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

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

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 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

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

I've always had a healthy respect for authors, but that admiration grew tenfold as I dove into writing my book, Write Like You Mean It: Mastering Your Passion For The Written Word. The hard work that goes into each chapter, including the emotions, pride, and pieces of ourselves that we pour into each syllable we type – I underestimated all of it. But I also embraced all of it. And when the time comes, I'll do it all over again! If you've been thinking about writing a book, do

There I was, sitting at a table by myself and wondering if anyone would show up. Only 10 minutes had passed since the start of my book signing for Write Like You Mean It: Mastering Your Passion For The Written Word, but what can I say – I was nervous. "It looks great," my wife said in response to a picture I'd just texted. "All I need is people," I said. Thankfully, someone did show up ... and then another person ... and then another. The next thing I knew, I had a successful

While watching a few author interviews several years ago, I couldn't help but marvel at how smooth the conversations were. It didn't matter what question was asked or which random direction the discussion went. They knew every inch of their book like the back of their hand. They recited specific passages from memory – as if they had the book open in front of them. They didn't stutter, stammer, or trip themselves up out of sheer nervousness. How could this be? Well ... beyond

It's not every day that I have the opportunity to be the spotlight author at a book signing. But here I am, thanks in no small part to my new book, Write Like You Mean It: Mastering Your Passion For The Written Word. It's a little more than a week away. And here's the best part: YOU'RE INVITED! I am cordially inviting all writers and avid readers everywhere to my book signing from 1-3 p.m. on Saturday, January 22! Patchouli Joe's Books & Indulgences in downtown Denton is gr

A friend told me the other day that he keeps getting in trouble at work for writing his reports in the passive voice. Granted, no one expects him to be a professional writer, but that hasn't stopped his boss from pleading with him to start writing in the active voice. My reaction when he told me was, "Good for your boss!" Everyone should know the difference between active and passive voice. With active voice, the subject in the sentence acts upon its verb. With passive voice,