One key factor that separates mediocre writers from good ones (and even good from great) is the quality of their editing.

If you’re working for a big magazine or publishing house, you’ll have an editor who goes through your work, checks for any clumsy or ambiguous phrasing, and fixes any typos – but if you’re working on your first novel, or publishing posts to a blog, you’re almost certainly going to be on your own.

It’s hard to edit your own work. You might end up skipping editing altogether because you hate it – or you might spend hours trying to get a piece right. These eight tips will help you develop your editing skills:

#1: Don’t Edit While You’re Writing

You’ve probably heard this one time and time again: don’t stop to edit while you’re writing. It’s great advice, though many writers find it hard to stick to.

It’s fine to pause and correct a typo, or restart a sentence, while you’re creating the first draft – but don’t keep going back to delete whole sentences or paragraphs.

If you really struggle to write without editing, try Write or Die, which forces you to make forwards progress by deleting your words if you stop typing for too long.

#2: Put Your Work Aside for a Few Days

Try to build extra time into your writing schedule, so that you can let your work sit before editing. With a short piece like a blog post, a day away from it – or even a few hours – is enough. If you’ve written a whole novel, try to put it aside for at least a week or two before starting the editing process.

By doing this, you make it easier to see your work afresh. You’ll come up with new ideas, and you’ll find that you can spot chapters that don’t fit, plot holes, inconsistent characterization and other big-picture problems.

#3: Read Through in a Different Format

Physically turning your words into a different format can help you spot problems or mistakes more easily. You might want to print out a blog post before editing it, or transfer your novel manuscript onto an e-reader device.

Often, it’s useful to take a look at your work in its published form (or as close to it as you can get). If you’ve got a blog post, for instance, you might use your blog platform’s “preview” function to check it out. If you’re writing an email newsletter, you could test it by emailing it to your own account. Sometimes, you’ll notice problems that didn’t stand out before, such as too many short/long paragraphs or glaring typos.

#4: Edit for Structure and Content First

Too often, writers start their editing by polishing up every sentence – and then end up cutting out huge chunks of their material later. It’s much more efficient to do your big picture editing first: that means looking for:

• Chapters or sections that need to be cut out – perhaps they’re too advanced for the piece, or they’re a tangent to the main point
• Missing information that you need to add in, like a whole new section or chapter
• Scenes or sections that need to be radically revised

Major cuts, additions and rewrites need to happen before you start digging down into the individual sentences and words.

#5: Cut Out 10% of Your Words

Once you’re broadly happy with the shape and flow of your piece, it’s time to cut. Most writers over-write: we use more words than we need, and we weaken our argument or story in the process.

Do a word-count for your whole piece, and try to cut 10% of the words. If you’ve written an 800 word blog post, for instance, aim to cut it to 720. Look out for:

• Repeating the same point several times – unless you’re deliberately doing this as a rhetorical device, it’s probably unnecessary. Trust that your reader will get it the first time.
• Wishy-washy phrases like “in my opinion…” or “it is my belief that…” Occasionally these are warranted; often, you can simply cut them out.
• Unnecessary adjectives. Don’t tell us “John said loudly” if you can say “John shouted”.

#6: Use Spell-Check – but Use Your Eyes Too

Always run your work through a spell-checker. That might mean using a browser plugin, or simply writing in Word or another word processing program so that you can check for red wiggly lines.

Don’t rely on spell-check to catch everything, though. Some errors will slip through – missing words are a common one, as are homophones (words that sound the same but are spelt differently, like “which” and “witch”). Sometimes, spell-check will pick up on words that are actually correct – mine has some bizarre ideas about “its” and “it’s” – so don’t blindly follow every suggestion.

#7: Read Your Piece Backwards (or Slowly)

It’s tough to proof-read your own writing: by this final stage of editing, you’re so familiar with the words on the page that mistakes just slide past you. One trick for better proof-reading is to read backwards from the end of the piece.

If you find reading backwards too awkward, then try reading s-l-o-w-l-y. That might mean running a pencil along each line as you read, or increasing the font size so that you don’t see so many words at a time on your screen.

#8: Let it Go

Finally, to edit well, you need to eventually stop! If you find yourself taking commas out and putting them back in, or rewriting the introduction one way then changing it back, then you’re done: it’s time to put your work out into the world.

If you’re like most writers, you’ll never feel entirely confident about your work. You’ll have a nagging sense that it could still be better. But perfection is an unattainable target – so settle for good enough. Even if a few imperfections remain, a published piece is infinitely more useful to your readers than a piece that sits on your hard drive forever.

Do you have a great tip for editing? Add it in the comments below…

Ali Luke is a blogger, novelist and writing coach. If you’re trying to take your writing further, check out her post on 7 Habits of Serious Writers to find out how you could improve today.
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Not having a website or blog to call their own is one of the biggest mistakes a modern writer can make.

It’s shocking how many writers make it anyway.

Perhaps it’s the abundance of free solutions that lull writers into the false belief that they’re building something with long term, sustainable value, when the truth is they own nothing at all.

From social media hot spots such as Twitter and Facebook, to Web 2.0 properties like Tumblr and Posterous, writers can easily find free solutions that will allow them to easily hop online and get noticed. Unfortunately, those “free “ solutions carry the ridiculously high cost of holding those writers back.

Any writer who says they don’t need a website is wrong.

You don’t need a website to succeed at a baseline level, but if you expect to mine the maximum potential from the time you spend online, and nurture the writing career that’s in your head, then a website is non-negotiable.

A website is a MUST, but that website must also be built on a quality framework that is easy to install, simple to manage, and will help you get your work noticed by the greatest number of possible readers.

That makes the WordPress CMS the best possible choice for your website’s underlying structure.

