It’s in the dictionary.

Welcome to The Writing Rundown, a weekly newsletter that offers advice, short essays, and reading suggestions to help driven writers (like you!) improve their writing craft. It's nice to see you here! If someone forwarded you this email because they love your writing, you can subscribe here.

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

“There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it’s now okay to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly until it’s simply the way things are.” – Tammy Baldwin

Try this hack.

Go to an online thesaurus. Look up any word you love.

See all those synonyms?

Those are ALL different ways of saying the exact same thing, with slight variations.

If there are that many ways to define a simple concept, then your versions and observations and ideas have publishable worth.

Your story is important and stuff, so go tell it! 💞

CYC Elsewhere…

Other places we’ve popped up around the interwebs.

• My top post on LinkedIn last week, about the term Thought Leader and what I’d like to replace it with. (Hint: it includes a Scots-inspired turn-of-phrase!)

In Other Reading This Week …

Need more insights and inspiration for your writing and mindset?

• Ever feel like the world is forcing you to write about topics merely because they’ll get “lift” on socials and in SERPs? You aren’t alone. And Kevin Nguyen argues we can blame it all on Game of Thrones.​
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• Lots of folks talk about getting into a state of flow, but do you know what that means? How it might help your writing process? This quick piece from Lindsey Ellefson breaks explains the 8 elements and how to use them to be more productive.
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• Speaking of productivity, do you wish AI could actually help you with your creative output, rather than trying to replace it? If you are blocking time for flow states or Maker time or whatever works for you, this GPT program from Nico Appel can help!
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• Are you a nonfiction book reader who likes talking about it? Mind helping Friend of CYC Anne Janzer out with research for her next book by answering this quick survey? (It took me like 5 minutes to complete!)
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• What’s the worst thing you can do in an edit? Start at the beginning. It sounds weird, but this is great advice from Monica Cox on how to handle edits, especially on a big project like a manuscript, to save yourself from diving into the weeds on your first revision.​

Weekly Writing Tip …

A quick chance to learn from the masters.

“Sometimes, when you start to think about what you want to write, you come up with 10 or 15 ideas and you think that they all have to go in one piece cause this is it, this is your moment! But no, they don’t have to go all in one piece. You have to be able to decide. You have to be able to edit yourself and edit those ideas down into one or two ideas that you can examine in depth, because depth and breadth matter, and that’s how you really create substance and meaning in your work.” — Roxanne Gay

Untranslatable …

Exquisite words from other languages.

Overzichtelijk [OH-vehr-zheeckt-teh-lek] (adj.) – From the Dutch language, overzichtelijk is simply translated as something that is clearly organized or not complicated. But in speech it sort of implies a really good overview of something, from a comprehensive understanding. Sorta synonyms: synoptic, overviewable, bowdlerized

This Week’s Writing Resource …

Why not use the tools at your disposal?

​Bookshop Summer Reading Challenge — Remember those free summer reading challenges we got to do at the local library or Pizza Hut when we were kids? This July, you can do it all over again, and be entered to win prizes (and get 20% off at Bookshop if you log reading every day!) Wanna be friends there? You can find me with the code: 4W63IAV

For the Upcoming Week …

Because we all need a good chuckle to start things off right!

As long as you get around to it eventually, that’s what really matters.

‘Til next time! ~ Elisa
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Full Disclosure: I don’t get anything for referring folks to Bookshop’s Summer Reading Challenge! But if you want to be connected throughout our July reading, my friend code is 4W63IAV​
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