Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels.

I went to school for Marketing. I took a slew of interesting classes like Market Research, Advertising, and even Consumer Behavior during my time at Messiah College, but none for writing. It was fun to learn about, I guess, but after school I made the decision to write instead.

For when you need to hit that five-page minimum

What is voice and tone in writing? Why should you even care? Does it REALLY matter? Yes, yes it does. Here's why your voice and tone is so important.

A new program can produce 20,000 lines of ad copy a second. But is it any good?

It can very well take over a year for even the best blog to pick up steam and really get rolling. It can take much longer than that to get published...

Over the last few weeks, the phrase, “I haven’t found my voice” has been echoing in my head. I believe this young man wants to share his ideas badly but there is something getting in his way. He is not alone. There are thousands of people out there who want and deserve to be heard. Once I realized this, I began to ask myself, how does one find his or her voice?

The strangest of these characters are those who espouse Blue and Orange Morality. These characters have a moral framework that is so utterly alien and foreign to human experience that we can't peg them as "good" or "evil".

The author Laura van den Berg on what inspired her newest novel, "The Third Hotel," and how she accesses the part of the mind that fiction comes from.

The playwright drew on his own experiences and astute observations to transform American comedy with work including The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park.

Writing great blog post titles doesn't have to be hard. Here are five frameworks to help you write better titles for every article you create.

It's called Writing A Compiler In Go and is the sequel to Writing An Interpreter In Go.

Alfred Brendel’s essays about Beethoven, Schubert, and many others are deeply relevant to performers and amateur listeners alike.

New research casts doubt on what's become a standard practice.

I have never suffered from writer’s block for lack of ideas. If anything, I get too many ideas and then a sort of a bottleneck effect happens, when all sorts of ideas become lodged in my mind and I have trouble disgorging them. I call it my Christmas lights effect. For me, it’s like taking your last year’s Christmas lights out of the box and finding them all knotted up together, in one giant ball of lights. Then you have to untangle the entire thing, it takes forever, there is much cursing and, in the end, the whole thing might not work, but there are many little light bulbs on that wire.

The key to finding success on any dating site like and particularly on Loveawake is to make sure that your personal profile is unique, compelling and fun. Here are a few easy-to-follow guidelines for posting an intriguing personal profile. Need tips for your photo? Read our Guidelines. Do this before you post a profile so you can be sure …

Isn’t there enough art in the world already? Why would I need to create yet more content? How can I stay motivated if there are thousands of people out there who make amazing art; who provide a bri…

Little professionalism "leaks" in content are errors that undermine the content's authority, squander audience interest, and detract from business goals.

2018's comprehensive guide all successful bloggers want to keep secret.

In this employee-friendly market, lots of things about the hiring process have changed to accommodate candidates. But companies don’t seem interested in the goodwill they could earn by giving honest, individual feedback. I work at Triplebyte, and over the last year I’ve written over 3,000 detailed, individual rejection emails. When I started, I wondered why no one else did this. Now, I think I know.

Which hard skill do recent college grads lack the most? In 2016, PayScale asked employers this question. The top response was “writing proficiency.” Wow. Our education system teaches few practical skills, but it does emphasize writing. So what gives? Incompetent teachers? Unteachable students? Actually, the problem for many college graduates is having absorbed their academic training all too well. The challenge for them is to unlearn the bad writing habits picked up from 16-plus years of school.

Repetition is an inevitable part of creation.

Let go of your misconceptions, or your creativity will never breathe. When someone identifies themselves as creative, or tells you that their biggest strength is their creativity, you instantly feel a certain level of respect for them. They’re creative! They take the world and everything in it and have the ability to turn it into something new, wonderful and incredible. We have been hard-wired to believe that people who are creative are better than other people who aren’t.

— and What Happens to the Ones Who Listen.

Why you should use percentages, not words, to express probabilities.

Was writing invented for accounting and administration or did it evolve from religious movements, sorcery and dreams?

Univision reportedly plans big cuts at The Onion, Clickhole, A.V. Club, and the Takeout.

In an era of illiterate racist YouTube comments, to worry about semicolons seeming overly sophisticated would be splitting a hair that no longer exists.

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” — Scott Adams

How does this make sense? The Washington Post has its own actual newspaper. It’s not my fault that print media is growing more obsolete every day. I wish it wasn’t because I like newspapers, but that’s technology. Not only do they have their own publishing arm, but they have their own website. A website which only lets you see a couple stories a month before you have to pay to look at them.

As I’m a developer, I love to use tools that can assist me in my writing. Over the last couple of years, I’ve created an extended list of useful resources.

2 Powerful Writing Lessons from Ryan Holiday and Derek Halpern

Giving and receiving feedback is an important part of being a writer---or any kind of artist, really. But that doesn’t mean it’s always fun.

See key things highly authentic creatives do differently that makes them so attractive and excell.

Pirette McKamey, a veteran English teacher, spent 30 years investigating what helps young people to view themselves as writers.