You may think of WordPress as blogging software, since that’s precisely what it is. Yet WordPress also has everything needed to build a robust website that offers everything a modern writer needs to grow a healthy business and a lucrative writing career.

Best of all, WordPress is 100% free.

Here are 5 reasons why every modern writer MUST have a blog:

Blogs Are Prime Real Estate For Audience Bonding

You need readers.

Visitors mean nothing. It’s readers who will help you grow by buying or spreading your work, opting into your lists, telling their friends about who you are and what you do, leaving reviews of your work, and doing much of your marketing for you.

But you must turn your visitors into readers first.

Blogs simplify the process.

The most powerful element to blogging isn’t the ease of the software; it’s the human element that allows you to grow closer to your readers, and them to you.

Your blog is a place for your readers to get to know and like you. Since people like to do business with people they like, a blog makes that easier, whether your business is selling books or selling services.

Your Blog Makes List Building Easy

No matter what your business model, or your personal reasons for blogging, the key to maximizing the effectiveness of your time spent online is to concentrate on gaining and retaining subscribers.

If list building sounds too clinical or markety, think of building a list as building your fan club. This is a massively rewarding strategy, both because of the tangible direct response nature of having a list with fans who will respond to your emails, and with what you can learn from your market by paying attention to your list.

List, or “fan” building can work with any market.

My list at Ghostwriter Dad offers a free eCourse that teaches people how to make more money writing in less time. There is never anything to buy and there is about 75,000 words worth of free information. Whenever I have a new book about writing or social media, those subscribers are the first to know.

I have another list for my serialized fiction series, Yesterday’s Gone. This list is filled with “Goners,” or fans of the book. They get special chapters and exclusive content not available on Kindle. Whenever I have a new fiction book or short story, those readers are the first to know.

Two very different lists, both extremely helpful in nurturing my writing career.

Either list would be extremely difficult to build without a blog.

Your Website Will Give You a Place to Build and Store Your Written Assets

You’re a writer, with magic to be envied. You possess the rare skill of being able to create something from the depths of nothing. You can alter thinking, sway emotions, and paint pictures in your readers’ minds.

You can manufacture money from thin air and the assets you build, simply by moving your fingers across the keyboard.

But you must create your content first, then make sure you dock it in a safe harbor.

A blog gives you reason to create great content. Blog posts, newsletters, special reports, landing pages, viral videos, interviews, sample chapters for your books — you have no limit to what you can create.

A blog, more than any other tool, free or paid, will give you a reason to create content, and a place to keep it safe, visible, and easy to share.

Create enough content over a consistent period, and you will be able to repurpose and package those assets to establish streams of steady passive income.

Your Website Makes it Easy For Publishers, Readers and Clients to Find You

While there are some people who get bitten by the blogging bug and get a burning desire to start sharing every element of their lives, that’s not you.

You started out online because you wanted to build a writing career, and were smart enough to see that the digital trends were undeniable.

Mostly, you wanted to get noticed.

Whether you’re looking to get discovered so you can land a traditional publishing contract, establish an audience of readers who will be eager to buy whatever you write, or establish a stable of steady clients for your growing freelance business, a website makes it much easier for publishers, readers and clients to find you.

More importantly, an increasing number of publishers, readers and clients now expect writers to have a website or blog. If you don’t, you risk being seen as out of touch from word one.

Your Website Provides a Central Hub For Your Writing Career

Whatever else you do, or wherever else you might spend your time online, a website offers a central hub to your writing career.

Your Facebook is important, as is your time on Twitter. And of course, that author’s profile on Amazon has tremendous weight, but you’re only a digital sharecropper if you don’t own your own domain.

The common denominator for an overwhelming number of successful writers is this simple formula: they own their own domain and have established a blog.

Your blog is the sun; everything else in your online world should orbit around it.

You don’t have to be great to get going, but you must get going if you expect to be great. Without a website, you’re only cheating yourself, and your career potential. If the thought of managing your own domain seems overwhelming, you can start with a free solution at WordPress.Com. It isn’t what’s best, but you can do it today with a few clicks, so you have no reason not to dip your toe.

Read more by Sean Platt at GhostWriterDad.com. Get his free report “9 Website Building Mistakes You Should Avoid.”
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Claiming the word ‘writer’ for yourself can be a big step. You may have been writing all your life but do you actually call yourself a writer?

Know Thyself was inscribed on the ancient Greek temple of Apollo at Delphi. People would go there to seek knowledge of the future or to find revelation about themselves. The words were a reminder that the first step to truth is to look inside.

Fundamentally, writers write, they put words onto a page or screen. But there are other aspects to writers. Do you recognize yourself in these traits?

1 We are loners

Writing is a solitary art. Even writers who collaborate create their pieces separately and knit them together later. We are not naturally team players. To be a happy writer is to enjoy solitude for creation. Writers are often introverts in the sense that they are energized by time alone with their minds. They may love being with people but it tires and drains them. I spent many years thinking I needed to be a team player, that it was essential to being a rounded person. Then I did the Myers Briggs test and found that introversion is just a natural state for some of us and certainly more dominant in writers.

2 We want recognition

Writers have egos and our desire to see our words in print or type stems from this need to be recognized. We want the six figure book deal. We want to be on Oprah or the New York Times bestseller list. We want to write words that change people’s lives. We want to be read. For all that to happen, our writing needs to be out there in the world.

3 We are scared and doubt ourselves

We want people to read our words but at the same time, we fear criticism and negative reaction. We compare ourselves to others and we often come up short. We doubt that we are original or that people will even want to read our words. We worry that we have opened ourselves up too much to the world, and then we fret because we haven’t been truthful enough.

