Fuel Your Writing

Ten Ways to Improve Your Writing

2010-09-01T16:22:37Z

I’d knew I’d be a writer when my eighth-grade English teacher told me to read aloud my essay on her two-page assignment called “If I could go anywhere in the world, where would that be and why?” While everybody else tried to stretch into two pages dreams of DisneyWorld, Six Flags or the beach, I wrote about the religious and historic significance of Rome, and how that one-of-a-kind culture has affected every generation since its Biblical beginnings. Yes, I was a nerd with a penchant for prose. I also easily sunburned.

Throughout my career, my writing skills have always served me well. If you want to improve your writing, here are ten suggestions:

1) Listen – If you’re saying anything other than “can you elaborate on that?” or “can I verify this?’, you’re talking too much. If you want to be a good writer, be a good listener.

2) Move – Literally, get up and move. If you’re maximizing your brain’s endorphins and all those other chemicals that prompt the creative juices through exercise, then writing becomes more natural.

3) Read – While I’ve no scientific research to support this, I strongly believe that readers make the best writers. Fiction, nonfiction, instruction manuals, food labels, whatever. Just read – and keep a dictionary handy when you stumble upon new words.

4) Practice – If you dream of making a living by writing, you either better be writing or practicing writing until you get that dream assignment. Write about anything – your feelings, thoughts or memories. Heck, write an essay on “If I could go anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?”

5) Think – We grew up on “Once upon a time” and “They lived happily ever after”. In general, good writing has a beginning and an end. Think about how to best connect the dots in your work. Use your analytical, logical and problem-solving skills. As one colleague puts it, “when you wrap it up, and put the prettiest bow on top, you’re done”.

6) Diversify – Learn to write in different voices. Writing a speech for a corporate CEO is completely different than writing a satirical blog. Just as people are diversified in their vocabulary and inflections, so your writing should be.

7) Timing – As my first newspaper editor taught me, write when you and/or the content is fresh. As soon as you’ve completed that interview, verified that research or thought of that million-dollar-making strategy, write about it right then and there.

8) Read aloud – When you think you’ve completed the writing task, read it aloud. Does the article flow, make sense, capture your interest and have a point?

9) Feedback – Depending on your time frame, confidence and/or type of content, you may want to get feedback from either an experienced writer or a subject matter expert. Make only those revisions necessary to clarify content or facts.

10) Edit/Proof – After you’ve read aloud, make necessary edits, and correct grammar or spelling mistakes. DO NOT RE-WRITE (writers are notorious for “perfecting” their work). Put down the piece. Go to bed. Repeat the process the following day. Then press the Send button, and give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done!

What suggestions do you have for improving your writing skills?

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Ten Ways to Improve Your Writing

Writer Workshops: Worth Your Words?

2010-08-30T09:57:27Z

The first day of workshop might have been the worst.

The little round-circle of writers listened to every quivering word of a story about suicide — the sordid tale of a young woman contemplating her own end and spending at least sixteen pages getting around to it. I don’t think anyone moved – or breathed – the entire time it was being read.

I’d had an uneasy feeling about the workshop right from the start. Writers are solitary creatures, right? So why herd a bunch of us into a room and expect magic to happen? Besides, I barely knew these people. I couldn’t analyze my own style, half of the time, so why should I expect to understand theirs?

The first two weeks of workshop didn’t do much to change my mind. But I started to realize, near the end of the program, that something was changing. I was changing. And for the better, arguably, which got me thinking: maybe workshops aren’t so bad after all. They don’t carry the most sterling of reputations, sure, but I think they can come in handy for anyone trying to do this for a living.

Just make sure you don’t go for the writing.

The Internet Age

Writers need a thick skin. That’s pretty well-established by this point, but it raises an important question: how do we get one?

The Internet is an option. It’s easy enough to put your work online and invite feedback, but that ease of use does cause a few problems. For one, you’re opening the floodgate for every kind of comment: flames, excessive praise, or straight-up apathy. That second category feels real nice, in a stroke-your-ego kind of way, but what about the rest? What about those comments that offer genuine criticism, and what about those critiques that read like a thousand tiny needles shoved straight into your heart?

They’re not that useful. The people who leave them tend also tend to stay anonymous, which makes it seem a) a little cowardly and b) way, way too easy to just ignore. Sure, they might have raised a valid concern, but are you really going to take it seriously when that one legitimate critique is mixed in with a big bag of inflammatory comments?

