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How to detect the write error
If you earn income as a writer or use writing as a marketing tool, you know how difficult writing can be sometimes. I started writing for my website and my newsletter a few years ago. Sometimes two or three weeks passed between articles. Sometimes writing would be torture. Then one day I caught the typing error.
Now I write two or three articles a day. I don't have to fight for theme ideas. I have thousands of good ideas to choose from. Instead, I am now struggling to limit the scope of the areas that I will write about. What happened to cause this change? I caught the typing error.
Typing error is contagious, and by reading this article, you will catch it too!
How to choose a topic
- Use a three-ring notebook as an idea file.
Your idea notebook should have two parts. The first part are sheets on which you write down your ideas each time they occur to you.
Where do ideas come from? Everywhere! The ideas can come from the television news or from any television program. They can come from the web. Ideas can come from a conversation with a friend.
Once you learn to brainstorm, your idea notebook will be filled with great ideas and research information for article and book topics. No need to plagerize or copy other people's work. Your article should not be like the material you have an idea about because it has the "writer's attitude." Below are some thoughts from a person with the attitude of the writer.
- I can better explain the subject.
- I know more on the subject.
- I do not agree with this source.
- I can approach that subject from another angle.
- I can develop more on that topic.
- I can write a more concise article.
- I can divide the information into short, more readable articles.
- I can write a more complete article.
- I can write a more up-to-date article.
When you come up with an idea, write it down in the first part of your idea notebook. If the idea comes from an article, tear off the article, poke holes in it, and store it behind a tab in the second part of your idea notebook.
- A surprising source of ideas on topics is the material you wrote earlier. You can apply the attitude of the writer to your own articles.
How to write the article
The second hardest part of the writing process is writing the article.
First, make an outline. If you are going to write the whole article in one go, it is not necessary that the outline be in writing, you can keep it in your head. If you are writing an article or a long book, create a written outline.
- Sometimes, when an idea comes to mind, I can visualize the final article. I want to put it on paper before the vision disappears, so I stop what I'm doing and write the article right away. This is when writing is extremely easy. I call this "flow."
Do not publish the first part of the article until you have completed all the parts, or at least several of the parts. When working on later parts of a multi-part article, you may need to make some changes to earlier parts.
Your first draft does not have to be complete. Just write down the main ideas. You can go back and develop it later.
Your first draft doesn't have to have the correct spelling and grammar. Just write the words on paper (or on disk). The first draft may not be perfect, but having an imperfect first draft is much better than not having anything perfect.
Come back later and review your first draft. Make sure it contains all the information and ideas you wanted to include in the article. But keep in mind that almost any topic is infinite. You should limit the scope of your article based on the purpose of the article and the practicality of doing the research required for a more comprehensive article.
I feel like it is very important to let someone else read your article. You may have spelled something confusing or requiring for the reader to have some knowledge or experience that they are not expected to have.
- If your article is for an audience that is expected to already have some knowledge of the subject, limit the explanations of the basic concepts. You have to limit explanations at some point or the article will be too long and boring for your target audience. Go back and correct your spelling and grammar, but don't try for perfection. I see spelling and grammar mistakes in magazines, newspapers, and on television all the time. If all writers waited until the spelling and grammar were perfect before publishing their work, we would have nothing to read.
I feel it is important to put your article aside for the next day and then read it again. But don't take the issue to the extreme. No matter how many times you reread your article, you can always find something to change. Don't try perfection. Your goal is to create an article that communicates the information and ideas you intended.
If you're not a skilled writer, keep learning by studying a page or two each day from a grammar book like Rebecca Elliot's Painless Grammar With your idea notebook, the attitude of the writer, and the ability to recognize when an article is good enough, you have the tools to be a productive writer. Have you caught the typing error?