Rox's Picks 36

Hi friend,

Welcome to the new Substack look of the newsletter. Let me know how you like it. If you read this on the web, you can even leave comments!

This week I finished Week 2 of Write of Passage. And it has been transformative for my writing practice. I can now go from blank page to a draft in 2 hours.

My goal by the end of 2020 is to publish 1 new article every week. I want to ramp that up to 2 articles per week by 2021. Thanks to Write of Passage, I’m confident I can do that.

Last week’s newsletter had a 48.2% open rate, the top link clicks were Ron Chernow’s Hamilton and Tim Ferriss’ Tribe of Mentors.

I don’t know if Substack will show me click rates and open rates going forward. If it doesn’t, then this is the last edition of the newsletter to have this. :(

If someone forwarded you this email, you can subscribe below and get this every week.

On to the list.

Here’s what I worked on this week:

[New Article] Influencers: David Dobrik & The Power of the Modern Media Celebrity. I’m incredibly proud of this article! It went through a few rounds of feedback and months of work… But now it’s published. Here’s an excerpt:

[New Article] Ecommerce Customer Retention: An Unexpected Definition & 10 Strategies That Don’t Take a ‘Lifetime’. I ghost-wrote this article for Commonthread Collective. If you’re in the ecommerce space, read this. You’ll learn how to build a retention strategy that gives you cashflow up front and cultivate valuable customer relationship, years into the future.

Here’s what I learned, shared, and paid attention to this week:

1. Essays that changed people’s lives — 

Last week I saw this tweet…

… And instantly bookmarked it.

The thread is full of outstanding, life-changing essays. I love getting recommendations on what to read from other people. Fortunately, someone put all of them together into this Notion database. Enjoy!

If you’re wondering: One of my personal favourite essays is from Derek Sivers entitled “I assume I’m below average”. Here’s the best line:

2. Why (and How) I installed Webster’s 1913 dictionary on my 2017 Macbook — 

Draft No. 4 by John McPhee

New isn’t always better. And Webster’s 1913 is peerless — better than modern dictionary we have (read this post by James Somers to learn more).

It’s great for learning new words, a thesaurus when you’re tongue-tied in your writing (Pro tip: hit CMD+CTRL+D to bring up the thesaurus on a Mac), or if you just want to read old words in a new lens.

For example, in Apple’s default dictionary, this is the definition of wealth: 

• an abundance of valuable possessions or money

• the state of being rich; material prosperity

• plentiful supplies of a particular resource

• a plentiful supply of a particular desirable thing

It’s pretty dry and “Duh, I knew that". In Webster’s 1913, though, the word takes on a richer meaning…

• welfare; prosperity; good

• Large possessions; a comparative abundance of things which are objects of human desire; esp., abundance of worldly estate; affluence; opulence; riches

If you want to install the dictionary on your Macbook (not sure how to do it on Windows), check out this post by Corey Ward.

3. The best writing tips I learned this week —

Julian Shapiro’s Writing Handbook

Writing was on my mind a lot this week. Here’s a new rule that’s helped me focus on my work and use my writing time wisely:

And here’s how to measure how memorable your writing is:

(Hat tip to my buddy Ryan for this 💣 insight!)

But the most significant article I read this week is Julian Shapiro’s handbook on writing well. It’s broken into several sections. But if you have to read just one, I’d go with the one on rewriting — this is a crucial but overlooked step that I personally need to learn to enjoy more.

4. Quote I’m pondering —

5. Hilarious video I sent to my friends —

Just a bit of wanker-level fun for the week. :)

That's it for this week!

Stay strong, stay kind, stay human.

Till next week,

Roxine

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