Even the super-positive comments, fluffy as they are, might do more harm than good in the long run. We’re trying to develop a thick skin here, people — not a thick ego, the kind which is usually built on pillars of praise and emoticons. Don’t get me wrong: the accolade feels good. But it’s only half of what you need to really excel as a writer, isn’t it?

So where can we get what we need?

Enter the Workshop

I’ll be honest: most people you meet in a workshop aren’t good writers. Some are passable, at best, and others might be flat-out terrible, making a workshop the place not to visit if you want to raise healthy debates about your writing. It took me a few months to realize this, but the workshop suddenly became much more interesting when I did.

You don’t go for the words. You go for the people.

These fine folk might not like your story. They might hate it, even, which sounds pretty terrifying until you come to grips with the idea of sharing something so personal with a group of relative strangers. If you’re unlucky, they won’t measure their words carefully when they’re discussing your work, but a good workshop will provide a healthy variety of critiques. Good, bad, ugly: they’re all fine.

It sounds brutal. And it is, in the beginning, when you’re unaccustomed to this style of feedback. But face-to-face criticism holds value beyond what the Internet can provide, and for one simple reason: you can’t ignore it. You can’t blow it off or delete the comment, and you can’t just assume someone was having a bad day. What you can do is recognize that their critique is good/bad/strange, accept it, and then move on. That might sting a little, at first, but it fades over time.

Workshops can help you develop the thick skin you need, and you might find it easier to recognize genuine criticism after a while. When any word of disagreement doesn’t automatically put you on edge, it becomes a whole heck of a lot simpler to realize that criticism, though usually bad, does provide an occasional moment of brilliance.

It helped me, at least. I’m not perfect at handling critiques of my work, but I’m getting better, and the workshop did a lot to help make that happen. So why not try one?

Please share your experiences of handling, or giving, criticism in the comments below!

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Writer Workshops: Worth Your Words?

Fuel Your Writing Notebook for Evernote!

2010-08-24T14:36:21Z

Exciting News!

Most of you will be familiar with Evernote, the multi-platform software that allows users to easily capture, organise and retrieve notes, ideas and inspiration with total ease. Recently, Evernote released their Trunk feature, comprising of a growing number of products – hardware, applications and notebooks – to expand upon the main Evernote app.

Fuel Your Writing is proud to announce the Fuel Your Writing Notebook for Evernote!

Released today, the FYW Notebook is part of three notebooks released by the Fuel Brand Network for Evernote, along with ones from both Fuel Your Creativity and Fuel Your Photography.

All of us at Fuel Your Writing know that starting a writing project can be hard, so the articles that make up the Notebook offer advice on how to organise your work (such as using Evernote itself), what websites, resources and writing tools to use, and how to submit your writing.

Evernote’s notebooks can be important into a user’s account, to inspire, give advice, and act as a starting point for further notes on that subject. In the Fuel Your Writing Notebook, we have compiled some of the best recent articles to share with Evernote’s four million (!) users. If you aren’t one of them already, download the app for your platform of choice here, and then be sure to grab the FYW Notebook here.

A big thank you to the all the writers here from me personally for all of your awesome articles, so that we had some incredible content to include in the Evernote Notebook!

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Writers, Embrace Your Passion!

2010-08-16T11:05:19Z

Whether you’re blogging about the latest social media craze, drafting a flyer for a block party or tapping out a message to that college buddy you just rediscovered on Facebook, put some passion into it. Whatever you’re writing about, you don’t have to be the world’s living expert on the subject, but you do have to care. As every good speech-maker knows, people don’t react to your words, they react to how you react to your words.

Passion in writing becomes even more important in print or online, where the reader can’t be influenced by your tone, eye contact, or body language.

Michael Stelzner, who writes for the online magazine Social Media Examiner, is flat-out crazy about social media. It’s not just his business; he’s in love with it, and it shows. Contrast the corporate blog of Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, with that of Bill Marriott of the eponymous hotel chain and decide who loves his job more.

Some tips for writing with passion…

Write about something you understand. It’s not likely you’re going to have strong feelings about something you’re not familiar with.

Know who you’re writing for. This should always be the case, but it will be helpful if you know what you have in common with the reader. If you’re a 55-year-old man writing for mommies about toys, you’re going to have to think about what experiences you share.

Don’t load up your writing with facts and stats. Unless you’re writing a blog for engineers, most people would rather know the meaning of the data and how it can help them. If you’re writing about homelessness, describe one homeless family’s experience and leave out the chart.

Find your indignation. There’s nothing like a little righteous anger to get the juices flowing.

