Art of Writing - 2/43 - Write to Done

Beyond The Basics: 5 Ways To Take Your Writing Further

Do you want to take your writing further?

It’s important to learn the basics of writing well, but at some point, you need to add nuance to your words and depth to your message.

Here are five ways to take your writing further.

1. Go deeper into yourself

We are complicated people, you and I. We have depths which no one has yet seen. We have demons roaming in our minds and dark things nestling inside our hearts. The aspects we keep hidden can be the fuel for some powerful writing but mostly, we’re too scared to let them out.

But if you want to take your writing further, you need to mine yourself first. Take your past failures, your fears, your dreams and pour them into your writing. Give of yourself and the words will reward you.

2. Tackle bigger themes

The bite-size internet (and indeed, list posts like this!) means we tend to skim the surface of meaning a lot of the time. There is a tendency to rush content out the door without delving as far into it as we could. There isn’t enough time to debate the deep and meaningful topics in this fast-paced world, right?

But actually, people are crying out for meaning and emotional resonance, and you can give it to them.

When you’re writing, decide on the deeper levels of meaning you want to illustrate. For example, I write action-adventure thrillers which at one level are about hunting down bad guys and blowing stuff up, but I also explore the question of whether there is a God, science vs. faith and whether miracles happen. Writing on two levels gives us a way to connect more powerfully with people.

3. Use free-writing

Free-writing is a short period of time, say 10 minutes, where you write from your own stream of consciousness, or around a specific topic. Don’t censor yourself, because you won’t be sharing the words in this format. Just let your mind and fingers go free.

Some recommend writing by hand as it accesses different parts of the brain, but I don’t think it matters. The important thing is not to stop writing, even if all you write is ‘this is terrible’ over and over again.

Set a timer and just write. When the timer goes off you can go through the text and see if there are any ideas in there you can use. Whatever happens, save the writing, because I guarantee that you’ll go back to it later and be surprised.

4. Copy the greats

Austin Kleon’s book ‘Steal like an Artist’ contains some fantastic advice, and I particularly liked this quote.

Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find yourself. ~ Yohji Yamamoto

Find the books you consider great and copy their style. Yes, actually copy their words out by hand or by typing them. You’re not doing this to plagiarize, you’re doing this to learn.

In copying, you will see how great writers approach aspects of writing and you will notice things that you wouldn’t if you just read the words. You can also use this as a jumping off point for free-writing, as above. Riff off their words and create your own. Use their style to expand your writing repertoire.

5. Rest your work for longer

One of Stephen King’s tips in ‘On Writing’ is to put your manuscript away after you have finished it. Print it out and put it in a drawer until you have forgotten enough of it that you can return to it with fresh eyes. Only then are you emotionally removed enough to be able to edit freely.

I believe we should do this with any piece of writing that we want should resonate with an audience, be it a guest blog post, or a letter/email to a loved one.

When you take the writing out again, you can edit but also add layers to the work around the themes you want to illustrate. You can make the work richer and more resonant. You can refine your word choice. This will make the writing stronger and you will have put more of yourself into it.

So take the challenge and go deeper into your writing craft. You will see the benefits in your own artist’s journey and your readers will thank you for it.

How do you go deeper into your writing? Please do share in the comments below.

About The Author:
Joanna Penn is the Amazon bestselling author of the ARKANE thrillers, Pentecost, Prophecy and Exodus. Her site for writers www.TheCreativePenn.com has been voted one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers 3 years running and offers articles, audio and video on writing, publishing and book marketing, plus the free Author 2.0 Blueprint.

Image: Woman running courtesy of Bigstockphoto.com

Top 10 Blogs for Writers 2012 – The Winners

When we asked you to nominate your favorite writing blog as one of the top 10 blogs for writers, we got a huge response! Great to see how passionate readers are about their favorite writing blog.

As you’ll see there are some previous winners, as well as some talented new bloggers in the top 10 of 2012.

How were the winners selected?

Initial qualification: A site must have been nominated more than once by multiple individuals. If someone nominated more than one blog, only the first nomination was counted. Valid nominations needed to include the URL and give a reason why the nominated blog should be considered.
Contest criteria: In order to be considered, a blog needed to be a writing blog. In order to qualify, at least 50% of posts needed to be about writing and not about freelancing, business, publishing etc.
Blog-based analysis: Reader involvement: Comment numbers per post accounted for 15% of the total score. The number of nominations accounts for 15% of the total score. Number of shares on social media per post accounted for 15%. These three blog-based factors make up 45% of the final score.
Quality of posts: Educational, useful, engaging, and discussion-creating posts were rated higher than self-promotional posts. The quality of posts accounts for 55% of the final score.

And the winners are …

Jeff Goins Writer

Positive Writer

The Creative Penn

Make a Living Writing

The Write Practice

Live Write Thrive

Moody Writing

The Romance University

The Renegade Writer

The Writers [Inner] Journey

Congratulations to all the winners!

The badge of distinction: If you are a winner, display the badge you see above on your blog and link the badge back to this page.

Readers, be sure to check out these awesome blogs!

And please help spread the word. Click the social media buttons to share this post with friends and fans.

