Writers struggle with wording.  It’s a science that haunts us when we are working on major projects like novels and screenplays.  But we’ve learned what’s important, what’s exciting, what keeps a reader reading and we know how to cut the fat.

“Cutting the fat” means taking everything out of your writing that isn’t necessary.  It’s actually pretty hard to do for someone who isn’t really that familiar with writing.  You might think that you’ve written the cleverest sentence and yet, it doesn’t fit in your writing.

It’s the hardest thing to convince a novice writer that a certain sentence doesn’t belong.  I remember when I was just beginning and desperately trying hard to learn the craft.  My teachers would always put red marks all over my favorite sentences.  It was frustrating.  But looking back on it now, I can certainly understand why.

Good writing needs to be focused and tight.  Even in the cleverest writings, where the writer seems to be smooth and flexible.  I would be willing to bet that the writer struggled and suffered over every paragraph and sentence.

Don’t take this to mean that good writing is a matter of being stiff and not enjoyable.  Writing can be great fun if you let it.  It’s a matter of making sure you don’t ramble on with senseless sentences that add no more meaning to your writing.

Empty

Empty sentences have plenty of words, but no meaning.  Vague and pointless sentences can be taken out of your writing right off the bat.  You might think it’s a clever sentence, but a good editor would show you how it adds nothing to your writing at all.

For example, imagine a mental picture of someone engaged in the intellectual activity of trying to learn in a situation in which it is crucial that they consider the facts when trying to be inquisitive.

That is practically a sentence about nothing.  “Imagine” and “mental picture” are the same.  So, that part of the sentence can be reduced to simply, “imagine.”

“Intellectual activity” and “trying to learn” are also the same just as much as “consider the facts” and “trying to be inquisitive.”  Basically, this sentence is someone’s attempt to say, “Imagine someone trying to learn when it is crucial to be inquisitive.”  The sentence is nice, but it has little meaning.

The sentence “imagine someone trying to learn to be inquisitive” might actually carry some weight.  In other words, it is important to be inquisitive and that’s how people learn.  But, trying to learn when it is crucial to be inquisitive has redundant meaning that gets the sentence nowhere.  It’s as if the writer is saying that it’s more important to be inquisitive than it is trying to learn.  Now, that’s just plain ridiculous.

Wordy

In business, people tend to use more words than necessary to express a certain meaning.  They act as if it is against policy to be clear and concise.  To some extent, business writing has its own form and there are certain ways to write that should be followed.  But, not every sentence has to be wordy.

For instance, word combinations such as “as you know,” “in time,” “it is regrettable” and the like are used over and over.  These word combinations add nothing important to the overall meaning of the sentence and can often simply be cut.

“So, it is regrettable as you know that in time we must conduct layoffs.”  This kind of writing comes across as a writer who is unsure and very weasel like.

Just say it, “So, we must conduct layoffs.”  That’s to the point.  Clear and concise writing will earn the respect of the writer often in spite of the message.

If you give yourself a few days away from your writing, you’ll be better suited to come back and edit it later.  You’ll see wording that adds absolutely no meaning to your sentences.  You’ll also be better capable of correcting your own mistakes. 

Cut the fat.  Take entire sentences out and reduce redundancy.  Being a great writer isn’t hard.  It just takes saying what you only mean to say and paying attention to detail.  Then, you can start build your own style and start having fun with it.

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Writing for a writer becomes a habitual process where the flow comes and just gets rolling. Pages and pages full of words course from our brains and through our hands in no time at all. It’s like giving a knife to a cook. The meal doesn’t take long at all to be ready.

Staying with the cooking analogy, someone who doesn’t know how to cook stands dumbfounded looking at ingredients and wondering what to do with them all. The same happens with someone who isn’t very familiar with the writing process. Thoughts are streaming through your brain, but you can’t get them out on the page. You can’t get them started.

Writing shouldn’t be as difficult as most people think. If you can talk to your friends, you can write. You’ve learned enough to start what you want to say, say what you want to say and sometimes you even get a chance to wrap up what you want to say. All you have to learn now is how to get it down on paper.

Just Begin

What stops most people from writing is getting started. How to begin is the question. Don’t look for some dramatic way to begin your document whether it’s an essay for college or an article for a magazine. Just begin.

What is the point of your paper? Start with a sentence that pinpoints the answer to that question and then go for it. Write the first paragraph with supporting sentences. Write your paper with supporting paragraphs and then, wrap it up in a nice little conclusion. Now, you can go back to the beginning and go for a more impressive, dramatic introduction if you want.