Tell a story. Relate not only what happened, but how you felt about it. Be vulnerable: people will consider it brave, and they will come with you.

Admit that you don’t have a clue. That happens so rarely that the reader will be intrigued.

Be yourself. You have a unique point of view and a voice that is not exactly like anyone else; that’s interesting. Are you edgy? Self-deprecating? Thoughtful? Irreverently funny? The local curmudgeon? Then be that.

If you want to engage people, get them on your side. If you don’t care, why should they?

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Writers, Embrace Your Passion!

When Life Gives You Writer’s Block, Build With It!

2010-08-14T20:15:12Z

There’s nothing worse than being bogged down with writer’s block — it interrupts the flow of writing, derails your creativity and leaves you frustrated. But as with all things in life, the best thing to do when faced with a challenge, is to make the best of it and work you way through it.

For writers, this means taking your episodes of writer’s block and building something with them.

Before you can start building though, you’ll need to discover the different shapes of your various blocks — the way you do that is by approaching your writer’s block with an analytical eye.

Exploring Your Writer’s Block

Just as building blocks are made of a wide variety or shapes and sizes, episodes of writer’s block can vary from one another drastically. The goal is to analyze why you’re bogged down with writer’s block.

My most recent case of writer’s block — perhaps the worst yet — involved a few common emotional states known to trigger writer’s block. It started with anxiety, then evolved into frustration, which further evolved into a light case of depression.

Once you’ve explored your writer’s block from an analytical point of view and pinpointed the reasons why it came about, you can start inching your way back into the creative process with a few basic exercises.

Start Building:

Only after you’ve discovered what caused your writer’s blocks will you be able to build with them.

Character

The easiest place to start when setting out to build something with your writer’s block is character. If there’s anything most writer’s share in common, it’s the way they draw details and facts from their own lives in order to create those that populate their stories.

If you’re feeling anxious, perhaps you might invent a character struck with severe anxiety … what might happen if that character were to lose the medication they take to balance their anxiety during a flight?

Themes

If you’re feeling a strong emotion during your block, consider exploring it through thematic value. One way to do this might be to explore the positive and negative versions of such an emotion — take serenity and frustration, for example.

Conflict

Take your writer’s block and project it toward someone of the opposite status — for example, create a character suffering from depressed and partner he or she up with someone cheerful and see what happens.

Your Own Bridge

Overall, the idea behind this exercise is to overcome your writer’s block and get back to creating your story — building a bridge you might say.

As I often say about writing, there’s no right or wrong way to go about it — it simply needs to work for your own creative process; for me, I start with an analytic approach because my episodes of writer’s block usually limits my ability to create. Once I’ve discovered what’s fueling my block, I can use that to image a character, theme, or conflict — you might take it a bit further and even build an entire story based on what’s triggered your own case of writer’s block.

Do you have your own unique way of dealing with writer’s block, or do you simply ride out the storm?

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When Life Gives You Writer’s Block, Build With It!

On Judging A Book By Its Cover

2010-08-09T12:50:07Z

From the time we’re children, we’re told not to judge a book by its cover.

We know it’s good advice. We’re aware that what appears on the outside of a book really has nothing to do with what appears inside, or how enjoyable that book will be.

Still, there’s always the temptation to pluck the glossiest, most attractive spine from the shelf, instead of the worn, torn, forlorn spine.

We’re visual creatures, and marketing departments at publishing houses know it.

Personally, I can’t go past a shiny paperback cover with crisp images and alluring fonts. I want to hold them, to feel their weight in my hands, to smell that distinctive scent of new paper.

Dare I say I want to own those books without even knowing what they contain?

There’s a sort of shame in it, knowing what I’m doing is wrong. Knowing that I might very well get that book home and realize it’s nothing I would ever read. Yet, the temptation is there, to have those books as a sort of art.

Of course, I would be broke if I bought every book I thought looked good, and so I use the library most of the time. I often end up returning volumes without reading them, all because I’ve been so rash as to judge those books by their covers.

And what of those books with unattractive dust jackets? The ones with dated cover art or cheesy graphics? How often do those copies get passed over, even if the stories they contain are wonderful?

What about the following covers would make you want to read them (or not)?

What visual attributes make you want to pick up a book?

What are your all-time favourite book covers?

(Photos courtesy of Karen Horton, Gauravonomics, A Journey Round My Skull, navparker, city of round rock)

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On Judging A Book By Its Cover

5 Ways to Use Your Friends to Better Your Writing

2010-08-06T16:26:33Z

I have recently discovered just how useful my friends and family are when it comes to writing. Whether it’s their opinion on my characters or their cheerleading skills, they have helped me every step of the way in my writing process. Here are five ways to take advantage of your loved ones without making them mad.

