Simple Transactional Email

“Style means the right word. The rest matters little.” – Jules Renard

👋 Hi! I’m Tom, and this is the Best Writing Newsletter (Issue #3).

Every Thursday, I send great reads, cool tools, jobs, tips, and friendly encouragement to do your best writing.

I like to think of myself as a sponge. 🧽

Any chance I get to learn something new, I take it.

Whether it’s studying business, marketing, or design, I want to read books, articles, tweets, and listen to interviews and podcasts.

Talking about podcasts, one of the most entertaining business podcasts I listen to is My First Million.

If you don’t have the time to listen but still want to get all the incredible business ideas, Sean Edrington sends weekly write-ups over the MFM Podcast, where entrepreneurs discuss business breakdowns, company-building ideas and interview founders.

I spend hours following my curiosity, and sometimes it’s hard not to feel guilty for wasting hours since I don’t produce anything.

But I still believe that following your curiosity and engaging fully is your unfair advantage in competing against the rest of humanity.

You're making yourself irreplaceable if you spend hours researching and geeking out about particular topics.

No one has the same experiences and knowledge as you do.

In my recent interview, Brooks Lockett eloquently expressed why these experiences matter:

I travel a lot and take mental notes of interesting experiences I have. These don’t have to be anything insane. But when you start to look at ordinary situations as stories for your readers, you’ll see that everything is a story.

For example, “I was swimming in the ocean and saw a sea turtle swimming in the shallows away from the reef” → an email to my list about how sea turtles understand how to choose a niche rather than compete with all the big fish out on the reef.

When I’m writing, it feels more like “documenting” rather than “creating.”

Follow your curiosity. Collect ideas and experiences. Become a sponge.

The Daily Upside is a business newsletter that covers the most important stories in business in a style that's engaging, insightful, and fun. Started by a former investment banker, The Daily Upside delivers quality insights and surfaces unique stories you won't read elsewhere.

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Best Reads

Favorite stories from Writer News.

💸 Best Pricing Models. Struggling with pricing your services? We all do. Andy Strote looks at pricing models: hourly, project-based, performance-based, equity-based, billing by retainer, and value pricing.

🏗 Pillar Page Examples. Pillar pages are high-level introductions to a topic. They then link to other pages, usually more detailed guides about parts of the main subject. Here are 8 excellent examples.

🎤 How to Interview. Pat Walls, the founder of Starter Story, built a successful business by interviewing entrepreneurs. Here’s a detailed and actionable guide to growing your audience with interviews.

🛠 Technical Writing Opportunities. Karl Hughes, the founder of Draft.dev, shares how to develop your technical writing skills and land paid gigs.

✍️ Writer News is a new place for writers to share their work, get feedback, and discuss writing. It’s invite only. If you want one, respond to this email.

Cool Tools

Interesting apps and software for curious writers.

BeeLine Reader. Read faster with BeeLine Reader. This app uses a simple cognitive trick (an eye-guiding color gradient) to pull your eyes through long blocks of text. It helps you read more effectively and maintain your focus better.

Blog Publishing Checklist. This is gold. Grab it while you can. Tracey Wallace, Director of Content Strategy at Klaviyo, shares her blog publishing checklist to ensure you get the details right, every time. Consistency matters.

LongShot. AI writing assistant to create long-form SEO content. Go from the idea to research to generation to SEO in minutes with LongShot AI writing assistant.

Essay App. You don't need another autocorrect. Stop being told what to fix and start learning how to write. This app lets you take your rough ideas and craft them into powerful words.

Writing Tip of the Week

How to use your old writing to land clients. Erica Schneider, Head of Content at Grizzle, suggests you edit your past work if you want to apply to a content writing job, but don't have recent work you're proud of.

Follow these 5 simple steps:

Copy/paste your live article into a Google Doc
Make suggested edits
Leave comments explaining your changes
Link to the live article AND the Google doc in your application (set permissions so they can see the suggested edits)
Explain what you did and why in the cover letter and/or space provided to share links

Here's why this is effective:

It shows initiative
It shows drive
It showcases your self-editing skills (hugely important)
It's a creative way to solve a common problem

Even if you don't get the job, you'll stand out. Maybe they'll circle back in the future. Maybe they'll recommend you to someone else.

And if none of that happens, it's still an excellent exercise that will help you improve.

Everybody looks at old work and thinks: “I can't believe I wrote this.”

Not everybody turns that into an opportunity to practice and improve.

Go get creative.

Best Writing Examples

Discover sharp copy, inspiring quotes, and powerful messaging from the best apps, websites, magazines, and books.

This is one of these polished copywriting diamonds I wish I had written. Lattice shows the world how world-class messaging is done.

I wonder how many crappy drafts Asana’s copywriters produced before approving this simple yet powerful punchline.

How do you position something boring as digital signatures without saying digital signatures? I think we can all agree that DocuSign figured it out. Brilliant headline.

More: 10 Memorable Copywriting Examples (and Why They Convert)

Food for Thought

“Two basic rules about winning in life: If you don’t bet, you can’t win. If you lose all your chips, you can’t bet.” – Larry Hite

“If I always did what I was qualified to do, I’d still be pushing a broom somewhere.” – Naval Ravikant

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast endless sea.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"Praise others. It will bring them peace of mind. Do not expect others to praise you. It will bring you peace of mind." – James Clear

“The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written.” – Joyce Carol Oates

Did You Know?

J. K. Rowling explained that one day during the final stages of writing the book, her dogs were barking, all her kids were home and the window cleaner was coming, and so she decided to throw money at her problem and rent a room at the Balmoral so she could have some peace to finish her writing. Once done, she vandalized it. 🪄

More: J. K. Rowling is among the wealthiest authors in history with an approximate net worth of $1+ billion.

Best Writing Jobs

Find your next writing job, freelance gig, or side hustle.

Freelance Writer at ConsenSys Mesh (New York, US)
Contract Writer at SYBO (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Full-Time Content Writer/Manager at Excelerate360 (Remote)
Full-Time Content Writer Associate at CareerNinja (Remote, India)
Full-Time Content Writer at GM Infotech (Mumbai, India)
Full-Time Technical Writer at Harness (Remote)
Full-Time Technical Writer at StormForge (Remote, US)
Full-Time UX Writer at TheFork (Milan, Italy)
Full-Time Lead Technical Writer at CYE (London, UK)

💼 Check all open roles or become a member to get daily job alerts.

Hiring writers? Use the code “FIRSTJOB” at checkout to get $100 off your first job post.

What’s New at Best Writing?

📰 We published new articles and interviews:

💁🏽‍♂️ Last week, we posted 30+ new jobs. Added Fiona Cameron-Brown, Onyeka Odega-okolie, Tamara Yoreva, Byron Armstrong, Archita Sharma, and Daniel Kariuki to the writer directory (here’s how to get listed if you’re a writer).

Please share it with a friend. 😉

Want to get featured or collaborate? Send me your ideas, and I’ll respond. Yes, it’s me, a real human being writing these emails.

Feeling generous? ☕️ Tip $5. We’ll spend it on coffee.

Want to become a sponsor? 💬 Let’s talk.

Until next week,

Tomas Laurinavicius (aka human sponge)

Co-founder, Best Writing (formerly Content Writing Jobs)

P.S. Editors, we love you! 😘

⭐️ This Week’s Newsletter Is Supported by The Daily Upside