My brain isn’t ouchy, but it is mushy.

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: 5 minutes

“And Kitty knew as well as anyone, the throbbing tedium of almost.” ― Allie Ray, Suffering Fools

I know you can overthink things, and you can underthink things, but do you ever just think things?

CYC Elsewhere…

Other places we’ve popped up around the interwebs.

• My top post on LinkedIn last week, in which I wrote a little “fiction” about our friend AL and how he messes with creative pride. (Honestly surprised with this one performing so well, I thought it flopped!)

In Other Reading This Week …

Need more insights and inspiration for your writing and mindset?

• The publishing industry has been broken for a while now, but is there even a hope of ever fixing it? Joan Westberg argues that no, we’ve hit the point of no return, and there is only one way forward.​
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• When I’m being productive, one of my secrets is a specific type of journaling. Not morning pages or diary entries, but a version closer to this one that Lindsey Ellefson explains about (with two methods) over on Lifehacker. ​
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• I was surprised to learn that the English language only has this many words (of course that’s an estimate, and new words or variances are being added regularly!)
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• Struggling to get the words out? Have you considered sharing with your reader? No, I don’t mean gushing your writer’s block out onto others, but as Fallon Clark explains on MetaStellar, maybe you just need to write a letter ABOUT your story and go from there.

Weekly Writing Tip …

A quick chance to learn from the masters.

“I’m superstitious about writer’s block to the extent I don’t particularly feel like devoting a great deal of time to dwelling on it. It seems like getting stuck in a desert, a nightmare. But there are definitely times when the inspiration flows more freely than not. It seems to me that writing is a muscle: it gets stronger the more you use it. If you let yourself fall out of the habit, it can be hard to get back in form. Writing a regular column keeps you limber and sharp and guarantees that any fear of writer’s block is kept at bay.” — John Avlon

Bygone …

Exquisite words from years gone by.

Crapulous [CRA-pyoo-luss] (adj.) – From the early 16th century, it doesn’t mean what you think it does! Well, it has a similarity. Crapulous is that feeling you get when you’ve eaten or drunk to extreme excess. The etymology comes from the Latin crapula, which essentially describes a hangover. So you feel kinda crappy. Which is NOT the same as the poopy “crap”, which is from Medieval Latin crappa, which means chaff (like the husks of wheat or corn.) Sorta synonyms: stuffed, podged, bunged

This Week’s Writing Resource …

Why not use the tools at your disposal?

​YouTube Breakdowns — When I go on and on about how I want AI to work for us, I mean use cases like this one from Nico Appel at TightOps, that shows you how to take notes AND create to-dos from your fave YT videos using free tools.

For the Upcoming Week …

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

Don’t mind me, I’m just about to crash into this conversation and toss it all over the place.

‘Til next time! ~ Elisa