5. Survey them

I recently put a post on Facebook, Twitter and my blog asking followers what they thought of three names. Responses told me what feelings the names evoked and helped sculpt my characters.

4. Enlist their services

If they are your true friends, they’re interested in what you’re working on. Ask them to read over your work and tell you if it’s cohesive. Better yet, provide them with a short list of questions: Can you tell he’s angry even if he doesn’t say so? What would make a better story, ending A or ending B? Does this sentence make any sense?

3. Base characters from your friends’ quirks

From habitually over-watering their plants to never wearing two matching socks, your friends have some oddities to them that are surely among the greatest resources for character development.

2. Use their support

When you feel you’ve hit a roadblock or that your piece isn’t worthy of being published, confide in your loved ones. They’ve seen how much time and effort you’ve invested in your writing and they won’t let you give up.

1. Listen to their dialogue

Dialogue is the ultimate tool when forming characters. If you pay close attention to the way your friends speak, you will better understand how specific personalities communicate and, as a result, formulating your dialogue will be an easier task.

How do you draw on your friends to help you with your writing? Practical or inspirational? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below!

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5 Ways to Use Your Friends to Better Your Writing

Are You Ready to Write a Novel in Three Days?

2010-07-26T17:57:07Z

Whoa.

I say that because I can’t believe a year has passed since I failed to write a novel in three days. You might be thinking, “Dave, that’s hardly a failure.” Mostly, I say it because I remember just how exhausted I was when the clock finally ran out.

The Three-Day Novel Contest is an annual writing contest held on Labor Day weekend. It challenges writers of all sorts to finish a full-fledged novel during the three-day holiday weekend.

I didn’t complete or submit a full novel, but I treasure the experience, and the writing I began that weekend has turned into something I continue to tinker with today. During this harrowing experience, I drank a lot of coffee, thought about the strange characters I cooked up at warp speed and actually wrote more than I had in a long time.

So even though I failed in a sense, I had a blast, and took a lot away from the attempt. You may have heard of NaNoWriMo, where writers have the opportunity to pen a novel in a month. That’s fun and all, but you can think of the three-day contest as NaNoWriMo on steroids.

Resources for Success

I’m telling you that not to scare you, but to help prepare you. It’s more than a month away, so you have plenty of time to plan for success. Here’s some resources to help:

Last year, one of our own writers, Laura Roberts, wrote about her attempt. Give it a read; it will help you.
The contest has a nice survival guide set up for you.
The contest cost $50.
The winner gets published!
You still have time to give some of the past winners a read for inspiration and guidance.

As for me, I still don’t know if I’ll enter this year. If I can clear out that weekend, I’ll give it a go because my past effort was one of the more rewarding writing experiences I’ve had.

If you have any more resources to add, please let us know in the comments.

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Are You Ready to Write a Novel in Three Days?

The Big, Dirty Secret about Blogging

2010-07-23T15:53:42Z

You can’t do it alone.

I know, I know. Writers are solitary animals by nature, the kind who demand a little alone time to kickstart the creative process. I like solitude. You like solitude. But listen up, my fellow lone wolves: successful blogging warrants a different skill set. Sure, you’ll still find yourself staring at a monitor any given hour of the week, but this new field of writing encourages a different approach.

You have to write, yes. But you also need to connect.

But don’t let that frighten you. Here’s the punch line: we’re already pretty darn decent at both!

Steps to Success

Ask high-profile bloggers how they made it to the top, and odds are you’ll start seeing a common response: they worked very hard for a very long time and spent most nights sobbing by the computer before they earned the first hundred subscribers. And then they did it again. And another time, and so on and so forth until they’d worked their way up to a nice pile of readers for all that incredible effort. It’s a long, sometimes tedious process, but these clever folk lessened the load like only true social butterflies can do: they talked to people.

Seems obvious, right? But the incredibly social nature of successful blogging doesn’t always click for someone installing Wordpress for the very first time. It didn’t hit me, certainly, until I got off my butt and realized there was some pretty telling trends on my Twitter feed. (Quick tip: stalk every single blogger in your niche!)

See, bloggers talk to each other. They comment on each others’ posts, write funny little emails back and forth on weekends, and just love to tweet about that great new article so-and-so put up on her blog. They read each other, essentially, and the network blossoms into something wonderful and financially viable from there. And when they really get friendly? They exchange posts, often leading to big audience boosts and many celebratory tweets all around.

