Don't resort to cat blogging. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1244985)

This is another one of my occasional posts on what to do when you don’t feel like blogging.

1. Update your bio/about page. If you’ve been doing this for any length of time, chances are it’s out of date. You should also make sure that you’re including everything there that’s going to help reinforce your brand and (if it’s a personal blog) establish your authority and expertise.

2. Develop a list of non-content tweaks to improve your blog. Chances are, you’ve got a widget or a plug-in you’ve been meaning to add to your blog, or a design tweak that you haven’t gotten around to. If you’re not going to create new content (the most important thing you can do), then figure out what else you could do to improve your blog.

3. Make one (or more) of your list of non-content improvements. If you already have a list of potential blog improvements, or you’ve made one, now is the time to start implementing those. Decide which is most important, and implement that.

4. Add more social media sites to your Ping.fm account. Ping.fm is a cool service that allows you to send updates to all sorts of social media, chat and social bookmarking sites at once. That makes it easy, when you publish a new post, to spread it to all sorts of networks. You still have to sign up for individual accounts at these sites, but Ping.fm automates the process of posting to some or all of them at once. Hint: You can also tie Ping.fm into your Hootsuite account, so Hootsuite updates it — if that makes sense for you.

5. Create a notebook with all the important records related to your blog. If you’re not keeping track of all your passwords, business records and other information related to your blogging and social media activity, it’s easy to find yourself hitting that “I’ve forgotten my password” link too often. I use 3×5 cards in a little plastic box (about $2 from an office supply store) to keep track of this information.

6. Brainstorm ideas for the next time you do blog. Sometimes taking the pressure off yourself of actually writing a full blog post can be freeing, and you may find new ideas flowing.

7. Leave smart, relevant comments on other blog posts. If you’re like me, you’re already blogging, keeping up with social media networks and digesting a torrent of incoming email, RSS feeds, ebooks and paper books. Commenting is something you probably don’t do as often as you should. Blogs with CommentLuv installed or that use Do Follow links can be particularly helpful for SEO purposes.

8. Check out other blogs in your niche, and figure out how to get a guest post on one of them. Guest posting can boost your search engine visibility, bring you new readers and give more credibility to your reputation and brand. Step one is to figure out where you’d like to guest post.

9. Look at your blog with a browser you don’t normally use and fix any design problems that show up. If you habitually use one browser (I recommend Firefox), you might be surprised what it looks like in Internet Explorer (various versions), Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome or the Opera browser (all of these, except Internet Explorer, come in versions for both Mac and Windows machines). You might also want to consider making your site better for mobile browsers. Here’s a set of WordPress plug-ins to help you do that.

10. Do something totally different to get inspired. Exercise, visit a museum, play with your children or read a thriller. Sometimes your brain needs a rest or a change of direction.

11. Proofread old posts. You’d be surprised at how many grammar and spelling errors could be hiding in old posts. Go read some of that older content and fix any mistakes. After the Deadline is a WordPress plugin (there’s also a Firefox add-on version) to help you find and correct those errors.

12. Blog anyway. If you’ve committed to posting regularly, don’t let your feelings (which are probably temporary) dictate your actions. If you’re feeling blocked, read my post on eight ways to overcome writer’s block.

What do you do when you just don’t feel like blogging? Leave your tips in the comments.

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After you’ve written, and rewritten, but before you publish, you need to proofread. Fail to do this well, and you might have a wonderful piece of writing (or a résumé or cover letter or some other critical document) marred by a silly error. I can just about guarantee that the errors you miss in proofreading will stand out like blinking neon signs once it’s too late to fix them.

So, to help you avoid that, here are nine proof reading hacks — tips and techniques designed to help you find mistakes in your writing before someone else does.

1. Ask for help. Even if you’re a good writer, and good at grammar and spelling, even if you’re the one others go to for help editing, it still doesn’t hurt to ask someone else to review your writing. It’s always easier to proof someone else’s work than your own, so don’t place too much confidence in your own proofreading abilities.

2. Wait. If at all possible, let that résumé, blog post or critical proposal sit for 24 hours — or longer — before going back to review it a final time. Going back after you’ve had a break will allow you to approach the document with fresh eyes. You should routinely plan your deadlines, and meet those deadlines, to give yourself this extra time. And even if you can’t give yourself a whole day between final draft and final proofreading, give yourself some time. A few hours, a lunch break, a 10-minute walk around the office to clear your head; any break will improve your chances of finding mistakes.

3. Use the spell checker and grammar checker that comes built into your word processor (Microsoft Word for most of us). Yes, Word’s grammar checker makes mistakes frequently. But even if it produces falsely flags grammatical errors most of the time (which is what I find), that still means that it’s identifying legitimate errors at least occasionally. You can’t use your spell-checker on autopilot, just hitting the ‘replace’ command with whatever the program recommends every time. But the spell-checker will still help you find mistakes. Think of these two functions as an extra pair of eyes on your copy, and use them.

