I’m taking a few weeks off from blogging, so regular posts will resume mid-August. In the meantime, here are seven of my favourite posts from the past seven months for you to enjoy:

How to Be a Writer: Ten Important Steps to Becoming a Writer (and Living Your Dreams) 

What exactly does it mean to be a writer? And how do you go about becoming one? That’s what I set out to answer in this post, offering ten simple but important steps you can take if you want to be a Writer. 

How to Come Up With Lots of Great Ideas for Your Writing [With Examples] 

Do you ever feel stuck for ideas? If you’re struggling to come up with an idea for your latest blog post or short story, this piece should help. I offer some different techniques to try (and take a look at what not to do). 

How to Write Faster: Twelve Tips to Get More Words Down

Whatever type of Writing you do, the faster you can do it, the better — so long as you still enjoy it, of course. Through many years of writing freelance articles and fiction, I’ve learnt a lot about how to get words down fast. I share my best tips in this post.

Get Re-Excited About Your Writing Project: Seven Ways to Stay Motivated to Write

Have you stalled part-way through a project? A lot of writers find that they feel inspired and motivated when starting something new … only to end up losing momentum part-way in. This post goes through some ways to keep up your motivation for the long haul.

 What Bad Writing Looks Like … and How to Fix It [With Detailed Examples] 

No one wants to write a bad piece — but what exactly does “bad” look like? In this post, I look in detail at a draft piece of fiction, showing where the writing is sub-par … and demonstrating how to go about fixing it.

The Three Stages of Editing (and Nine Handy Do-it-Yourself Tips)

It’s easy to think of “editing” as simply meaning fixing typos and mistakes … but there’s a lot more to editing than that. Ideally, you want to approach editing in three distinct stages. I run through them in this post, and offer some tips for self-editing your work.

Seven Habits of Serious Writers to Help You Go Further

It can take time (and a whole lot of effort) to see success as a writer. These seven habits are great ones to cultivate: they’ll all help you go further with your writing, whether you’re a blogger, freelancer, or fiction writer.

Don’t forget the Aliventures summer sale: it’s still on until the end of Thursday 22nd July. You can get everything in the Aliventures shop half-price:

• Get Writing (a guided introduction to four areas of writing – freelancing, blogging, short stories, and novels – plus tips for going further with each) – $20 $10
• Supercharge Your Writing (four guides to help you make the most of your writing time, however limited it is) – $8 $4 each or $20 $10 for all four
• The Self-Study Seminar Packs (pre-recorded seminars on various aspects of writing) – $20 $10 each or $50 $25 for all six packs