Call it a game, if you want, but remember this: it’s probably the most important game of your blogging career, and you just so happen to be in great position to play it!

Work Your Words

Ideally, folks, you’d write the best damn post of your life, publish it, and your blog would skyrocket from there. But that sparkly new site of yours is just a drop in a staggeringly large bucket, and you’re going to need some help to raise it to the next level.

Good thing you’re an accomplished writer, right?

Start writing. But take the words, this time, into lands far beyond your own realm. Write friendly emails to other bloggers in your niche and cultivate those friendships over the next months. Sign up for Twitter, if you haven’t already, and get cracking: retweet other bloggers’ comments, tweet about their latest posts, and strike up a conversation just often enough to not get annoying.

It works. In the last two weeks, I’ve chatted with a few high-profile bloggers in my niche, only to see one then leave a comment on one of my posts. That’s exciting stuff for a new blogger, and the exact kind of connection-building so crucial to gaining any headway in an internet already saturated with unique writers. And who knows? If I keep up the conversation, I might get to write a guest post for this popular blogger, inviting a big stream of readers right over to my site – proof, if nothing else, of how valuable social skills can be to the aspiring blogger.

You can’t do this alone, folks. But don’t let that get you down – you’re already well-equipped to rocket a blog to success, so long as you realize that some social support along the way will make all the difference in the world. Blogging isn’t a new game, but it is a different one, and honing your social skills right alongside your writing talent might just be the best ticket to success.

Has social networking changed your blogging for the better? What else do you do to push your blog to the top?

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The Big, Dirty Secret about Blogging

Slenderize Your Writing in Only Minutes a Day

2010-07-21T11:03:51Z

Most of us really don’t enjoy exercising that much; we just want to be skinny. It’s the same with writing… so much easier to bang out a thousand words on a blog when fifty would probably do. Elegant writing doesn’t just happen; it takes regular, concentrated effort. Here is an exercise you can do to make your writing leaner and more attractive.

The first time you do this one, it may be a challenge. Let’s get started…

Write a three-page essay on an easy topic, like what you did on your summer vacation, how to change the oil in your car, or anything with a fair amount of detail that you don’t have to research.
Rewrite your essay as one page, without leaving out a single idea. Don’t simply edit, start over.
Now write it up as one paragraph of 5 lines, without leaving out a single idea.
If you’re feeling ambitious, make it one sentence, without leaving out a single idea.

By now, you’re out of breath and sweating like crazy. When your heart stops racing, go back and read the first essay, then read the lone paragraph. Which one do you think people will be more likely to read?

The good news is that you don’t have to perform a major workout every time you sit down to write. Doing it once is usually painful enough that the memory of it causes you to think, “Is there a shorter way to say that?”

What did you write today? Spend a few minutes going back over it, taking out unnecessary words, thoughts redundant or irrelevant to the main point, anything that doesn’t absolutely have to be there. You’re on your way to scribal fitness.

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500 Words A Day: The Graham Greene Challenge

2010-07-12T16:08:56Z

If you’re anything like me, sometimes you find it helpful to know what other writers are doing to get words on the page. If you’re a little more like me, this curiosity has become more of an obsession. Maybe I’m just hitting an experimental phase in my writing journey. In any case, I hope it’s an experiment that others can benefit from as well.

Recently, I read that Graham Greene, author of “The End of an Affair”, tried to restrict his writing to only 500 words a day, a little less than two pages. Not even two pages a day? The task seemed…well, like a piece of cake. However, like anything too good to be true, there was a catch. Greene stopped at exactly 500 words. That means even if you were in the middle of a sentence you would have to stop, you couldn’t exceed, not even by one extra word. I wanted to give it a whirl nonetheless.

I attempted this with some novel material I’ve been working on. I was picking up mid-scene and was going to have to be uber-conscious of my word count. However, I ran into a problem right off the bat. The writing started off slow and my muse didn’t seem to want to play along. This experiment wasn’t going to work if I couldn’t even get to the 500 words. I took a break with total word count of 93 and started to read, a nifty technique I like to use to invigorate my creativity. Half an hour later and I was ready to go.

