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Sandra Madeira

I am a working mum and entrepreneur with a passion for writing, coaching, mentoring and inspiring others. Subjects I tend to blog about are life skills, parenting, decluttering, worklife balance, career etc. I’ve been on a decluttering mission for years creating space in my house, garden and mind. In 2020 I challenged myself to declutter every day for a whole year and write about it daily. After that success I took on a challenge to change my career from accountant to life coach, and in early 2024 set up my own company. I continue to keep up with the decluttering, and now write daily about my home life and coaching business. Have a good day! Sandra https://www.sandra@solarcoaching.co.uk https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandramadeirasmith
Sandra Madeira has written 391 posts for My Writing Notebook

Note 169 – When are you qualified to say ‘I am a writer’?

I’m fine being asked if I’m a mum, a project manager, an accountant, a training manager and a testing manager, but when someone asks me if I am a writer, I come up with this long-winded sentence which goes something like this: ‘I’ve written all my life and I’d like to think I am a writer, in fact I … Continue reading

Note 168 – Writing the old fashioned way – with pen and paper

I spend a lot of time on the computer both in my main job as a Project Manager and in my new freelance writing career.  This can cause all sorts of posture problems especially in the neck and back.  Today I decided to spend a bit of time writing the old fashioned way – using pen and paper – and … Continue reading

Note 167 – How to write for Technorati

As part of my plan to grow as a writer, I recently signed up to Technorati which is a blogging platform and search engine that publishes content to millions of people every month.  Topics include entertainment, sport, latest news, parenting and many more.  I received the news this week that they have accepted me as a writer and today I … Continue reading

Note 166 – Trust your writing and don’t deprive the reader

Whilst listening to William Zinsser’s non-fiction audio book today called On Writing Well, I heard the following: “Trust the information that you’ve gathered to make its own point.  Don’t explain why it’s interesting or unusual or emotional”.  Make your writing exciting, but don’t say it’s exciting; let the reader work this out for themselves.  Zinsser … Continue reading

Note 165 – ‘between you and me’ v ‘between you and I’

It’s a common mistake to write ‘between you and I’; however the correct way of writing this is ‘between you and me’.  If we break the phrase down, the word ‘between’ is a preposition and the words ‘you’ and ‘I’ are personal pronouns.  When personal pronouns follow prepositions, they should be in the object form and not the subject … Continue reading

Note 164 – Should you put quotation marks around thoughts?

I realised today, when I was typing another blog post, that I wasn’t entirely sure if you should put quotation marks around thoughts.  In the forums there was a mixture of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ responses and some suggested putting the thought in italics, but nothing I read seemed good enough evidence for today’s blog.  I eventually stumbled upon an excellent article called ‘Grammar … Continue reading

Note 163 – Grammatical building blocks

To recap on yesterday’s blog in Note 162 – Language = Vocabulary + Grammar rules, grammar is the glue that holds the words together to form a language.   Today I am going to analyse a sentence word by word and if this brings up any new information that I haven’t covered before, it will form part of a future post. According … Continue reading

Note 162 – Language = Vocabulary + Grammar rules

Collins Improve your Writing Skills by Graham King explains that you require two keys for language to work as a communication tool – ‘vocabulary’ and ‘grammar’.  Vocabulary (words) will never work on their own without the grammar rules that sticks them together.  I won’t quote Graham King’s analogy on this until later down the page.  Here are a couple … Continue reading

Note 161 – Your web presence as a freelance writer

If you want to make money writing online you need to set up a web presence as a writer.  The Daily Writing Tips course that I’m doing at the moment suggests that it’s useful to have either a website or a blog to showcase your work, so that potential clients have somewhere to see who you are and … Continue reading

Note 160 – Should you put a comma after ‘bracketing commas’?

This point came up in an email conversation today with a friend and I would like to thank him for the inspiration for today’s blog. I had previously told him that you shouldn’t put commas either side of bracketing commas (for more on this, see Note 3: The use of brackets and bracketing commas), or … Continue reading

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