4 We are deeply creative but sometimes forget this

When I was working as a corporate IT consultant, I found my creative side withering and dying from lack of exercise. I wanted to write a novel but I couldn’t imagine even starting one. I didn’t believe I could find that creativity in myself. So I started saying an affirmation on the daily commute. ‘I am creative, I am an author’. I said that over and over, and gradually I began to explore ideas and start to write. Four years later, I have two novels available on the biggest bookstore in the world. Although we may spend years in the wilderness, we can resurrect that creativity.

5 We know execution matters

Ideas are abundant. They swirl in the air about us and we pluck them down. We form them into finished works. People talk to us about the ideas they have, for this book or that story, but they don’t execute on the idea. We write, and we finish what we started.

6 We are always improving

Writers are readers. We learn from others by their words and we constantly try to improve our own ways of expression. We take courses on how to improve our writing. Sometimes we spend more time on reading books about writing than we spend actually getting white on black. We are obsessed with understanding why this works and why that is successful and we put what we learn into practice.

7 We know there are dark places within

Inside us are memories, emotions and an imagination that runs deep. We go there to tap into the experiences that make our writing resonate. Sometimes what emerges may be violent or horrific, resonant in truth and raw in emotion. We write with the knowledge that most people feel these things but they don’t admit to themselves that they exist. We have the ability and the strength to write those words without apology.

Do you agree that these are truths about writers? Are there any more?

Joanna Penn is the author of thriller novels Pentecost and Prophecy. Her site TheCreativePenn.com helps people write, publish and market their books and has been voted one of the Top 10 Blogs for writers 2 years running. Follow Joanna on Twitter @thecreativepenn

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Writing a book is a big challenge. But there is another hurdle at the end: you have to launch your book. Danny Iny of  Firepole Marketing came up with a radical strategy of creating and launching a book when he created Engagement from Scratch. Read about his new strategy in this no-holds-barred interview with Mary Jaksch:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for the book, “Engagement from Scratch”?

A: It started with my own experience building Firepole Marketing, which I started really working on about a year ago, in January 2011.I read and studied everything that I could, and everything that I found about building and growing an audience seemed to assume that you’ve already got one; if you were starting from scratch, there really wasn’t a place for you to go and be pointed in the right direction.

Further down the line, as Firepole Marketing was starting to get some real traction, I wanted to create that sort of “jumping off point” for people who are getting started, but I noticed something interesting – there were a lot of successful people doing what I was doing, and we were all getting good results, so clearly our way worked – but then there were lots of other successful people who were doing different things, and also getting results, so clearly their way worked, too.

I realized that this isn’t a “one path up the mountain” sort of endeavor, and the only way that I could do it justice would be with input from a wide array of audience-builders, which is what I ended up doing with the book.

Q: The book is a great collection of individual articles. What’s your experience of putting together a multi-author book? Do you have tips or warnings?

A: Putting the book together was an amazing experience – I was really blown away by how helpful and considerate the contributors were, and by how much I learned from the the contributions that they sent me. At the same time, I learned that it’s a lot more work than it looks.

For this sort of book to be really good, each contribution has to be “meaty”, which means that you’re going to have to push back with the contributors asking for more content and more information. It also takes a lot of editorial and organization work to make it really flow, and that’s something that I hadn’t really accounted for in my initial timelines and projections.

Q: You’ve come up with a great mind map of how to create a book. Your first step includes writing a great book – and building relationships. Why is it important to build relationships?

A: Well, I should clarify that I came up with the content, strategies and ideas, but the actual map was designed by my friend Matt Tanguay at Fluent Brain. But yeah, the first step is to write a great book, and building relationships. The relationships are important because they drive everything else; for one, without relationships, this book would never have happened, because nobody would have agreed to contribute.

I didn’t build relationships with the intention of asking for something in return, but I did invest a lot in building relationships, right from the start (for example, with Guy Kawasaki – and having him on-board made a huge difference!). Even if I was writing a book on my own, I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the exposure, or resulting traction, if I didn’t have great people backing me every step of the way.

Q: Your second step is ‘Learn from others”. I’m especially interested in your strategy of research engineering other book projects. Can you please say more about how you went about that?

A: There’s a story about a disciple who goes to a Zen master and asks him to write down some advice for success in life. The Zen master takes a piece of paper, and writes the word “Attention”. The disciple says that he was hoping for a little more, so the Zen master takes the page, and expands the text to read “Attention! Attention! Attention!”

There’s a lot of wisdom in that, particularly in this day and age when so much happens in public; the first and most important step is to just pay attention to what people are doing, what you’re finding impressive or persuasive and why, and what results they’re seeing. The rest is reverse engineering, but honestly, that’s the easy part – the hardest part is to just pay attention in the first place.

Q: What was the one most critical thing you learned from others?

A: That there is no single insight or trick or strategy to success; rather, building something real is about learning, absorbing, integrating and synthesizing a lot of different insights.

Jim Collins explains this very well with the metaphor of a flywheel; you push the wheel and push the wheel, and each push adds a bit of momentum, until it’s spinning quickly and powerfully. You can’t point to a single push, though, that made the difference. It all comes down to committing yourself to buckle down and do an enormous amount of work – that’s the only way to really get substantial results in the big picture.

Q: Your third step is choosing your launch plan. What worked and what flopped in your launch?

A: It’s hard to answer that question with certainty, because it’s hard to say that results came from this tactic and not that one – they all kind of blend together. I can definitely point to some things that feel more successful and less successful (i.e. I fumbled them), though.

On the more successful side, I think having close to 30 guest posts on major blogs around the launch made a huge difference in terms of the initial spike of traction, and giving the book away for free was of course a cornerstone as well. I also had a very structured follow-up sequence in place that solicited feedback, shares, and reviews from people who had read the book, and I think that worked pretty well, too.<

In terms of stuff that I goofed, the top of the list would be my video trailers (I copied Tim Ferriss’s tactics instead of reverse engineering the strategy), and my Nominate Your Engagement Superstar contest (I live in Canada, and goofed by scheduling the contest for American Thanksgiving weekend). Oh well, live and learn. ;-)

Q: Step number four is to give yourself a lot more time than you think. The mind map mentions the Gantt chart in order to organize a project. What tips can you share?

