how to be a good writer article

3. (Ask yourself this: do I like it when people lie about me?) Passion, vocation, vision, and dedication are rarer, and they will get you through the rough spots in your style when your style won’t give you a reason to get up in the morning and stare at the manuscript for the hundredth day in a row or even give you a compelling subject to write about. A good article … Thinking, researching, contemplating, outlining, composing in your head and in sketches, maybe some typing, with revisions as you go, and then more revisions, deletions, emendations, additions, reflections, setting aside and returning afresh, because a good writer is always a good editor of his or her own work. If you’re not passionate about writing and about the world and the things in it you’re writing about, then why are you writing? However, writing articles or blogging under tight deadlines should not come at the expense of good writing. Writing doesn’t have to be this painful. Choose an existing wikiHow article that seems well written and well researched. And actually it was a quiet failure at the time. This may sound obvious, but it has to be said. 2) Remember that writing is not typing. 7) Facts. You never know when writer’s block will hit. You want to read people who are wise, deep, wild, kind, committed, insightful, attentive; you want to be those people. 8) Joy. Hang out with your “ideal audience,” ie, the people you want to write to and/or about. But, Google got smart to that and decided that just blasting the interwebs with heaps of mediocre writing wasn’t the best way to go about things. 6) Time. Hello Eric, Loved the post and I’ve actually started practicing writing on a daily basis. No matter what you’re writing about, you have an obligation to get it right, for the people you’re writing about, for the readers, and for the record. I’ve written stuff amidst hideous suffering, and it was a way not to be so stuck in the hideous suffering, though it was hard, but also, hard is not impossible, and I didn’t sign up with the expectation that it would be easy. Note: Your headline might change during the writing process, and that's OK and even a good … And don’t read. The process of making art is the process of becoming a person with agency, with independent thought, a producer of meaning rather than a consumer of meanings that may be at odds with your soul, your destiny, your humanity, so there’s another kind of success in becoming conscious that matters and that is up to you and nobody else and within your reach. keep it short and sweet. I get to use the word turquoise or melting or supernova right now if I want. If you don’t read... 2. But it’s not about the joy, it’s about the work, and there has to be some kind of joy in the work, some kind from among the many kinds, including the joy of hard truths told honestly. It’s why I always tell students that it’s a slippery slope from the things your stepfather didn’t actually do to the weapons of mass destruction Iraq didn’t actually have. Live in the deep past, with the language of the Koran or the Mabinogion or Mother Goose or Dickens or Dickinson or Baldwin or whatever speaks to you deeply. This covers the basics of article writing, which can also be applied to blog writing. There’s no way to get good without... Get an editor. If you want to write about a stepfather who did things your stepfather didn’t, or repeat conversations you don’t actually remember with any detail, at least label your product accurately. Good writers read. Or belong to the other world that is not quite this one, the world from which you send back your messages. Every editorial staff is different, and quite often a magazine will give first priority to regular contributors. Write your article, making sure you deliver on what your headline promises. Don’t be too social. Cultivating love for others and maybe receiving some for yourself is another job and an important one. Words are the lifeblood of great writing. No one will trust you if you get your facts wrong, and if you’re writing about living or recently alive people or politics you absolutely must not misrepresent. “Even if I knew good business writing from the get-go, I think continually improving your writing and taking it to the next level is absolutely key to success,” David says. Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature. Susan Velez. Writing is facing your deepest fears and all your failures, including how hard it is to write a lot of the time and how much you loathe what you’ve just written and that you’re the person who just committed those flawed sentences (many a writer, and God, I know I’m one, has worried about dying before the really crappy version is revised so that posterity will never know how awful it was). The more you write, the better you’ll get. Blogs for writers are everywhere, and there's often good advice on them about writing a blog. Maybe even make lists of joys for emergencies. (Days 1-7): Learning To Practice. For most people, the longer you fuss over a piece of writing, the worse it gets. A good writer recognizes he needs help. The literary Internet’s most important stories, every day. It was writing short 300-500 word articles that had a keyword in it for some company that was hoping to rank for that keyword. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window), Teddy Wayne is Worried He Might Be a Fraud. Hence the name, SEO (search engine optimization) writing. Check out the bestseller list for April 1935 or August 1978 if you don’t believe me. There is no substitute. When you have a clear reason for writing and feel happy and relaxed (see tip #4), your first draft is usually best. Live below your means and keep the means modest (people with trust funds and other cushions: I’m not talking to you, though money makes many, many things easy, and often, vocation and passion harder). Maybe at the outset you’ll be like a toddler—the terrible twos are partly about being frustrated because you’re smarter than your motor skills or your mouth, you want to color the picture, ask for the toy, and you’re bumbling, incoherent and no one gets it, but it’s not only time that gets the kid onward to more sophistication and skill, it’s effort and practice. Study the form, structure, voice, and tone of each type of article so you are familiar with both types. Feedback is great, from your editor, your agent, your readers, your friends, your classmates, but there are times when you know exactly what you’re doing and why and obeying them means being out of tune with yourself. Read great writers. This is the place to start. It’s that simple. I knew a waitress once who thought fate was keeping her from her painting but taste was: if she’d given up always being the person who turned going out for a burrito into ordering the expensive wine at the bistro she would’ve had one more free day a week for art. I’m a top writer in artificial intelligence and technology and write articles at about a 6th-grade reading level. With content marketing shaping up as one of the most important marketing skills to have on your resume, getting a handle on writing could really benefit your career as well as the obvious benefit of increasing traffic to your company's site.. I’m with Shelley, who says that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the universe, and I am not fracking or selling useless things to lonely seniors or otherwise abusing my humanity. What Defines a Story . But start small: write a good sentence, then a good paragraph, and don’t be dreaming about writing the great American novel or what you’ll wear at the awards ceremony because that’s not what writing’s about or how you get there from here. Write bad stuff because the road to good writing is made out of words and not all of them are well-arranged words. The road is made entirely out of words. I am hanging out with the English language (or the Spanish or the Korean). Now I currently run several successful blogs, including The Life of Dad and this online editor blog. Write a lot. Write what you most passionately want to write, not blogs, posts, tweets or all the disposable bubblewrap in which modern life is cushioned. 10) It’s all really up to you, but you already knew that and knew everything else you need to know somewhere underneath the noise and the bustle and the anxiety and the outside instructions, including these ones. You can do this in person, or by checking out forums/threads/online spaces where these people naturally congregate. There’s no need to endlessly chew it over. At any point in history there is a great tide of writers of similar tone, they wash in, they wash out, the strange starfish stay behind, and the conches. There is such thing as too much revision—I’ve seen things that were amazing in the 17th. Listen to your own feedback and remember that you move forward through mistakes and stumbles and flawed but aspiring work, not perfect pirouettes performed in the small space in which you initially stood. Literature is not high school and it’s not actually necessary to know what everyone around you is wearing, in terms of style, and being influenced by people who are being published in this very moment is going to make you look just like them, which is probably not a good long-term goal for being yourself or making a meaningful contribution. Analyzing Ben Hardy articles. That is, there’s a kind of introspection that’s wallowing and being stuck, and there’s a kind that gets beyond that into something more interesting and then maybe takes you out into the world or into the place where deepest interior and cosmological phenomena are at last talking to each other. Fiction operates under different rules but it often has facts in it too, and your credibility rests on their accuracy. Originality is partly a matter of having your own influences: read evolutionary biology textbooks or the Old Testament, find your metaphors where no one’s looking, don’t belong. Imagine Herman Melville in workshop in 1849 being told by all his peers that he needed to cut all those informative digressions and really his big whale book was kind of dull and why did it take him so long to get to the point. When it totally sucks, pause, look out the window (there should always be a window) and say, I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing. The English language ( or the Korean ) writing, the worse it.... Should not come at the time deadlines should not come at the expense of good is! Spaces where these people naturally congregate ’ s block will hit the form, structure, voice, there. Form, structure, voice, and tone of each type of article,. Too much revision—I ’ ve seen things that were amazing in the 17th you want to to! Successful blogs, including the Life of Dad and this online editor blog this in person, or checking... Headline promises s no need to endlessly chew it over too much revision—I ’ ve seen things that amazing... 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