I'm pleased to announce that my book, Write Like You Mean It: Mastering Your Passion For The Written Word, will be available at this year's North Texas Book Festival. The event, slated to be held from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m on August 20 at the Patterson-Appleton Art Center, is an annual celebration of books and authors. It is also a wonderful opportunity to provide grants to public and school libraries and literacy programs in the North Texas area. It's also a chance for authors

When you're tired and want to go to bed, do you wonder whether it's grammatically correct to say that you're laying in bed or lying in bed? Of course not! You're tired and couldn't care less about grammar at this point! Laying down ... lying down ... I'm in bed! Who cares?! Well, we grammar nerds care! So if you don't mind keeping one eye open for a few seconds longer, I'd like to use this week's Edit This® grammar lesson to show you that you've probably been saying this line

It's Best of Denton County time, and your favorite writer and editor at Edit This® would love to earn your nomination for Best Writing & Editing Service! Here's how you can help (it's super easy and quick): 1. Click these words right here to go to the direct link. 2. Fill in your name, email, etc. 3. Go to Question #26 (Best Writing & Editing Service) and type Edit This. 4. Click next and done a few times. It's as easy as that. Nominations end July 6. If we make the Top 3, yo

Even the best writers admit certain words are really hard to spell. No matter how often we use them in everyday writing, we routinely have to spell them out slowly as we type or even resort to double-checking ourselves with spell-check or a quick online search. Even then, we still aren't confident that we got it right. Some words are just confusing like that, especially those that sound like they should be spelled a different way, have weird letter combinations, or feel like

There are so many writing tools at our fingertips right now that it's easy to forget what inspired us to get ideas out of our heads in the first place: good old-fashioned pen and paper. I had this conversation a few days ago with a lady named Michelle. She, too, is an avid writer and self-proclaimed grammar nerd. And while sharing stories about how we each developed a passion for what we do, she asked how I prefer to start the writing process. "Do you go straight to your lapt

Welcome to another Edit This® grammar lesson. In today's blog post, we will discuss Compliment vs. Complement and the differences between the two. I wrote a blog post about this five years ago but am revisiting the topic since I've seen a lot of confusion lately. Compliment and Complement are examples of homophones – words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings – and they trip more people up than you think. So, let's dive right in, shall we? Compliment

I wrote a blog just over a year ago to shine an important light on a few common phrases everyone keeps getting wrong in writing and everyday conversation. Things like "I could care less" and "She's biting her time." We all think those are correct. But they're not. They've been butchered so often over the years – including by yours truly – that it comes as a complete shock when we find out we've been saying them wrong the entire time. Needless to say, my post was pretty popula

Editor's Note: This is a guest post from one of our Edit This® writers and a close, personal friend, Lori Fickling. Lori has been one of my biggest supporters, and she was nice enough to share a few of her thoughts on my book, Write Like You Mean It. A Writer on Writing – by Lori Fickling When a writer meets another writer who happens to be really good, and that writer writes a book about writing, they’re compelled to write about it. Such is the case with Steve’s new book, Wr

My friends Joe and Diane Mayes at Patchouli Joe's Books & Indulgences hosted the first (and long-awaited) Denton Writers' Roundtable on Wednesday at their insanely-popular bookstore on the square. And if you missed it, you really have to be there for the next one! The idea behind the event is to kick-start an inclusive writers' group in our community to share tips and tricks, learn from each other, hear each other's stories, and build lasting relationships. More importantly,

It's been a little more than seven months since my book, Write Like You Mean It: Mastering Your Passion for the Written Word, was released worldwide. If you're a writer and don't have this book yet, I suggest you add it to your collection of books about writing. Just a few of the topics discussed in this book include: Overcoming your fear of writing What writer's block is telling you How to become a successful freelancer Tips on how to write fiction and nonfiction How to be a

Welcome to another Edit This® grammar lesson. In today's blog post, let's discuss the difference between Already vs. All ready. Do you know when to use each one? Already and All ready are examples of homophones – words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings – and they trip more people up than you think. So, let's dive right in, shall we? Already as an adverb means that something has taken place, just took place now, or was completed beforehand. It also

It never gets old shouting to the mountaintops that Edit This®, your friendly neighborhood writing and editing service, is another year older. That's right! We celebrated our 8th anniversary on Friday, April 1. Our self-proclaimed EDIT THIS DAY! As is the case every single year with this ceremonial blog post, I can't say thank you enough to every family member, friend, client, business partner, and everyone in between for the love and support as I continue to live and breathe

Metaphors and similes are constantly being used in writing, on television, in poetry, in the media, and in everyday conversations to compare one thing to another. And the examples are endless. Such as ... Life is like a box of chocolates. My life is an open book. She is as sharp as a tack. Steve is as cool as the other side of the pillow. But how many metaphors and similes exist when talking about the writing process? Well, being the nosey writer that I am, I decided to check

My wife and I celebrated our 17th-wedding anniversary on Saturday. And as most people do in this wonderful age of social media, I took to Facebook as soon as I woke up. While she was in the living room watching TV, I found a handful of cute pics for a collage, dressed them up nice, and then wrote something. But I didn't want what I wrote to be the generic stuff like, "Happy Anniversary, babe. I love you to the moon and back." No. I had to follow my Write Like You Mean It phil

Everybody craves being with family, especially as we attempt to make up for lost time from the pandemic. I'm certainly no exception. My parents are in town from Houston, marking only the third time in two years that we've been together, and we're enjoying every minute of being with them, too. But I must admit that their visit is definitely cutting into my writing time. Perhaps this has happened to you? You've got family in town that you've been dying to spend time with, but y

Welcome to another Edit This® grammar lesson. In today's blog post, let's discuss the difference between Pail vs. Pale. Do you know when to use each one? Pail vs. Pale are examples of homophones – words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings – and they trip more people up than you think. So, let's dive right in, shall we? Pail is another word for a bucket. You know, those things with the half-circle handle used to carry water, etc. It also refers to the

I found an article about writing and procrastination that suggested writers are the worst procrastinators. The author even admitted – or perhaps embellished for the sake of the piece – that she checked email 3,000 times and found herself engaging in numerous Twitter battles and other nonsense in the course of writing that one article. She's not wrong. Everyone procrastinates, whether with home, work, school, relationships, or something else. And that includes writers. After a

The positive reviews for my book, Write Like You Mean It: Mastering Your Passion For The Written Word, has been nothing short of amazing. But two recent ones, in particular, show how motivating and inspiring this book is for many of my fellow writers. The first I'd like to point out came from an old client. We hadn't spoken in three years, but he reached out to tell me that after buying my book, he couldn't pry it out of his wife's hands. My wife picked up your book and can't

I've said before that my ultimate goal is to have my book, Write Like You Mean It: Mastering Your Passion For The Written Word, become a key educational tool in every high school and college writing class in the country. One way to spread the word is to speak to those classes and share tips and tricks I've learned throughout my nearly 25-year career. I'd love for your class to be the next place I visit – so all of us can write like we mean it! I'm interested in speaking to an

In January, a veteran journalist crafted a Twitter post telling other writers to stop recording most of their interviews. In her opinion, recording interviews with sources for your articles is both time-consuming and leads to an over-reliance on quotes. She called it her #journalismtipoftheday. Her tweet was met with wide-sweeping disagreement in the form of roughly 1,200 replies and nearly 2,500 quote tweets. I, too, respectfully disagreed. Recording your interviews: Ensures