A: The thing is that well experience a sort of Doppler effect with regards to our projections for how long things will take, the further into the future we’re expecting to do them.

There are lots of things that we have to take care of day in and day out, that don’t really get scheduled far in advance; there’s this doctor’s appointment, that meeting with the accountant, these phone meetings, that client engagement, and so forth. They add up to a big chunk of your week, and if I ask you how much time you have to work on a project next week, you’ll be able to tell me fairly accurately, because you know more or less what’s coming.

Looking a few months out, though, we don’t think of these things, and expect to get a lot more done than is probably realistic. We also don’t realize how many different things we may be planning to do in a given month, so creating a Gantt chart helps to visualize the timeline and see where there might be bottlenecks that could trip us up along the way.

Q: What about the actual launch week? What are your suggestions or warnings?

A: Heh, all I can say is that if you’ve done a good job of laying the groundwork, it’s going to be intense. Clear your schedule, don’t plan anything for that week that you don’t have to, and expect to spend your days answering commenters, fixing problems, and hitting refresh to see your stats go up. ;-)

Q: You offer the digital version of the book for free. What’s the rationale behind this strategy?

A:  They are low ticket items with terrible margins, so unless you’re in a position to sell tens of thousands of them, there isn’t a real financial up-side to selling a book. And realistically speaking, unless you have a significant platform already, you can’t count on sales figures like that.

At the same time, the relationship with the reader (and their opting in to an email list) is more valuable than the few dollars I’d get on a book sale, especially since I can probably get 15-20 people to download it for free for every one person that I could get to buy the book (selling a few hundred or even thousand copies is nice, but not that valuable ultimately, whereas having 5,000-10,000 people download it and subscribe to my list is worth a lot more to me).

Ultimately, my goal for this book is more to grow my audience than to sell lots of copies (though I think people who download it and like it are more likely to buy a copy – who wants to read 240 pages in a PDF?). That being said, if it were just an e-book, it wouldn’t be perceived as being as valuable. Also, the physical book just feels different, and I think that makes a difference for contributors, and for reviewers.

That’s my thinking behind it – I’m pretty sure that it will turn out to be either smart strategic thinking, or a gross error in judgment – one or the other. ;) The bottom line is that the business model of traditional book publishing is fundamentally broken, and this is just one example of authors getting creative about publishing.

Q: What was the most important thing you learned from creating and launching ‘Engagement from Scratch”?

A: Any big project is a marathon, not a sprint. Things will get difficult at times, and that’s okay. You’ll stumble and fall from time to time, and that’s okay, too – you just pick yourself up and keep on going. It’s the cumulative energy and momentum that you invest in the project that will ultimately determine its legacy.

Q: What are three main things that writers can learn from reading “Engagement from Scratch”?

A: If I had to boil the book down to three main takeaways that could each fit on a fortune cookie, I’d say that they are (1) Know your audience, (2) Create epic stuff, and (3) Get to work. :-)

Dany Iny is a co-founder of Firepole Marketing. You can read more great stuff by Iny on the Firepole Marketing blog. Click here to download the free version of Engagement from Scratch.

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I read a story a while back about a farmer who was sowing seeds by hand. He would bring his pouch of seeds, go out and start sowing. The farmer threw the seeds everywhere. At first, one would think that he is losing so much because he throws handfuls of seeds on the ground. To the extremely hungry, those seeds could make a decent meal. Why would he be throwing them away like that? But when you look at the big picture, the farmer really does lose handfuls of seeds, but in time he gains bounties more.

I was reminded of this story when I was out fishing with my girlfriend and her family. I’m not good at fishing, but I love the quiet atmosphere of the place.

The rules of the park were that you throw some type of bait that they provided in order to get the fish to come closer, and then you can then hook them with your fishing rods.

My girlfriend’s niece, was a little girl by the age of 4. When she got a hold of the bag of fish bait, she tore it open and got handfuls of the stuff and threw them out to the water.

A lot of us told her that throwing handfuls of bait was not the right way to do it. She then said that the reason why she threw a lot of the bait on the water was so a lot more fish would come closer and every one of us would catch one. She said the more bait, the better.

Wisdom from a 4-year-old

Do you really want to be a writer?

If you do, then you should be open to the fact that you’ll need to throw away lots of seeds. This means you need to be prepared for a lot of sacrifice on your end.

You should be ready to sacrifice money. As a writer, one of the best tools to have at your disposal is a blog. Getting your own domain name is going to cost money. Certain tools to market your blog cost money. Writing courses cost money. Getting professional web design can be costly, unless you’re willing to learn how to do it on your own.

Then there’s time. Time is golden, but you’re going to have to be ready to sacrifice a lot of your time to work on your writing. Say goodbye to long nights of sleep. Say goodbye to spending all day every day with your family, or hanging out with friends. You can still do these, but not as much as you would want to.

There’s a significant amount of sacrifice that you have to make if you want to be a writer.

So, do you really want to be a writer?

You’re not alone

But one thing that you have to know is that you’re not alone in this.

Writers everywhere also learn that they need to sacrifice time and money for doing what they love. They understand that they have to sow their seeds.

But it’s not just writers. Every one is involved. In order to succeed at something, everyone has to sacrifice some part of their old routine. Their old lifestyle. Their old habits.

I know a lot of people who had to sacrifice spending time with their families to work on other countries, to get jobs good enough to pay for their family’s needs.

