Last week I was riding the 7 train uptown from Grand Central a few hours after the morning rush. There were no strap-hangers, but most of the seats were occupied. I couldn’t help but observe my fellow riders, the majority of whom were engaged with the small screen before them. A car full of necks craned downward might be a chiropractor’s nightmare, yet it’s a revealing snapshot of our digital age.

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Q: What do landing the perfect job, finding your ideal mate, and winning friends all have in common?

A: They all require you to know how to market yourself.

Yes, it’s the reason people sweat interviews (and first dates), spend hours drafting cover letters, and even pay others to assemble their résumés — we don’t always know the best way to sell ourselves. Marketing yourself is an essential skill to get where you want to go, but the process is often easier said than done.

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If you are someone who enjoys writing, you probably take pride in using your skill and knowledge of the language to craft a message that communicates exactly the intended point. The raw materials at your disposal—words—are not unlike those of a sculptor; some are easier to work with than others. So when you can master the harder materials—more obscure words—you might feel a special satisfaction.

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Disclaimer: I’ve never been skydiving.

The first step of blogging, like skydiving, is making the commitment to do it. Once you’ve decided you’re going to skydive, you’ve got to decide on a method for your jump. Are you going in tandem? How about an accelerated free fall? Or should you static line that bad boy?

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Epic fail.

Literally the best.

The most amazing.

The absolute worst.

These superlative descriptions are best reserved for, respectively, the sinking of the Titanic, invention of the wheel, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the 1918 flu pandemic.

Today, it’s hard to know where you stand when something as minor as burnt toast can be considered an epic fail, or a particularly good burger becomes literally the best thing ever. An affliction of modern discourse is our penchant for exaggeration. Having been a vegetarian for seventeen years, to me there are few foods that come close to the glory that is a nice thick juicy burger. But let’s not get carried away; I’ve had ups and downs, but my life would be pretty grim if a hunk of ground beef was literally the best thing ever.

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Envision a gothic fantasy tale, with a blood-sucking horror sitting at a piano. His cold, pale hands dance over the white, glistening keys of the ancient instrument as his haggard, wet breath exits his chest in a tremendous gray cloud of cold, damp vapor.

Your skin may have crawled a little while reading that, but not because the tremendous number of descriptors painted a vivid picture in your mind. In fact, you may have even been distracted by how many words were used to say something so simple. This is an example of the danger of over-reliance on adjectives in your descriptions.

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Advertising, like language, is no modern phenomenon. Today, we’re so overburdened with ads that advertising has garnered a negative connotation. “Ugh, how can we get ads off of Facebook?” or “Why can’t they skip the ads before the movie starts?” are common 21st century woes.

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A time-honored practice in writing is…let’s call it “borrowing.” You see someone else’s clever turn of phrase, a few words that perfectly describe what you’re trying to convey, a zinger pun, and you decide to use it in your own writing. Maybe you change the words around to fit your situation, or maybe you don’t, but it’s just harmless borrowing, right?

But borrowing can be a bit like eating Girl Scout cookies. Just a couple, you think, or maybe a few more—dang, those Samoas are good!—and pretty soon the whole box is gone.

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I’ve always had a thing for Valentine’s Day that I can’t explain. Maybe it’s the incongruous combination of red and pink. Or maybe it’s the stupid puns on hokey valentines and cheap, terrible candy. Could be the hearts, because I really do love hearts. Beyond all those solidly rational reasons, though, my absolute favorite thing about this holiday is that it’s an entire day built around celebrating something that, in the day-to-day, is all too often taken for granted: your special someone.

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Do you engage in risky writing? Or, more to the point, should you?

I’m not talking about Charlie Hebdo-style cartoons, or even the kind of novel that forced Salman Rushdie into hiding for years. I’m talking about garden-variety edginess for rhetorical effect: strong language, subtle references to sex, drugs, alcohol, bodily functions, taboos of various kinds… you get the idea. Where do you draw the line? How far (and how often) do you cross over it before a little bit becomes too much?

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