How To Be An Instant Writer!
Writing seems to be the easiest job in the world if you are able to string proper sentences together. It really does not matter if you are not great at it. The fact that you can put together a few sentences correctly, you are on your way to becoming a writer.
Of course, any writer worth his or her salt would start comparing him or herself to Tom Clancy, Ernest Hemingway and such. Don’t. Stop it before your confidence level dwindles to nothing.
Practice makes perfect. Believe in that. Keep it as your mantra. So if you keep writing, you will get better and better. Believe it or not, Hemingway admits to writing 91 pages of nonsense before he can start producing one page of a masterpiece. See? He is only human after all. So are you.
But we are not talking about becoming authors here. Let’s start with just writing some articles, say, for magazines, newsletters or even for a newspaper. Here are some article writing tips you may want to memorize and keep thinking about from now on:
Use active voice and always direct the reader. You want to move your audience with action words and people generally want to be told what to do. So take a firm stand and give your reader a direction to go in.
Be specific. Just a few gems of wisdom are greatly appreciated, and will establish you as someone who really knows his stuff. Stick to the journalist’s rule of 5W and 1H (who, what, when, where, why and how) and you will do alright.
Check your facts. If you intend to be an expert, then take care to back your arguments with solid evidence. There’s nothing worse than seeing your article all over the places only to realize that it contained the wrong information. For research on such information, you can always turn to free articles available freely on plenty of article directories over the web for information.
Include examples. Create a powerful image of what you are writing about with real-live testimonials. You may need to ‘interview’ some people for this but examples drive the point home and build your reputation as an expert.
Know what the editor is looking for. Scan a few recent issues of the publication you want to get in to learn not only the writing style but also the house style of that publication. This will earn you great points with the editor.
When in doubt, use simple English. Simple words usually say a lot more than big ones.
Proofread. Do it more at least three times before submitting your article to the editor. An expert article author always submits flawless work and you must walk the talk in this case.
Another way to start writing articles, and continue doing it regularly, is to follow these simple steps which will help you overcome that monster of a problem to all writers – the writer’s block.
a) List down an idea for an article you plan to write and draw out the concept you want to cover.
b) Let the article ‘incubate’ for a while. If you don’t have pressing deadlines, a few days will be good. While your article incubates, think and ponder on the topic. Ideas tend to come to you and these are ideas to add to your points. Some ideas, however, may not be in line with your angling.
c) When getting down to writing the article, start with some warm-up by just simply writing. A letter to a friend, posting a comment on someone’s blog or just about anything else which will get your fingers moving over the keyboard and your brains functioning like a writer’s is good warm-up. Some people tend to go for walks but that is just procrastination.
d) Once you have completed the article, leave it alone. Come back to it a few hours later, preferably with a fresh mind. Re-read the article and edit at the same time.
Last of all, remember that just because you are perfecting the art of article-writing, it is not the same as starting a blog or becoming a copywriter. If you are interested in the latter two options, seeks lessons on them. A quick way is to get some blog writing tips and copywriting tips from the Internet.
Have fun!
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