My second attempt was much more successful. I fell into my stride and was going strong when I noticed that my word count had reached 489. Eleven more words. That’s all I had left and I was on a roll. I silently cursed myself for choosing this lousy experiment in the first place before begrudgingly continuing with the task at hand. My last sentence looked like this:

The wash basin shattered upon impact, sending tiny shards of porcelain

I could have gone on. The thought was on the tip of my brain ready to tumble to my fingers and onto the page. I played fair though and stopped. I walked away and tried desperately not to forget what came next. As it turns out, I don’t think I could have forgotten it if I had tried because all I could think about was what came next and even what came after that. Mr. Greene was definitely on to something.

The following day, I found myself eager to return to the writing and the 500 words seemed like nothing. I used Graham Greene’s technique for a whole week and found it to be amazingly beneficial. Forcing yourself to stop before you feel you’re finished keeps you thinking about the story and when you’re thinking about your story, you can’t help but to keep pushing it forward even if it is only in your mind. Not only that, but I found myself scrutinizing more over word choice. What would be the best fit for that sentence? Is that really what I want to say?

I enjoyed this exercise because it forced me to slow down and really see my story, something I think is key to a good narrative. Also, 500 words really isn’t asking a lot, is it?

Image courtesy of John Ochwat

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500 Words A Day: The Graham Greene Challenge

5 Mistakes You Make When Writing A Blog Post

2010-07-09T10:23:06Z

Blogging is so common these days, everyone seems to want a piece of the action.

The problem is that newbies get the idea this blogging thing is a cinch–that you don’t need any particular skills, structure, or game plan to write for the internet.

It’s true to some extent; you can get your own domain and start up a blog with no experience whatsoever. However, creating a blog that people will want to read, and subscribe to, requires more than that.

There are limitless wrong turns one can make when writing a blog post, but here are 5 common mistakes and how to fix them:

1. You don’t know who your audience is.

Who reads your blog? Can you describe your average audience member? Do you know what they want out of life? Do you know what they’re searching for on your site? If you don’t know your audience, you won’t be focused on writing to meet their needs. And, if your blog doesn’t provide ongoing benefits for your readers, they won’t be around long.

2. You don’t bother to outline.

For all you pantsers out there, even outlining a blog post might go against your natural tendencies. But, I’ve found the best way to keep your article focused is to write the headline and subtitles first. These might change as you write, but they give you a sense of where you need to go. When I get a few great ideas for posts all at once, I write my headlines and tentative points, plus find a suitable photo first, and simply leave the outlines in my WordPress editor for later. Once my posts are outlined, they get written relatively quickly.

3. You skip the introduction and conclusion.

Just like you remember from your high school days, your writing needs an introduction and a conclusion to be effective. For example, my article would appear less-than-professional if I’d begun with my headline, then launched straight into the list, and ended abruptly with the 6th point. Many readers wouldn’t have bothered sticking around to find out what I have to say. Introductions and conclusions don’t have to be long, but you should write them every time.

4. You don’t use an effective photo.

Photos aren’t necessary for good content, but they help visually attract your readers and reinforce your point. A poor or amateurish photo can be just as bad as no photo at all, so if you’re going to choose one, choose wisely. Flickr has a huge directory of Creative Commons photos available for use with only the need to cite the owner. While it can be time consuming searching for photos and uploading them, it’s time well spent.

5. You omit keywords and meta descriptions.

When I first started blogging, I had no idea what the ‘keywords’ and ‘meta description’ boxes in my WordPress editor were for. It was only once I’d been writing for a couple of weeks that I discovered those little boxes were for important for helping people find and read my articles. SEO Logic says on their FAQ page:

Both the meta keywords tag and the meta description tag contribute to your search engine ranking, and the meta description tag influences the liklihood [sic] that a person will actually click on the search engine results page and visit your site.

If you’re not using these tags, you’re missing out on potential readers.

Tips for Writing Better Blog Posts

How can you make your blog posts beneficial, focused, and clear?

Define your audience before you launch your blog.
Write your headlines first and get in the habit of outlining your posts.
Always write an introduction and conclusion, even if they are short.
Choose visually appealing photos that match either the particular post or the overall themes of your blog.
Learn to identify keywords and write effective meta descriptions for each post.
Don’t try to make too many points in one post. Choose one and focus on it.
If you want your blog to be professional (as opposed to a diary-like venture) write your posts the same way you would write an article for a magazine.
Solve a reader’s problem or include a benefit in each of your posts.
Proofread your posts at least 24 hours after writing them. Fresh eyes catch more mistakes.
Ask for reader participation. End your post with questions or invitations for your audience to contribute through commenting.

Learn the guidelines of professional blogging, and you’ll soon find your posts more engaging, and your readership increasing.

What newbie mistakes did you make when you first started blogging? What bothers you the most in other blogs? What are your best tips for writing better blog posts?

