Freelance Writing

Read This Now – It’s for YOU!

Read this because it’s for you – yes, YOU!

You’re here because you write and are looking for some perspective and resources. I know that because this is a writing site and blog – easy enough for me to know who you are.

Now ask yourself this question – Why are you reading this NOW?

It’s a dominating, eye-catching headline for this post so you read the first line above – the first line reiterates this post is for you again. Now we are getting into why you’re still reading this post.

You’re still reading this post because the headline caught your eye, you managed to get engaged with the first line of the post and you became intrigued or hooked just enough to continue reading.

My Point is Simple!!

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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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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What’s It All About Alfie? or Why Bother With Good Writing?

No pop metaphysical descriptions here on the life of a rake, my son is too young to really appreciate the humour and pathos in Alfie but he put me on the spot during half-term with some rebellious comments on homework.

“Why do I have to write good stuff anyway Dad?”

At the time I was busy with the hectic shuffling that ocurrs around dinner time so my initial response was along the lines of “Because I’m your Dad and I say so, now just get it done!”

During dinner, we talked about this a little more not least as #1 heir was in something of a strop over why he had to do some homework when his younger sister did not.

As I’m increasingly learning, the questions I get from my offspring are rarely less than thought provoking. I can picture my nan in heaven looking down with a knowing smirk on her face and thinking how poetic justice is particularly after all the grief I gave her when I was a sprog.
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Aristotle, Aristotle was a Bugger for the Bottle….and Brainstorming

“Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle and could drink you under the table.”

Monty Python

Brainstorming new ideas for scribbling is a key part of the composition process. In a practical sense, brainstorming is essential when you have a commission to produce 40 articles on the same topic and by the time you’ve gotten to the 10th you’ll be scraping the barrel for off the top of your head approaches.

Now personally, if I drink I know perfectly well that there is an answer lying at the bottom of the bottle, it’s just I’ve always been too drunk to read it and certainly never rememebered anything the morning after.

Aristotle, if Monty Python are correct, certainly was able to read the answer because he came up with an excellent summary for brainstorming that is as relevant today as it was a couple of thousand years ago when he wrote about Rhetoric.

Braoadly he came up with five main ideas to use:

Definition
Comparison and Contrast
Relationship
Testimony
Circumstance

I’m going to cover definition here in this posting but we’ll come to the others in future postings.

Definition

For a definition you can simply reach for a decent dictionary but there are other ways you can approach determining a definition by asking questions about what something is and how it interacts.

For instance:

Blesse or Blessay?

Having an idyllic weekend i.e. no kids, I was able to do all the man type stuff normally reserved for such rare times. Watch rugby, drink beer, wake up with a hangover at what ever time of the day I damn well please!

After chopping a ton of firewood I retired to my living room and the mansize TV and slapped on “The Longest Day”. There is a line in the movie “Blesse mon couer avec une langeur monotone” and in English “Wound my heart with a monotonous langour”. Blesse being the French word for wound (pronounce the last “e” as “ay” or in other words as you would Blessay.

Now Blessay is not in the English dictionary … yet!

My television fare into the late hours was Stephen Fry’s QI and as coincidence would have it, I had drifted over to his blog for a read as he is also one of my favourite authors. Blessay is Stephen’s corruption of Blog and Essay to describe his blogging efforts. If he’s using Blessay as a word, surely it can only be a matter of time before it finds its way into some Oxford type dictionary?

Essay or Blessay writing can be fun and simple to do. I write them virtually every day for my own amusement and to practice with a medium I think many writers employ as a development arena for good ideas.

Here is a summary of Supaproofread’s advice on writing essays and you can find the full info on their site here:

Plan your work early – I think this is aimed at essay writers who are students working to assignments but I also find it applies when I have an idea; ideas zip around at neural speed so write it down as soon as you can before you lose it;
Understand the question – my old law lecturer and I still meet up for the occasional brain cell hammering session and I mention him as he used to write “RTFQ” quite a lot on my papers – RTFQ stands for “Read The F*****g Question!” – if in doubt ask for clarification before you head off in the wrong direction;
Organise your Research & Thoughts – again writing your ideas and reference materials down on a blank piece of paper will help you get everything into perspective and visualise how the essay will flow from point to point – I use a blank sheet of paper regularly and you will find me carrying around a hardback A4 notebook just for this purpose;
Short is Sweet – unless your name is Stephen Fry, don’t use a long word when a short one will do. If you are familiar with a word and understand its application in your particular context, that’s fine but otherwise you are on a slippery slope which only results in loss of credibility and a poor reception for your work; and
Stay On Topic – this is my own opinion, and it may seem obvious but veering away from topic is anaethema unless the direction you take is a logical extension of the ideas that have been developed and presented earlier. Sentences are units of sense, paragraphs also as they develop an idea which flows into the next while the essay stands as a coherent piece presenting your ideas as a unified whole – going off at a tangent is something reserved for geniuses or for your own fun so stick to your brief.