6 Business Email Best Practices to Get You Back Your Time

6 Business Email Best Practices to Get You Back Your Time

How business email best practices can make everything better… I was soooo lucky and I didn’t know it. How? During my 20 years as a freelance copywriter, I worked primarily with smart people who communicated well and made smart use of email. That means I thought the average person was equally good at email. I was wrong. When I closed up We Know Words at the end of 2019 to focus on our farm and Better Faster Writer, I also started doing a lot of volunteer work as part of a marriage ministry that we had to take over. (That’s a...
How Horses Can Improve Your Writing at Work

How Horses Can Improve Your Writing at Work

Sure, as a horse person I like to sneak in horses as much as I can when blogging about writing at work, but it works, as you’ll continue to see… 🙂 I recently volunteered as a horse handler for Leadership with Horses. It took 6½ hours of driving to get there and back to be there for 5½ hours. Why then did I do it? I was intrigued. Horses have much to teach us and I wanted to know how that would play out with leadership training. Because I was a horse handler, I was with the horses, and I missed out on the discussions between Amanda,...
Rude vs. Respectful Writing at Work: Know the Difference!

Rude vs. Respectful Writing at Work: Know the Difference!

I have a goal. It might sound morbid to you, this goal, but it is realistic. My goal? When I die, I don’t want any need for a garage sale. I am of an age that friends have parents who are dying, and those friends are stuck sorting through all kinds of what we’d call crap if we’re being honest. I don’t want anyone to have to go through that on my account. So, I am trying to slowly but surely make sure that I only live with things that can be recycled if not wanted (like books) or donated (like quality clothes, dishes and furniture)...
Electrify Your Writing at Work with Rhythm

Electrify Your Writing at Work with Rhythm

Why do you write at work? Your answer might be “I write at work because I have to use email,” or “I write at work because it’s part of my job” or something similar. But is any of that really the reason why? Nope. The real reason why you write at work is to inform, persuade or even convince someone, be that a coworker, boss, stakeholder, prospect, customer, vendor or someone else. But to do any of that, your writing first has to get read. Because you can’t inform anyone if they don’t read what you wrote, can you? And how do you get...
7 Ways to Slow Down Life…and How That Helps Your Writing at Work

7 Ways to Slow Down Life…and How That Helps Your Writing at Work

(Pssst: Scroll down for an adorable picture of my horse and puppy!) I had an epiphany while hauling a horse to a clinic the other day: I realized it’s not helpful to tell people to slow down to be better writers. Why not? Because I can’t expect people to slow down just one single part of their lives without looking at the bigger picture of a whole life lived in a hurry. I can’t expect people to slow down just one single part of their lives without looking at the bigger picture of a whole life lived in a hurry. We’re doing everything...