Images courtesy of B Rosen, Steve Keys, SuziJane.

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5 Mistakes You Make When Writing A Blog Post

Description that Grabs You

2010-07-07T09:05:13Z

As an active bookmobile participant and Highlights fan from way back, I love to read. I especially love well-written copy that’s so specific and so revealing that you can almost touch, see, smell or hear what’s being described. Here are some recent favorites:

From Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge:

* It was as if marriage had been a long, heavy and complicated ordeal, and now there was this lovely and light dessert.

* Years later, the situation squeezed Olive so hard she felt like a package of vacuum-packed coffee.

* For the first time in years, Cliff thought about God, who seemed like a piggy bank that Harmon had stuck up on a shelf and had now brought down to look at with a new considering eye.

* The appetites of the body are private battles.

From Ron Hall and Denver Moore’s Same Kind of Different as Me:

* The surgeons filed in, looking grim, and I wondered bizarrely is they teach appropriate facial decorum in medical school.

* I could see through his eyes that little pieces of his heart was break off while we was standin there.

* He stood away from anyone – which did not surprise us since the others always treated him like a bad dog on a long chain.

* When all you doin is bringin in the Man’s cotton, ain’t nowhere you got to be at ‘cept where you at

And from Lynne Truss’ classic Eats, Shoots & Leaves:

* He saw commas as so many upturned office chairs unhelpfully hurled down the wide-open corridor of readability.

* Cruelty to punctuation is quite unlegislated: you can get away with pulling the legs off semicolons or shriveling question marks on the garden path under the powerful magnifying glass.

And the story that makes this last book’s title such a classic:

A panda walks into a bar. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. “Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. “I’m a panda,” he says at the door. “Look it up.” The waiter turns to the relevant entry, and sure enough, finds an explanation. “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

What are some of your favorite well-worded descriptions? Please share yours, and why you like them, in the comments below.

Image courtesy of From The Left.

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Description that Grabs You

Making Writing Easy: Practical Tools

2010-07-05T11:34:41Z

Writing, despite being an art and a creative endeavour, is most definitely a craft. Like any crafts, the skills and the rules needed to be able to construct successful, enjoyable writing are ones that must be practised and honed. By reading fiction we familiarise ourselves with the right (and wrong) ways that language can be used, by reading articles such as this we remind ourselves of the skills we need, and discover ways in which we can improve them, and by simply writing we can discover what works, and what doesn’t.

Making Things Easy

Like any craft, writing blog articles and stories isn’t just reliant on the core, hard skills that we learn, such as grammar, dialogue, structure, punctuation etc. It is also made easier when there is a raft of supporting structures put in place in order to make the process easier, or more enjoyable. I would like to share some of the practical, physical tools that can be used in order to make the writing process easier, by facilitating inspiration and creativity, and by aiding in the actual writing process.

We often think of creativity and inspiration as being opposite to the craft of our writing. The rules and skills, grammar and punctuation, are the craft, and the flashes of inspiration, the whimsical musings and the creative process are the art. However, we need to view the art and the craft as being together. By doing this, and by using practical tools to turn our creativity into actual writing, we can avoid getting lost in thoughts and ideas and actually get them down onto paper and turn them into stories and articles.

Capture Your Ideas

Sometimes we struggle for inspiration, and sometimes they just come to us, prompted by something unexpected. It’s true; we can find inspiration anywhere. The key to successfully creating something from this inspiration is to have the tools to hand to capture those ideas when they come to you. Get that idea out of your head and down on paper, then forget about it until you can come back to it later, write the story, or file it away for a future dry spell.

Scratchpad – I keep a A4 pad on my desk, next to my laptop. Any time something pops into my head (ideas for stories or blog posts, but also things I need to do, reminders for stuff, things I need to buy) I pick up a pen and write it quickly down on the paper, and continue what I was doing. At the end of the day, process these ideas.

Notepad/document - I prefer to use pen and paper, but I know a lot of people (especially those of us who are at our laptops for long periods of time) like to keep a simple Notepad document or similar on their desktop, as a place to capture ideas for future filing and reference, in a similar way to the physical Scratchpad.

