Preview
What it is.
Ann Handley wrote Everybody Writes and Content Rules, and Total Annarchy is her fortnightly letter to more than 61K subscribers. It arrives early Sunday.
The subject is writing: how to open a piece, how to sound like a person, and lately what happens to writing when a machine drafts it. The letter itself is the demonstration.
It's been running long enough to pass issue 214, and the archive is public, so you can read a year of it before deciding.
What you get.
- A fortnightly letter on writing, storytelling, and marketing craft
- Worked examples of openings, structure, and voice
- Her position on AI drafting, argued with examples
- Book recommendations for people who write for a living
- A public archive past 214 issues, free to read
Editions we'd start with.
Is the Age of Reading Actually Over? ↗
Her argument about attention and long-form writing. Read it if you're deciding how much to invest in written content.
The Em Dash Is NOT an AI Tell: Justice for the Em Dash! ↗
Her side of the argument about which punctuation gives away a machine. Sharper than it sounds.
What to Do About All the Changes in Marketing ↗
Steady advice for a year when everything in the job moved at once.
What I Learned from Keeping a Journal and Why I'm Relaunching My Newsletter ↗
A writer explaining her own practice, which is the best of what she does.
From Parrots to Prose ↗
On voice, and why generic prose stopped being worth anything.