I took up a  bachelor’s degree in Nursing when I went to college. I personally know hundreds of fellow nursing graduates who had to leave the country to work in greener pastures. Their biggest sacrifice is that they can’t spend as much time with their families as they want to.

How many seeds are you willing to sow?

With sacrifice done wisely though, comes great rewards.

Like the farmer who throws away handfuls of seeds across his farm, he earns bounties more in time.

So would all your hard work. All your sacrifices will bear more fruit than you’ve ever dreamed possible. You just have to make a few wise sacrifices at first.

This  will be your big dream reward. Whatever you want, a book deal, thousands of subscribers and readers, a teaching course that will let you earn money, anything. Not just a goal, but a dream that you would work your ass off for it to come true.

I also heard a passage from the Bible related to this.

He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. He who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

No seeds to sow

I loved reading stories as I was growing up. I’ve read books from Robert Ludlum, John Le Carre, Franklin W. Dixon and a whole lot more. I got back to my roots. I loved reading books as a child, and come high school I was writing my own fantasy/adventure short stories. Ten of them, actually. I titled them ‘Hollow Dreams’. That’s why I decided to get back to writing again.

But I had a problem.

There are lots of writing courses on the Internet. Courses that I couldn’t afford. My current writing job could only provide for food and rent, and some little savings.

But I wanted to learn more. I wanted to write better. I wanted to tell stories. The same stories that inspired me as a kid growing up surrounded by paperback novels. I decided to start sowing some seeds.

I tried learning how to write by reading and studying a lot of writers’ blog posts. I’ve also got back to reading A LOT of old books that I haven’t read yet. It may not be the easiest method, but it’s what I could obtain at the moment.

Journey to be a great writer

We’re all on our journey to achieve writer immortality.

Whether we take writing courses, or dissect other people’s writing, or read books, we’re all sowing our seeds. And the more seeds we spread across the soil, the more rewards we get, in time.

A writer’s job isn’t easy. There’s a lot of sacrifice involved. But these sacrifices help us grow and improve our trade, in order to give us the opportunity to live out the dreams we had as children.

How do you sow your seeds as a writer? Let’s share our experiences and struggles in the comments section below.

Josh Sarz is a Freelance Writer, Blogger and the founder of Sagoyism, which talks about Epic Content Marketing and Storytelling . He also likes punk rock and metal, among other things.

Isaac Asimov, one of the big three science fiction writers of the twentieth century, published over 500 books including novels, short story collections and non fiction, making him one of the most prolific writers of all time.

Asked by Writer’s Digest magazine for the secret to his prolific writing, Asimov said:

“I guess I’m prolific because I have a simple and straightforward style.”
~Isaac Asimov (500 books)

Could it really be that easy?

Write clearly, in a conversational voice

Writing clearly, in a simple and straightforward style allows you to write fast.

At the same time, when you write fast, you don’t stop to process your thoughts . You put them straight onto the page, in a simple and straightforward style.

Best of all, writing clearly should be the goal of every writer. Clarity is the cardinal rule of nonfiction writing, and it will almost always improve your fiction.

Write fast, and you’ll have a conversational tone. You’re writing as fast as you can put the words together, just like when you’re speaking.  This gives your words power and immediacy, engaging the reader.

Literary critics dismissed Asimov’s writing as colorless, with functional dialogue and a transparent style.   Readers disagreed, buying his books in the millions.

In response to the critics, towards the end of this life, Asimov wrote:

“I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing—to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics—Well, they can do whatever they wish.”
~Isaac Asimov (500 books)

Try to get your first draft down in 5-10 minutes

Writing fast improves your motivation to write.  If you know you’ve only got to sit down for five minutes to get a draft down, you’re more likely to sit at your desk and put pen to paper.

When you’re writing a first draft of a blog post, article, or scene, try to get your first draft down in five minutes.

Sean Platt, author of “How to Write an Article in Less Than 20 Minutes” has published 11 books in the past nine months.  He sets the following exercise:

“Get a timer and set it for five minutes. Think of a topic and write three prompts, these can be as short as a word or as long as a question. Start writing. Don’t stop until the timer goes off. Now read over what you wrote. Your writing is better than you thought it would be, right?

“This won’t seem easy until it finally is, but it will happen almost immediately. Again, don’t concern yourself with quality. You can always go back and edit, though you won’t need to clean up nearly as much as you think.”
~Sean Platt (11 books since March 2011)

Start with a question

Choosing a question to write from is the key to writing fast.  Get down the question, then focus on writing the answer.  No need to edit as you go, just write, as though you were giving your best possible answer to a friend.

How do you come up with a question?  If you’re writing a how-to article, make it the question you’ll be answering.  How do I find a holiday home in the Algave? How do I get an Angling license for the Grand Union Canal? How do I train a dog to sit on command?  The more specific the question, the better.

If you’re writing fiction, use the story question for your scene.  Or choose three words as the pith of your scene, and write from there.

Use established structures and plots

When you start writing fast, use established structures for the form you’re writing in.  Writing what you enjoying reading will help here (Asimov read science fiction from the age of 10).

As you learn to write fast in an established structure, you will gain the knowledge and experience you need to create your own structures and plots.

Romance novelist Barbara Cartland holds the Guiness World Record for the most novels written in a single year, having written 23 novels in 1983. She says:

“You can’t lose if you give them handsome highwaymen, duels, 3-foot fountains and whacking great horses and dogs all over the place.”
~Barbara Cartland (280 books)

Treat your writing as a craft

Anyone who knows how to do something well can work faster than those who are still learning.  Devote time to learning writing skills. Read books and blogs about writing. Attend writing classes.  Apply what you’ve learned to you writing. The more you learn, the faster you’ll be able to write.

Writing is a craft, so take time to edit after you write.

