve been writing about improving energy. Recent essays include why we should manage energy rather than time, the saga of ego depletion research, and the paradoxical relationship between…

«The parts of the brain most clearly associated with the subjective feelings of effort are those associated with working memory and executive control.»

Writing offers a unique way to name your pain and create distance from it. By engaging the brain’s memory and decision-making centers, this simple daily practice helps shift your mindset from…

Before you hit “send,” delete these words from your writing. Your message will be stronger for it.

Getting people to reply to emails can be a pain. Here's what copywriters can teach you about how to make your writing more persuasive...

I remember driving home from my high school graduation, excited. I was excited not because I was done with school but because of what I was about to start. I’d been working with a friend to put up my…

The Atlantic’s writers and editors have chosen fiction and nonfiction to match all sorts of moods.

The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it plunges you into the depths of your being and at the same time takes you out of yourself. Writing i…

When #MeToo happened, everything women wrote about rape outside reportage was crowned by the same bloody image—Judith Beheading Holofernes—by the Italian baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. You’…

David speaks with Neville Medhora, an expert copywriter, best-selling author of "This book will teach you how to write better", and founder of Copywriting Course and SwipeFile.com. Neville never set…