The Best Articles in Writing
The most useful articles and videos in Writing from around the web—beginners to advanced—curated by thought leaders and our community. We focus on timeless pieces and update the list whenever we discover new, must-read articles or videos—make sure to bookmark and revisit this page.
Top 5 Writing Articles
At a glance: these are the articles that have been most read, shared, and saved in Writing by Refind users in 2023.
Videos
Watch a video to get a quick overview.
Drawing for writers: Procreate 101
Even if you have never drawn before, we'll teach you how to draw and make your articles stand out using Procreate. Salman Ansari (https://letter.salman.io) a...
Writing Tips: The 6 Quickest Ways To Become A Better Writer
There are a lot of writing tips out there, but the ones I share here only take a minute to master and will help you become a better writer forever.It's an ex...
Everything You Need To Know About Becoming (Or Hiring) A Freelance Writer
This is a special “Flip the Script” episode! Instead of answering a guest’s questions, host Josh Spector brings on an expert he wants to learn from and asks ...
How to ...?
How to Write Concisely
It’s not the end of the world if you use an unnecessary word now and then, write the occasional overlapping sentence, or tell us what you’re doing in a sentence before you do it. But the extra words…
«But your readers don’t necessarily need to follow the journey you took while you were drafting the document. They just need to know where you ended up.»
How to Write Usefully
February 2020What should an essay be? Many people would say persuasive. That's what a lot of us were taught essays should be. But I think we can aim for something more ambitious: that an essay should…
«Useful writing tells people something true and important that they didn't already know, and tells them as unequivocally as possible.»
How to Develop Any Idea Into a Great Story
Even stories that start with brilliant strokes of inspiration too often fizzle out before we reach The End. Use this four-step method to develop your best ideas to their fullest.
«No matter your starting point—a love story, buddy tale, mystery, quest—you can do like the great innovators do: Bend it. Amp it. Drive it. Strip it.»
How To Take Smart Notes: 10 Principles to Revolutionize Your Note-Taking and Writing
I long ago stopped reading books on note-taking. They were always too vague and boring, full of platitudes that had little to do with the world outside academia. I especially avoided “how-to” style…
How to write the perfect sentence
Orwell advised cutting as many words as possible, Woolf found energy in verbs, and Baldwin aimed for ‘a sentence as clean as a bone’. What can we learn from celebrated authors about the art of writing well?
Trending
These links are currently making the rounds in Writing on Refind.
To whom it may concern: AI wrote that cover letter
Fed-up applicants are letting bots handle their job searches.
My 12 Favorite Problems
A dozen things that drive my writing, research, thinking & actions
«battle against the constant pressure from powerful forces to narrow and constrain my life»
Can AI help you win your next brief?
Although the very first step in the lifecycle of a creative project, it’s always easy to fall at the first hurdle of understanding the brief. With AI tools now available, is this new collaborator a…
Becca Rothfeld: "In the Shallows"
Why do public intellectuals condescend to their readers?
Julia Child's Kitchen Notes
“Rushing from stove to typewriter like a mad hen...”
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles in Writing—all under 10 minutes.
The Written Word
Sep 26, 2023 SHARE ↓ A few thoughts I have about writing: Writing is an art, and art is subjective. Novelist William Maughan said there are three rules to good writing. “Unfortunately no one knows…
«Most good writing is a byproduct of good reading. You’ll never meet a good writer who doesn’t spend most of their time reading. Not some. Most.»
Aldous Huxley's Deep Reflection
Huxley was a very special kind of expert witness to his own unusual states of consciousness, which he actively cultivated in the service of his writing.
Some tactics for writing in public
Someone recently asked me – “how do you deal with writing in public? People on the internet are such assholes!” I’ve often heard the advice “don’t read the comments”, but actually I’ve learned a huge…
«When I share stories about problems I solved, the comments really help me understand how what I learned fits into a bigger context»
Is My Writing a Hobby Or a Career?
I'm the author of two books, but I'm used to writing on the side of other jobs. Maybe that means it's a hobby—or maybe it's what knits my whole life together.
Proprioceptive writing: a method for embodied self-reflection
Proprioceptive writing is a self-reflection method combining meditation and writing, two of the most effective ways to tap into the inner self.
«This process combines meditation and writing, two of the most effective ways to tap into the inner self.»
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles in Writing.
What AI Teaches Us About Good Writing
While AI can speed up the writing process, it doesn’t optimize quality — and it endangers our sense of connection to ourselves and others.
«Good writers assess the rhetorical context for their writing and make deliberate decisions about where to conform and where to stray»
What does a happily ever after look like?
We looked at over 1,400 romance novel covers featured in Publishers Weekly from 2011 to 2023 and evaluated each cover based on its raunchiness (or level of undress), art style, and representation of…
Baroque, Purple, and Beautiful: In Praise of the Long, Complicated Sentence
The meter-tall stone that has come to be called the Mesha Stele, its smooth, black basalt carved some sixteen centuries before it was unearthed from the packed, red sand of Dhiban, Jordan in 1868, …
Why Write? - The Paris Review
“I’ve been collecting these theories of why writers write because so many writers have written about it.”
«I encountered Joan Didion’s famous line about why she writes—“entirely to find out what I’m thinking”»
The elements of scientific style
Scientific papers are dense, jargon-filled, and painful to read. It wasn’t always this way – and it doesn’t have to be.
«Journals are increasingly seen as a point of friction in science as opposed to what they used to be: a tool to facilitate communication»
Thought Leaders
We monitor hundreds of thought leaders, influencers, and newsletters in Writing, including:

Stephen King
Author

Grammar Girl is also @grammargirl@zirk.us
Mignon Fogarty. Podcaster. Language lover. NYT bestselling author. Quick & Dirty Tips founder. @grammargirl@zirk.us
Darren Rowse
Speaker, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Muser & Founder of @ProBlogger & @DigitalPS. Hubby to @Stylensh + dad to 3 boys.

Madam Grammar
Professor, editor, grammar evangelist. Finding the joy in language and walking the fine red line between prescriptivism and descriptivism. She/her.

Merriam-Webster
noun | a reference source containing words alphabetically arranged along with information about their forms, pronunciations, functions, and etymologies
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Who are the thought leaders in Writing?
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