Trying to add the flowers before the dirt never worked. Think of Billy Crystal in Throw Momma From The Train. He has writer’s block because he can’t get past the first sentence. Sometimes you can’t start on the first sentence. It’s easier to start at the point you’re trying to make and then go back later to add an eye-catching first sentence.

Mean What You Say

All of a sudden, you are on a roll. You’re thinking thoughts faster than you can type them. Keep going and don’t stop. Don’t correct your paper while you’re writing it. Trust me! If you are writing this fast, you have plenty to correct.

Once you have finished writing, go back and look it over. You’ll catch most of your spelling mistakes in a hurry. Just look for all the red. Now, go back and look for homonyms which technically are spelling errors. Using the wrong word in a sentence is hard to catch, so take your time and look your paper over thoroughly. If it belongs to you, then the word to use is “your.” If you mean “you are,” then use “you’re.” These are common mistakes. Now, put your paper up for a few days.

Take a Break

You become very connected to your work. It’s like a child to you. Everyone else can point out your child’s flaws, but you can’t see them. Your paper has flaws. You just can’t see them.

Put the paper up for a few days. If you have a deadline, always make sure you have time to put your paper on the shelf and walk away from it for a few days. After a few days or weeks, you’ll become less connected to your own work and you’ll be able to see your errors. The time you need to spend away from your work is directly related to the size of the work itself. A five page paper is fine after a few days. A three hundred page book needs about a month.

Look for your grammar mistakes. Punctuation can easily change the meaning of a sentence. In the swipe of a comma, you can say the exact opposite of what you mean. For example, a woman without her man is nothing. A woman; without her, man is nothing.

The most important thing about looking over your paper is saying what you meant to say. When you are writing fast, words are getting thrown into your paper all over the place. But when you look over your paper, take a look at what exactly each sentence is saying. Does it say what you meant? Is there a more exact word you can use?

There is so much more to proofreading a paper. And you should learn the steps if you are going to be doing it on your own. I remember a day in college when I had just finished a paper and didn’t want to take the time to properly proofread it. I wanted to turn it in now and it cost me a letter grade. When the professor returned my paper, every mistake was simple and one I could have caught myself.

Take the time. Be patient and do it right! Before long, you’ll be able to do it blindfolded with the efficiency of a professional writer.

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It is not always appealing to always write just about technical information, whether it is in parts or in detail, especially when you are writing a technical document. If your thoughts are clearly communicated through your writing, then it is likely to be understood and read by a wider audience. So, as a writer you need to build a bridge to obliterate the gap that often lingers between the writer and the reader of any technical writing material.

For example, to win a bid, a company’s project developers need to write a proposal in order to convince their potential client that they are the best team suited for the job. Their entire presentation is focused around this. Precise development of connection between the presenters and the viewers or the readers will do the trick. It is necessarily to place clearly in your reports the methodology, resources used, final results and the compatibility with legal regulations. Statistics, appropriate data collection, graphs, illustrations and necessary reports also need to be placed along with the main report(s).

To make the report justifiably free to access and easy to connote, appropriate footnotes also need to be placed. At the end of the report a lucid bibliography should be given, indicating all the detailed sources used, otherwise you could be accused of plagiarism! Also, remember that overused sources can tarnish your originality and create unfathomable boredom, so keep your source-details neatly piled.

During the course of report development, several technicians’ reports, laboratory results and feasible study details of their job may come to light. You have to mention all these sources and provide them with their respective accreditation. Different equipment such as laboratory tools used, specialized machinery, and software programs all need to be analyzed specifically under their respective technical guidelines. All complex analyses must be coagulated in a solution-approach form.

In every aspect, a writer needs to build the connector or bridge in the way of conveying information. This has to be done in such a way that the reader relates with the technicalities of the subject, and grasps them with considerable ease. This is not all that easy, as every specialized field has its own complex mechanisms, not to mention the innumerable technical jargon involved! The key reminder is your target audience and their relative familiarity with the field. After this, the writer should take the role of a friendly mediator, and drive away any hostility the targeted reader may feel toward the materials conveyed. So, keep your approach warm and friendly, and nurture your reader-group with important and relevant information. Just like a layman would get bored to death with the sudden bombardment of unknown terminologies that he or she has never come across in life, a similar reaction can be expected from an advanced student in a particular field! That is why you should always keep your reader group a priority!

