After an uncommonly mild December, it is finally snowing! And armed with a valid excuse to stay in my pajamas by a crackling fire, it is time to submit a review of one of my favorite books of this past year.

 Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content (affiliate link) by Ann Handley, represents a very solid instruction manual for folks facing an ever-present fear of writing. This is her second book on content creation. The first, Content Rules (affiliate link) by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman, covered the whole gamut of content creation (short of game creation). Both books were epic (in a nerdy kinda way), but I’ll limit this review to Everybody Writes.

The whole book has a conversational, “besties having coffee” tone that separates this from your standard academic, dry tome on grammar efficiency and journalistic best practices. While both subjects are indeed touched upon, Ann focuses on the mindset and strategy behind writing from a content marketer’s perspective. This is not surprising… Ann Handley is reputed to be the first person to hold the title Chief Content Officer with Marketingprofs.com

Part I: Writing Rules: How to Write Better (and How to Hate Writing Less) prepares you to get beyond the paralyzing effects that staring at a blank page can muster. This, for me, has been difficult to overcome. It’s always easier to write when given an assignment or asked to write on a particular subject. When it’s my own blog and I’m the writer, editor, and final approval authority, it was tempting to stew forever on an idea without actually putting ink to page (or digits to screen). Several tricks in this section helped me a lot. One, in particular, was a story about the process Chris Penn uses to flesh out entire articles from sentence fragments on his Awaken Your SuperHero blog.

Part II: Writing Rules: Grammar and Usage is not your standard high school grammar lesson. This section addresses the critical flaws indicative of amateurish business writing, including the excessive use of buzz words, passive voice, and Weblish. Chapter 36 is a personal weakness of mine (like right there.) It covers key mistakes that marketers make, including wordiness and redundancy. If I break copyright law and copy this list to a wall plaque by my iMac, then I apologize Ann. It’s that good, and definitely an area I need to address.

This is a 6 Part book, but I don’t want to bore you or spoil the book. Just buy it. Ann Handley is an undisputed expert on the written word… and she brings back the librarian look with style

If this review helped you make up your mind, please buy it from the link above. Otherwise, please use Amazon Smile and pick a good charity. My personal favorite is International Justice Mission.