Advice for Authors and Writers

5 Reasons to Take a Break from the Keyboard

On a windy Sunday morning, I’m sitting at the PC for the second time of the day. I woke up at 6 buzzing with a slight hangover from the excesses of a boozy Saturday night with my cronies. Several coffees later I sat down to start writing at 8 full of good intentions.

The result was absolutely nothing. I just sat there and fiddled, checking email, checking google, and playing around instead of working.

As an example of gaining ideas to post about, this one is pretty lame – knowing when to leave the keyboard because you can’t write due to a hangover! Nevertheless, sometimes you do need to take a break from keybashing and there are warning signs to look for that should sound an alarm. When writing you need to be mentally and physically on your toes.

#1 Procrastination

At #1, procrastination is a sure sign you need to take a breather. If you’re surfing the internet and getting hooked on topics at a tangent which have no direct bearing on your assignment in hand, this is a sure sign you need to take a break. This is my number one sin as I’m forever getting sidetracked but procrastination takes many more forms than just idle surfing the internet to no effect. Sales people call this “soldiering”; making up chores and tasks in order to give yourself the feeling that you are being productive when in fact you are not.

#2 Not Knowing Where to Start

Strunk & White – The Elements of Style

In my quieter moments I surf the internet just like anyone else involved primarily in writing web content. I regularly read CopyBlogger which is a mine of writing tips and resources, but I particularly picked up on a post by Brian Clark
bemoaning the adverse comments scattered about blog posts by English usage Nazi’s. I think he has a fair set of points but they are not the subject of this post here. Brian was posting about common errors and by all means read his post, I thoroughly enjoy his blogging but bear in mind this is American writing and grammatical tips.

I followed through the post and picked up on a couple of names – Strunk & White – and clicking on the hyperlink, there we go through to Wikipedia and the entry for their tome. Reading the Wikipedia entry has motivated me to purchase a copy through eBay not least because of the simple, straight-forward advice that Messrs. Strunk & White appear to be dishing out.
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Fighting Writer’s Block

I wrote about getting started in writing, that sometimes the beginning is the hardest part. But, writer’s block is a completely different monster. See, getting started is often difficult but at least the writer has something to say. Writer’s block is where you hit a mental wall and you have absolutely nothing at all.

Some people would look at you crazy and wonder why you would want to write if you have nothing to write about. But, a writer has a need to write. And sometimes, things just need said even when a writer can’t seem to form the words.

How do you get through it is the question? There are several ways to combat writer’s block. Force yourself through or gradually get back into it, there’s always a way.

Freewrite

You may have been taught this before, but it works rather well. Freewriting is a method in which you start writing all of your thoughts down on a piece of paper. You don’t think about grammar or spelling errors. You don’t worry about punctuation. You just write, and write, and write. Before long, you’ll actually have something to write about.

Anything and everything that comes across your mind, that’s what you write. Don’t censor yourself. And if you have absolutely nothing going on in your mind, write about that.
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How to Establish a Web Presence for your Writing Services

As my time has become increasingly taken up with writing website content these past few weeks, I’ve decided to take the plunge and set my own website up to showcase my wares.

I purchased for the princely sum of $7.99 (about £4) the domain name www.ghostslair.com through GoDaddy.com, a domain name registrar and hosting company in the US. I now have a website design company putting together a rather simple website within which I can showcase my talent or lack thereof.

My budget for setting up GhostsLair.com is $200 or about £100 and this is certainly within everyone’s budget.

Here’s my “How to..” guide for creating your own web presence.

Step One : Choose and Buy a Domain Name

A domain name is simply the name given to your site, so www.supaproofread.com is the domain name for SupaProofRead and www.ghostlair.com is the domain name for GhostsLair. Domain names are unique and you should take some time in choosing a name that suits you and your services.

Registering a domain name is very easy and is extremely cheap unless you go after a seriously popular domain name e.g. www.madonna.com. I personally use GoDaddy for my domain name purchases, but you can find many, many others simply by inputting “domain names” in google and I have even purchased domain names off eBay.

Planning a Document

Anyone who travels around a lot knows that planning contributes towards making the trip a success. Certainly, the unplanned jaunts and routes taken in a trip come as side-kicks or bonuses— in both ways, making your trip ripe in experience. However, without the bone structure of planning you will fall face-down-in-the-earth.

The foundations of any document are the planning of its “rhetorical strategy”. To get one’s point across to an array of audiences, as wide as possible, is the main focus of most document writers. One needs to be clear in purpose of the message to be conveyed through the project. When the purpose of the writing becomes clear, this becomes easily possible. Some of the major points involved in creating a successful document presentation include the following:
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Cooking for Writers: A Recipe for a Great Paper

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.
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