Writing is rewriting

Hi friends,

Greetings from the confusing weather of Ottawa.

One minute you are smothering sunscreen on your face, the next you are scrambling on a jacket because you got hit by some banshee of a wind draft.

How you all doing?

Today, we’ll be talking about rewriting.

Look, Rewriting is Everything

The process of going through your draft, and fixing all the problems you might have missed is often the difference between average and great content.

Note, this doesn’t mean your content will drive a boatload of traffic to your blog, but you at least improve its chances.

You know, like the saying — “not all concentrated investors are winners, but winners are most likely concentrated investors.”

Don’t ask me who said that…cos’ I don’t know 🤷🏾‍♂️

But agreed, it isn’t easy.

And if you don’t have an editor, it can be tempting to hit the publish button after running the article through Grammarly.

Here’s a three-step process I use to help ease the rewriting exercise along:

1. Step away from the work for a bit: Let your article breathe for a while. I sometimes don’t go back to it for a day. If you are pressed for deadlines, stepping away from your desk for a short walk can be equally helpful.

2. Come back and pretend to be someone else: Once you get back to your writing desk, try to pretend to be someone else (your target audience, your client - this is a hard one though 🤦🏾‍♂️) and read through the piece. At this stage, I actively make corrections while reading through the piece.

3. Finally, print it out and read it aloud: Printing your work has a mysterious effect on your editing superpowers — I think it increases mine by 10X. So, print it out, and read it aloud to yourself. This is a smart way to catch awkward phrases, funny typos, and grammatical errors.

At the end of this, you should have a significantly better article.

Remember to run it through Grammarly one more time. But make sure you double-check some of the suggestions that headstrong AI sends your way during this editing round.

Content tools

A content tool I discovered this week

The Count of Things is a tool for seeing how numbers compare to other numbers. Its a great tool for writing sentences like this: The crowd was seventeen times the number of Sesame seeds on a Big Mac bun.

Not Enough Writers - Erin was AWESOME

You can check out our LinkedIn page for a recap of her session.

It doesn’t stop there folks.

We’ve got the amazing Michaela Mendes coming up on the 5th of June.

Can’t wait.

Until then, sign up here.

Content writing jobs (Remote/Freelance)

✅ Junior Content Writer, Prime6 Brands | Apply here

✅ Content Writer, Eliassen Group | Apply here

✅ Freelance Content Writer, GetPhound | Apply here

✅ Freelance Writer/Editor, North Star Inbound | Apply here

✅ Writer, Generation Branding and Communication | Apply here

✅ Remote Content Writer, Speck Design | Apply here

All the best folks. And please share with any of your friends/colleagues who might find this useful 🙏🏾

My biggest takeaway this week 🚀

“You don’t need complex sentences to express complex ideas”

Paul Graham

What I’m thinking about?

In life, you don’t need to know all the answers. Just take it a day at a time. However, never bullshit yourself or others.

What’s your biggest content marketing challenge?

Reply to this email. Let me know what you’d like me to cover next.

I read every reply.

Thanks for reading this far. I am grateful!

Stay safe and sane.

I’ll be back on June 4th.

Dozie

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