“I have always tried to write in a simple way, using down-to-earth and not abstract words.” ~ Georges Simenon (500 books)

Know your motivation for writing – and keep it with you as your write

You will only write if you enjoy writing.

Writing fast makes writing more enjoyable. Rather than wrenching out words, you let them flow from your fingers.

Knowing why you write will also increase your motivation. Do you love telling stories? Do you want to earn a living as a writer? Are you driven by the search for truth? Or is fame the name of your game?

Whatever your reason for writing, even if you have mixed motives, search it out, and keep it close.  It will come in handy on those days when you need an extra boost to get you sitting at your writing desk.

“Infatuated, half through conceit, half through love of my art, I achieve the impossible working as no one else ever works.”
~ Alexandre Dumas (277 books)

Write Every Day

When you’re motivated, you’ll write every day.  When you write every day, you’ll increase your motivation to write.

Some writers find they lose momentum if they don’t write every day.  Others find it better to take a break from writing every so often.  I find I lose energy to write if I don’t let myself take a break from writing one or two days a week. I usually take my break at the weekend.

“How many words a day do I write? Between six and seven thousand. And how many hours does that take? Three on a good day, as high as thirteen on a bad one”
~ John Creasey (564 books)

Never Give Up

Children’s writer Enid Blyton published over 700 books.  Like Asimov, she was criticised for her simple, earnest style.

Her writing was an immediate hit with the British public, yet BBC executives banned her work from being dramatized for radio from the 1930s to the 1950s, describing her style as “stilted and longwinded”.

Blyton continued to write and publish books until her death in 1968.

“The best way to treat obstacles is to use them as stepping-stones. Laugh at them, tread on them, and let them lead you to something better.”
~ Enid Blyton (753 books)

In the decade up to 2010, she remained in the top-ten best selling authors, with sales of nearly 8 million copies in the UK worth £31 million ($48 million).

How Much Do You Need to Write?

To write 100 books (75,000 words per book) over the next 30 years, you need to be writing 1,000 words per day (writing 5 days a week, 50 weeks per year). At a brisk but comfortable pace, that’s an hour a day.

If you want to write 100 books in the next 10 years, that’s 3,000 words a day.

Being prolific is closer to possible than you might have believed.

David Masters is a freelance writer and storyteller helping the world tell powerful stories at inkably.

When my kids were in middle school they got a lot of make-work for homework and classwork, stuff that kept them very busy but that steered them away from real creativity and by proxy, real learning.  This make-work gave the illusion that students were busy and oh so productive. Wrong. What they were really doing was chasing their tail—in other words: stagnating.

Being busy, compulsively busy even with journaling and writing and revising does not always spell productivity. As far as I’m concerned it’s a form of stagnation which is worse than writer’s block. Why? Because you have the illusion that you’re being productive—just like my kids with all that make-work in middle school.

This is my story about how to avoid stagnation. Actually, it is a post about growth.

I love getting a piece of writing to work. And by work I mean flow—which actually implies that I’ve stepped back and let the words—the work—happen. My fear, on the other hand, would like to take credit for working a piece to death and, in the process, grinding my creativity to pieces. It’s true. I try not to let my fear do my writing for me anymore. Sometimes I succumb. It’s usually the result of comparing my work to someone else’s. I would have hoped to have grown out of that by now but, oh well. If I share my experience with you it will help me, too. So, here goes:

My cautionary tale

I was the kind of writer that went out and found the right words. Really dug for them. I could spend hours researching a term. There is a place for this type of finishing-touch treatment and—lo and behold—it comes somewhere in the final stages of editing. In other words, it happens best, for me anyway, at the end, after the bulk of writing (story finding) is complete.

If I go out and dig for words too quickly, or scour my brain or dictionary for the perfect metaphor before I’ve found the real story I’m writing, I go insane (and eat too much candy). Once I’m in the insane place I keep trying this approach. Over and over. The insanity comes, not only in the seeking of the perfect words but after I’ve stepped back and realized the words I’ve chosen don’t fit or mean anything to me. If you’ve ever gone on a binge of any kind, you know what I mean.

The holding-on problem

But because I worked so hard and dug so deep for a string (gossamer) of beautiful (pulchritudinous) words, I’m likely to not want to let go of them—ever. I start trying to find ways to keep a certain sentence, to mold the story around a turn of phrase. I often fall into the trap of overdoing the flow part.

Well, yeah.

That’s the flip side.

It’s what happens if every writing session is about letting my mind and pen just go wherever they want, all my work turns into a disjointed slew that requires hours of dissection. So instead of finding the perfect words out there in the dictionary, I’m on a treasure hunt across 10 new journals I’ve penned. I may look busy. But I’m spinning (in place).

Same stagnation, different disguise.

Granted, I’ll unearth a few gems waiting to be polished (or maybe they come ready to use). But the time I spend untangling the jungle of roots (beginning of ideas) instead of growing those ideas is more stagnation. I waste more time and energy trying to surgically extract the phrases that work from the stuff surrounding it. I get bogged down, pent up and tired. The joy of sitting down to accomplish turns into make-work that keeps me from moving forward. For a writer, this is stagnation.

So what to do? Here’s what I do:

Be nice (to myself). Understand that when I sit down to write I’m treading two paths: I’m simultaneously finding the story and relaying the story with language that moves the story along. In the beginning and middle, I keep my eyes on the finding the story, not on finding the words.

Listen (to myself). I resist the urge to be seduced by teachers and books and workshops and websites that tell me to focus too soon on technique. (My ego likes those.) Instead, I pay attention to teachers who say simple things like: “Keep going.”