4. Read copy backwards. This doesn’t work very well for lengthy prose, but for short bits of copy — headlines, captions, etc. — reading backwards can help you focus on the words in a new way. You may find that misspellings, grammatical mistakes and other problems suddenly jump out of the screen (or off the page) at you.

5. Highlight every number, date and proper noun and double-check each one against your notes and reference materials. When I was a reporter this was a trick that I, and lots of other newspaper folks, used to eliminate dumb errors. The mind can play tricks on you when you think you remember that someone spelled her name Katherine but it’s really Catherine. Check again, just to be sure.

6. Double-check everything with an apostrophe. Apostrophes, used in possessives and in various contractions, cause writers all sorts problems. “It’s” vs. “its,” “who’s” vs. “whose,” and so forth. And even when you know the right one from the wrong, it’s still easy to make mistakes when you’re hammering away at your keyboard, cranking out something against a deadline. So just go back and check them all.

7. Read it out loud. Problems with missing words, run-on sentences and awkward phrases that you can miss when scanning copy with your eyes suddenly become obvious when you read it aloud. Don’t read too fast, or this won’t work as well, but choose a normal, relaxed, conversational pace. If you work in an office environment where you don’t have much privacy, you can do this quietly and it still works.

8. Proof it on paper instead of on screen. Having edited probably a couple million words that eventually made it into print, I can tell you that nearly everyone is better proofing on paper than on a computer screen. I don’t know if this has something to do with the glare from a computer screen, resolution or some subtle psychological reason, but you’ll catch more mistakes if you print it out and proof with a red pen (or whatever color you prefer) in your hand.

9. Finally, know your trouble spots. Chances are there are certain areas where you tend to make mistakes. Maybe you have trouble spelling certain words, or you always have to look up the rule about using “which” instead of “that,” or you never quite understood the subjunctive. You know what your weaknesses are, so pay close attention to those and be prepared to compensate for them by asking for help, keeping a dictionary and grammar manual close at hand, and making sure you have the extra time available to check. Everybody’s trouble spots are different, but everybody has them. Know what yours are and be sure to compensate.

Have some other proofreading hacks you want to share? Please leave them in the comments.

The classic manual of modern prose style, “The Elements of Style,” puts it this way:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

So how do you make sure that your emails, blog posts and that novel in progress are lean? In two steps.

Step 1: Write your first draft without worrying about brevity. The first draft is often as much about thinking through the piece as it is about producing polished prose. (The first draft of this post had 765 words; the final, 572.)

Step 2: Cut the fat. Go through the your first draft with your editor’s eye and look for ways to make your sentences and paragraphs clear, compelling and lean.

Here are seven tips to help you whip that flabby first draft into shape:

1. Change passive voice to active voice. In active voice, the subject acts on the object. In passive voice, the object is acted upon by the subject.

Example: “The mail carrier was bitten by the dog” changes to “The dog bit the mail carrier.”

2. Use short words instead of long ones.

Example. “Use” for “utilize,” “about” for “approximately,” etc. Look at those long words and ask yourself if there’s a shorter one that means the same thing.

3. Kill the do-nothing phrases.

If you’ve used expressions such as “the fact that,” “the reason why is,” “it is interesting that” and so forth, you can probably get rid of them.

4. Delete prepositions — of, by, for, into, etc.

Prepositions — those little words show relationships between other words — are often a sign of bloated language. You can’t kill all of them them all, but you can get rid of many. For instance, change “a lot of people” to “many people” or “he heads up a department” to “he heads a department.”

5. Eliminate redundant modifiers.

It’s surprising how many phrases littering our speech are redundant. Some examples:

Core essence becomes essence
Personal friend becomes friend
Violent assault becomes assault
Glare angrily becomes glare
12 noon becomes noon
Deliberately target becomes target

6. Change wordy phrases to simple verbs.

Are you using more words than you need to express simple ideas? Change “make a recommendation” to “recommend”, “give a donation” to “donate,” “work to build” to “build,” and so forth.

7. Get rid of intensifying words.

Usually when you see words such as very, extremely, intensely, and the like, they’re unnecessary. Just get rid of them.

Is there such a thing as writing too tightly?

Yes, but it’s a rare problem. Conciseness isn’t the most important virtue in writing; clarity is more important. If you must choose between the two, choose clarity. Further, a variety of sentence lengths and word choices create rhythm and variety, which please readers. So, yeah, not every sentence has to be stripped down to its bare bones. But lean copy almost always packs more punch.

Got more tips for lean copy? Please share them in the comments.

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