Since, even a slight edge of hostility could crack your readers’ interests, the task of the technical writer is really that of an able mediator. You cannot just push yourself to the keyboards or the pen without enough knowledge on your target reader-group. Instead of cooking up something ineffective, involve yourself in a step-by-step manner of approaching, interviewing, consulting recent statistics and doing relevant ground work on your target readership.

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Grammatical errors can  show you up to be disinterested in your writing. They can detract your credibility and make your work look immature. In cases of blog writing or creating web copy, the case is pretty much the same. People will not read your blog, or subscribe/link to your blog if you make silly mistakes when you write. I believe that copywriting and blogging should be conversational and engaging, and breaking some in the formal convention of spelling and grammar can often be a good thing. Though, I also believe that you have to know the rules in order to break them. Here are some errors that you’ll never convince anyone that you wrote intentionally in the name of style, and even then, there will be people who will doubt your credibility.
So, let us look at some common errors that could diminish the credibility of your writing.

• Improper Use of the Apostrophe – It is used generally in two cases. One for contractions (don’t for ‘do not’), and secondly for showing that something belongs to someone (Bobby’s pen would mean this pen belongs to Bobby). If you are ever in doubt, leave the apostrophe out. It generally causes more confusion if you introduce an apostrophe where it does not belong than it does to omit one.

• i.e. vs. e.g. - These two Latin abbreviations are very useful to modern writing only if you use them correctly. The Latin phrase id est. means “that is,” so i.e. is a way of saying “in other words.” It’s designed to make something clearer by providing a definition or saying it in a more common approach. Whereas, the Latin phrase exempli gratia means “for example”, so e.g. is used before giving specific examples that support your assertion.

• Loose vs. Lose – One of the more common errors of bloggers and copy writers is to distinguish between loose and lose. It’s so common that one feel’s that ‘lose’ at times can be a proper substitute for ‘loose’, but in reality they are two different words which have two different meanings. Here’s something that will keep you guessing ( If your watch is too loose, you might lose your watch).

• It’s vs. Its - This is another common mistake. It’s also easily avoided by thinking through what you’re trying to say. “It’s” is a contraction of “it is” or “it has.” “Its” is a possessive pronoun, as in “this item has lost its value.” Remember this, and it will pay you dividends later. Read your sentence out loud using “it is” instead. If that sounds strange, “its” is likely the correct choice.

• There vs. Their - “There” is used in many ways, including as a reference to a place (“let’s go there”) or as a pronoun (“there is no hope”). “Their” is a plural possessive pronoun, as in “their shoes” or “their bottles.” Are you talking about more than one person and something that they possess? If so, “their” will get you there!

• These little points, when kept in mind while writing will help you avoid common writing errors, and make you a better writer. There it is. So, don’t lose your focus!

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I first encountered writers block when I had to deliver a set of twenty 300 word reviews on 2007 model cars sold in America. The word count was not large though I’m no car buff so a little research was in order.

It struck me just how similar car reviews were and it made no difference if the reviews were of different makes and models. There is not a lot you can write about changes from the Aston Martin DB7 to the Cherokee Jeep to the Smart car! Don’t take my word for it, take a look yourself at car reviews and you will see that they are all extremely similar.

Unless you are actually going to take a car out for a spin, you are well and truly stuck with using reviews and writings that already exists for the model. Embellishment is superfluous as you’ll only be embellishing someone else’s embellishment in turn.

My principal asked me how the work was going and I responded “It’s like eating cardboard!” - I really had a problem getting 300 words out for each of the twenty models that I’d been given. I’m a fairly self-disciplined kind of chap and stayed stuck to the keyboard trying to concentrate and get the work bashed out. Honestly, it drove me to distraction and took an age to complete.

Fortunately for me, I rarely come across instances like this. On the rare occasions that it happens I sit back, get up and go for a walk, do the shopping or chase my girlfriend around the house and see if she’ll let me catch her. Anything in fact, than sit there and try to work through this barrier like a runner runs through the pain barrier.

My take on writers block is that it originates in my own mind and not from the subject matter. There is simply no mileage in blaming the topic, so the only variable that is left is yourself. I haven’t tested this hypothesis yet as I’ve not had a car review to write since, but I certainly have come across other topics that have caused my brain to freeze with the numb banality of it all.

Another tool for tackling writers block is to use a writing template which has already been covered in a previous post. Templates remove the need for your brain to be engaged if you just wish to be something of a keybashing automaton. The result may not be very pretty but it will be better than what otherwise remains a blank page on the screen with a deadline approaching.

Find more Writing Tips at Supaproofread

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