Check out my new featured articles on TWM!

My family and I took a Disney Cruise last month. I was privileged enough to be able to write about it and be featured again on TravelingWithMonkeys.com. Check out the first part of this 3-part article here.

And while you're there, check out another of my featured articles, How I Became the Daddy-Daughter Road Trip Master!

My path to becoming a better writer

Reading this article by Duncan Riach entitled How to Become World-Class at Anything made me think about my journey to becoming a paid, professional writer.

My path to writing for a living took twists and turns. In the article he talks about regular practice without focusing on the result (in my case I don't focus on the result until it's time to share the work with my clients).

Years of this type of practice freed me up to write better.

I've been writing professionally for 5 years. At the beginning, I was a solid writer who could do research, assimilate ideas and construct sentences without errors. I created coherent articles. Yay for me!

Yet if I compare my writing from 5 years ago to my writing now, there's a significant difference. I've refined my process, found a style and discovered a voice all while improving my mechanics.

One of the best resources, which I've featured here a few times, is Elements if Style. The book contains immensely helpful advice like Omit Unneccesary Words and Focus on the Unit.

More than any advice, method or how-to, my improvement as a writer largely came the old-fashioned way - through practice, repetition and hard work. I've spent many many hours stringing together words. I've spent many more hours reading books with a critical eye towards things like sentence structure, phrasing, word choice, punctuation and many more things.

I love writing, but love isn't enough. Like any relationship, I want my partner, in this case my writing, to be as great as it can possibly be. That's why I continue to practice and consider my writing skills a work in progress.

Elite City, Dubai

I've done a fair bit of real estate writing over the past couple of years. One of my most recent clients is one of the more interesting ones that I've ever had. Elite City in Dubai develops luxury towers and sells apartments. I've ghostwritten a few posts for them in the past month. Here they are!

Recent Recommended Reads

I've mentioned before that I love to read. Recently, I've read some really excellent books. The stories range from sci-fi to mystery to weird to coming-of-age.

The Fold by Peter Clines
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
The River of Kings by Taylor Brown
The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley
The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

If you're looking for a good read, I recommend any of these. Happy reading!

Traveling With Monkeys featured article

One of my newest clients, Traveling With Monkeys recently featured one of my articles on their site. Check it out!

Jonas C's new bio

Jonas C., a Malaysian born, Australian-based photographer recently hired me to rewrite his bio. Check it out!