Trust the process. I don’t get bogged down in “the language” and “the turn of phrase” and “the big brush strokes” and any number of other writer catch phrases I may have heard or read about. That comes later. And later always comes as long as I dedicate myself to the process in the correct order: Write first, edit (word find, cut, revise, finesse) second.

Remember. Understand that I do have a story to tell. As do we all.

Meredith Resnick’s personal essays have been published in Newsweek, Los Angeles TImes, PsychologyToday.com, JAMA, Culinate, Santa Monica Review and many more. Visit her at The Writer’s [Inner] Journey, a finalist in the 10 Top Blogs for Writers Contest 2011/12, Meredith is mesmerized by all facets of the creative process.

These days, if you want to make it as a writer, you need to do more than just write well.

It used to be enough, but …

Before we all went digital, every writer’s dream was to be discovered by a publishing house. The publisher would then take care of editing, production, publicity, public relations, distribution – in fact, nearly everything, apart from the act of writing.

Now, aspiring writers are free to publicize their stuff on blogs, in digital magazines, or in eBooks. They can control when and how their material is published, how much it’s sold for, and how it’s publicized.

With this freedom comes a challenge. We need to take up some of the tasks that used to be the domain of publishers.

The most important task is to connect with readers.

How to do it?

We can learn from how publishers connect writers with readers. Publishers get the writer’s face out there any way they can: they arrange interviews with magazines and  TV programs, create news items, and organize book signings and speaking engagements.

You need to put YOUR face out there.

Yes, this can feel scary. But it doesn’t have to be. Learning to create videos can be a lot of fun!

Watch the video below… (if you’re reading this by email, click here to watch the video)

If you want to learn how to create videos in a fun and easy way, join our Bootcamp: How to Blog with Video. It’s a 2-week interactive course.

We start on Saturday, 21 Jan.  Click here to to find out more.

With the advent of writing communities on such networking sites as Twitter and Facebook and half a thousand forums and Nings, writers are perhaps more social and less solitary than at any time in our history.

This brings its fair share of both benefits and drawbacks, since our easy access to other writers—both those who are striving to be published and those who have a dozen bestsellers under their belts—causes inevitable comparisons.

Are we as good as they are?

Are they as good as we are?

Let’s explore what we can gain from answering these questions, as well as the pitfalls to avoid.

Cons

Jealousy: Easily, the most destructive con of comparison is that of jealousy. Sometimes this jealousy is the simple result of having read a book that spun its tale with such gossamer characters and seamless themes that we were left astonished.

We look at this brilliant author’s perfect prose, and we hate them just because they’re so much better than us. Or perhaps a writing buddy has just nailed a plum contract with the Agent of the Year. What did she do to deserve that honor, especially when—let’s be honest here—her writing leaves a lot to be desired compared to ours?

Jealousy is a flaw common to the vast majority of writers (due largely to the next con on our list), but it’s one that gets us exactly nowhere. The sooner we can stand up to our feelings of jealousy, put them behind us, and work toward being genuinely happy for our fellow writers, the more content and the more productive we’ll be.

Because, let’s face it, there’s always someone who’s better, richer, or luckier than we are. Jealousy is a never-ending melodrama of pain and pettiness.

Inferiority: Perhaps the reason jealousy is so prevalent among authors is that it almost always follows on the heels of its kissing cousin: inferiority. Very few writers are able to maintain perfect confidence in their skill.

When we run across a writer whose prose is more effortless than ours, whose characters are more realistic, whose paychecks are larger, and whose accolades are louder, we can’t help but compare. And when we find ourselves wanting, we either want to plot laborious and exhaustive murder for the object of our comparison, or we want to crumple in a corner and bawl at our general wretchedness. Sometimes both.

In one sense, this chronic inferiority complex is actually a positive thing, since it keeps us honest. As Orson Scott Card put it in How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, “Writers have to simultaneously believe the following two things: The story I am now working on is the greatest work of genius ever written in English. The story I am now working on is worthless drivel.”

Maintaining humility in our work is crucial to our genuineness as artists. But we can’t take this too far. We have to be able to reach a place of objectivity from which we can honestly compare our work to other writers, glean what we can from that comparison, or, if there’s simply nothing to be gained (as would be the case if we, say, compared the latest advance on our books to Stephen King’s), shrug it off as the inconsequentiality it is.

Pros

Inspiration: Comparing ourselves to other writers isn’t all bad. So long as we keep the downfalls in mind and are prepared to avoid them, we can actually gain a number of benefits from considering our fellow writers and how we measure up against them.

Honestly, can you imagine living entirely segregated from writerkind?

That would mean no books to read.
No fellow crazies to understand our quirks and obsessions.
No writerly energy to feed off.

We gain our inspiration from the art of others, from hearing about our writing buddies’ struggles, and from bouncing ideas back and forth.

If I were to write a thank you note to every author I’ve read, loved, and inevitably compared myself too, I probably wouldn’t have time to finish my next novel. Because most of us write the kind of books we enjoy reading, we are constantly reading books that are similar to our own. We recognize similar elements, compare them, and learn how to improve our own characters, plot, and prose as a result.

It’s a win-win situation, because who’s to say our mentors may not someday read one of our stories and find some similarity that brings that next epiphany to their writing?

Motivation: Once we get over the crumpling and crying brought on by our sense of inferiority in comparing ourselves to great writers, our next step is to rise from the ashes, pen in hand, motivated to blot out the very reason for our inferiority. The brilliance of this other author isn’t a boulder to crush us; it’s a mountain to scale.

Perhaps today we’re not good enough to be mentioned in the same breath with our heroes, but, you know what? If they can do it, so can we!

Reading great writers and comparing their brilliant stories to my own has been one of the single greatest factors in motivating me to keep writing, keep learning, keep trying. Nothing is more exciting to the dedicated writer than reading good fiction. Good stories excite us and drive us forward. We close the covers on a good book, and the first thing we want to do (after buying the sequel) is run to our keyboards and funnel all that inspiration and motivation into our own writing.