Notebooks – I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this advice for writers, and you are also probably sick of hearing it, but – carry a notebook wherever you go! Inspiration can strike at any time, so be ready to get it down, otherwise you’ll forget it. Plus, having a pocket notebook on you at all times can be really useful if you have a spare moment while you’re out – chance to brainstorm one of those ideas you’ve had, or write a few paragraphs of that story you’re working on. Make the notebook one that you enjoy using, and you’ll use it more often. I use a Pocket Moleskine (currently Lined, but sometimes I use Plain, which can be very useful for free-form ideas and brainstorming)

Structure Your Ideas

Some of us plan, some of us don’t. For me, a brainstorm is usually enough to get me started, even when starting longer pieces of work that may or may not become novels. But for those of you who do like to plan (and even for those of us who don’t) index cards and Post It notes can be very useful. Using either of these things can be brilliant for writing on individual characters, places and events in a novel, and as they are physical and moveable they can be shifted around, shuffled and arranged, in order to work out and visualise the relationships between them. Even with non-fiction writing, this technique can be very helpful in structuring your articles and blog posts, by rearranging key points. Combine these with either a Whiteboard or a Cork board. These can also be very useful for sticking up ideas and prompts, as well as inspirational pictures or cards or nice things people have got you.

Writing Programs

How do you write? Writing longhand can be great for unlocking creativity, but in terms of pratical writing and editing, be it of an entire novel or a relatively short blog post or article, some sort of writing software is usually required. I myself use OpenOffice.org Writer, the free, open-source version of Microsoft Word. It does everything that I want, and I’m comfortable using it.

The key word here is comfortable. You need to feel comfortable when you write (including the need for a comfy chair and writing area) but you need to be mentally comfortable as well. No use using a program that you find difficult and unintuitive to use. Most people just use Word, because it is the default program for most of you (I’m sure many of you use Macs, same applies for your default writing program) but here are some alternatives you might like to try, that will make getting down to writing as easy as possible.

Darkroom (Windows) or Writeroom (Mac) – these two downloads take away toolbars, menus and other such clutter so you can focus on what is important – the writing. Just being able to see the text can be a real help for clearing your mind, concentrating on writing and freeing your imagination. Because these programs fill the screen they can also filter out other distractions such as email, Twitter, FB etc. Plus, these programs can be fun to use, and the more fun our writing is, the easier it will be and the more we will want to sit down and do it, even if it’s to churn out copy or freelance filler articles. Darkroom looks especially cool, with its bright green Courier text set on a black background. Makes you feel like you’re writing in the Matrix…

Writer (online) – this online version of the above programs can also be very useful. You can still save your work, once you’ve set up an account, and then access it again when you want to continue writing. This can be especially useful if you frequently travel and want to be able to work on your article or story wherever you might be, on any computer. Of course, you can do this with other suites such as GoogleDocs, but this is a great way to do it in a distraction-free environment, especially when you utilise Writer’s full-screen mode.

Text editors – one really good is to use whichever text editor comes with your OS. Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Macs are very simple programs, and while most people just use them for jotting down notes when at their computer, others swear by using them for writing entire pieces of writing.

Play!

Sometimes we can take our writing too seriously. But, on the other hand, we sometimes don’t take our creativity seriously enough. We think of creativity as something passive, that comes to us in flashes of inspiration, or just as something to do (or that just happens) while we are writing. But, by looking at the creative process as something that you can work on, like the writing process, we can use it (yes, at our beck and call!) to inspire us when we need inspiring, or to just give us that mental boost when we get stuck, or even just as a break! Learning to use creativity in a practical way like this can be very useful.

Lego – This is perfect tool for unlocking your creativity when you need it. It doesn’t really matter what you make, and whether it’s anything particularly good or even recognisable! The idea is to play. The simple fact of making something, anything, creating something, that is the important thing. By making ourselves be creative in this way we can unlock areas of the brain which might otherwise lay dormant, opening up, engaging in play, and allowing our brain to think creatively – can lead to increased inspiration, motivation and creative thought.

What tools do you use to make your writing (and creating!) easier? Please share in the comment below.

Images courtesy of FallingWalls.com, WhoIsMadHur.com and ddi7.com.

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Making Writing Easy: Practical Tools

Free Online Writers’ Conference

2010-07-02T09:04:02Z

The annual Muse Online Writers’ Conference takes place from October 11th through the 17th. Registration has already begun but is open until August 15th so there is still plenty of time!

Check it out and see what you think.

All that is asked for is a donation, if you are able. And, if you do not make the August 15th deadline to register, there is a five-dollar fee, payable through PayPal, but even that is nominal considering all that is offered.

The previous years worked out really well and this one should be just as great. Jump on board and take advantage of a remote workshop that allows you not to have to take a *real* vacation yet offers the same programs other workshops do!

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Free Online Writers’ Conference