As with so many things in the writing life, successfully comparing ourselves to other writers is all about balance. If we can tamp a lid on the cons and embrace the pros, we can use the success of our fellows to launch ourselves to even greater heights.

It should be the goal of every writer to be comparison worthy. Hearing someone say, “I wish I could write as well you,” isn’t only the highest of compliments, it’s also a sign you’re giving back to the writing community the benefits you drew from it yourself.

About the Author: K.M. Weiland is the author of the historical western A Man Called Outlaw and the medieval epic Behold the Dawn. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, her book Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, and her instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.
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Readers are short on time.

So when someone starts reading your article, you have just a few seconds to draw her in and convince her to keep going. The same applies to a query letter — you have only a sentence or two to grab the editor and make him want to finish reading your pitch.

Remember, your articles and queries are competing with TV, Internet surfing, chores, administrative tasks, meetings — not to mention hundreds of other pitches and articles. To help you draw the busy, distracted reader into your writing, I’ve compiled my five best tips.

1. Start with a quote.

Imagine starting an article on infidelity like this:

“I knew I never should have trusted my best friend,” says Sarah Johnson of Lawrence, Kansas.

A quote that surprises readers, entices them, or leaves just a little to the imagination is a great way to keep their eyeballs on the page. Just be sure not to overuse this tactic: It’s so easy to use that many writers are tempted to rely on it for all their articles, and editors do notice if you’re a one-note.

How to get this magical quote? The more you practice interviewing, the better you’ll get at eliciting great quotes from your sources. Write up a list of questions, but don’t stick to the list — use it as a guideline, but ask other questions as you think of them during the conversation. You’re more likely to get a source talking freely if you approach the interview as a conversation than if you fire questions at her from a list shotgun-style.

2. Jump into the action.

Too many writers start off their queries and articles by hemming and hawing, giving too much background, and generally boring the reader. One trick professional writers use is to simply lop off the first paragraph or two of their piece so that it starts right in the middle of the action.

For example, say you’re writing about your experience having a heart attack. Instead of explaining what happened to you starting at the beginning or describing your health status previous to the heart attack, start with yourself being wheeled into the emergency room with medical workers swarming around you. For example:

“Code Blue! Code Blue!” Those were the last words I heard in my delirium before I went under — and when I woke up, I found myself in a hospital bed, tethered to machines with tubes sprouting from my arms. I’d had a heart attack while I was getting ready to leave for work that morning.

3. Use a startling statistic.

If you were shocked by a statistic, chances are your readers will be, too. So if parents of only children and five times happier than parents of multiple kids, or bullying victims are 8 times more likely to commit suicide (I just made those up), be sure to put that somewhere in your opening paragraphs.

4. Find a compelling anecdote.

This is one of the best ways to start an article, and is related to my tip to jump into the action. Many women’s and health magazines start a good portion of their articles with a personal anecdote as a matter of course.

An anecdote can come from someone in the magazine’s target demographic, or from yourself if you’re part of the mag’s demographic. They’re easy to find, too…think of what kind of anecdote would best illustrate your topic, and ask around on relevant forums and source-finding services like Help a Reporter for people who have been through that experience.

Here’s the lede I used on an article about perfectionism for Oxygen magazine:

Elisabeth Andrews, a fitness instructor in Bloomington, Indiana, used to get anxious before every class and worry that she would forget her routine. “Then one day, when the class was especially packed, we were doing a stretch with our arms in the air and I loudly told everyone over the microphone to ‘Keep your head between your ears,’” Andrews recalls. “Everyone laughed so hard, including me, and it turned out that a lot of people felt more comfortable asking questions after I had shown my imperfection. As a result I was able to be a better leader and connect with my class.”

A personal anecdote like this helps the reader relate to the situation you’re writing about and makes him want to keep reading.

5. Use specific language.

Readers are drawn in by precise language and strong phrasing that gets your point across — not vague generalities. For example, when I pitched an article about health-hazard clothing, I didn’t write:

If your shoes are too small, they can hurt your feet.

Instead, I wrote:

If you’re teetering around in too-tight Manolos, you can get hit with foot woes ranging from simple soreness to bunions.

See how many specifics I used? A brand name instead of the general “shoes.” “Teetering” instead of just “wearing” or “walking.” “Soreness” and “bunions” instead of merely “hurt.”

Here’s another example: This is the lede to a query that led to an article in the now-defunct $1/word market Zillions:

It can happen to even the savviest shopper: The Levis you bought disintegrate after just one washing, or maybe that Game Boy cartridge isn’t nearly as exciting as it looked in the ad. Don’t toss your new purchase and hope for better luck next time — write to the company and tell them what you think!

I could just as easily have written:

It can happen to even the savviest shopper: The jeans or toys you bought aren’t good quality. Don’t toss your new purchase and hope for better luck next time — write to the company and tell them what you think!

Do you agree that the second version is weaker and more likely to cause the reader to give up and move on to more interesting things? In the first version, by using brand names and giving concrete examples of what happens to those products (“disintegrate after just one washing” and “isn’t nearly as exciting as it looked in the ad”), I help the reader form a clear vision of the situation in her mind — and keep her reading.

Have you ever used these tactics, and if so, how did they work? What tricks do you have for drawing readers in to your articles, and editors into your queries? Please post your tips in the Comments below so we can all learn from them!

Linda Formichelli, a WTD Top 10 finalist for 2011, is the co-author of  the Renegade Writer blog. Together with Carol Tice of Make a Living Writing, Linda is offering their popular Freelance Writers Blast Off group mentoring program in January  to help new writers skyrocket their earnings in 2012 [aff link].

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