We’ll be inviting the winners to guest post on WTD so that all our readers can get to know and enjoy these excellent bloggers.

Mary Jaksch, Chief Editor, Write to Done

How to Write About Yourself

how to write about yourself

“So, tell me a little about yourself …”

Don’t cha just hate it when someone says that to you? Where do you even begin?

But there’s something even worse.

And that’s when someone asks you to write something about yourself.

Do you feel the panic setting in? If so, you’re just like most of us.

Even though we may consider ourselves writers, most of us prefer to write about other things—and other people.

But you won’t be able to dodge this bullet forever. At some point in your life you’re either going to have to do it—for a job perhaps—or you will choose to do it—for a memoir, essay or blog post.

Here are a few things to consider:

Know your boundaries

If you are going to write about yourself, particularly online, expect that whatever your write will be shared well beyond your intended audience and that it will be around forever.

If you don’t want a prospective employer—or your mother-in-law—to read or otherwise find out about it, don’t write about it.

Seems simple, doesn’t it?

But we all know someone who did or said something that he really wished wasn’t “out there”.

So be careful about what – and how much – you choose to share.

Be honest

All of us have probably been tempted, at one time or another, to stretch the truth a bit—perhaps to pad a resume line or to otherwise exercise some creative license—when it comes to sharing some of our life experiences.

Don’t.

Not only is this wrong on many different levels, but it’s also hard to remember something that’s less than the truth.

Unless you eventually “fess up” or, god forbid, someone “outs” you, you’ll be carrying around the burden of that lie for the rest of your life.

Just be you—people respond to authenticity.

Or decide to write fiction.

Nowadays, it’s simply too easy to verify facts. Why risk it?

Determine your audience

As with any writing assignment, you need to know who you’re writing for, so do your homework.

Having a good understanding of your audience will help you to adopt the appropriate tone of voice. Is a more formal tone best (for a prospective employer) or is a casual, friendly tone a better choice (for a blog post)?

In other words, while the information you choose to share about yourself may be the same, how you convey that information will change significantly depending on your audience.

Be strategic

Now that you know who you’re writing for and the tone you will be adopting, you need to determine the 3 or 4 key message points.

People remember stories better than just facts, so connect with your intended audience using the power of story. For example, if you’re writing to a potential employer, choose a story that highlights your accomplishments and explains why it is relevant to the organization. Don’t just recite facts.

First impressions matter

It takes only 30 seconds for people to form an impression.

Write with confidence, not arrogance.

Bring energy and enthusiasm to your writing, but don’t over-sell.

If you’re not sure that you have achieved the right balance, ask a friend or mentor to read what you’ve written.

Final thoughts

As you have probably figured out by now, writing about yourself is not that different from other types of writing.

But it can feel uncomfortable.

If you’re still having difficulty and don’t know how to write about yourself, try writing about yourself in the third person. Then go back and revise it.

At the end of the day there’s only one thing I know that helps with that uncomfortable feeling–writing about yourself over and over again.

“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing that makes you good.”~Malcolm Gladwell

By Cheryl Craigie, Contributing Editor at Write to Done. Cheryl also blogs at The Manageable Life

How Writing can Change the World

Change the world!

It’s not like writing something can change the world.

Or can it?

Uh, it absolutely can!

If you are a fan of writing, then you already know the power it has.

Writing something powerful has the ability to inspire, motivate, change lives, change minds, even change history (the bible, the alchemist).

Even if writing isn’t your “thing”, you probably understand the importance of it. Writing isn’t fun for everyone, but everyone does it.

Those who write as a creative tool, do so to express their creativity, thoughts, ideas, feelings, and help others learn something, do something, or just to plain old write.

Reading to Write

I was never much of a fan of reading. I always thought it was rather boring and would rather flip on the video game console. It wasn’t until a few years ago that it occurred to me why I thought reading was boring. It really wasn’t that reading was boring, it was “what” I would read.

I can’t imagine anyone having fun reading an article online because someone else (like a friend, colleague or professor) thought it would be engaging or useful, if they didn’t care about the topic.

Ever since I could remember, I was only reading because I “had to”, for an assignment or other learning.

Once I discovered the stories and articles that fell in line with my passions, I started to actually enjoy reading. I could look up a topic that inspired me and get lost, reading for hours.

It wasn’t long after that I started to gain new perspectives, ideas and opinions of my own that I wanted to share. So I did what anyone with a head full of creative ideas would do: I started to write.

I wrote about what I thought and felt about the world. I wrote poems, songs and essays that allowed my thoughts to spill out of an ink pen and a keyboard.

The only audience I had was myself and I was OK with that.

Writing led to more reading, which led to more learning about my growing list of concerns. I found myself passionate about inspiring change in the world.

People, books and ideas that gave people a sense of renewal for themselves, others and the world we live in. I wanted to write about my experiences and what I had learned about the world, and share it.

I hoped others would care as much as I did about how the world was, the way society worked, and what humanity was doing to it. I found that others cared, and I wanted to join them.

I decided I would use my passion for writing (no matter how good or bad) to spread my thoughts, ideas, beliefs and learning to those who needed a bit of inspiration. I wanted to help change the world with my writing.

How Writing can Change the World

For me, writing has completely changed my world. It has changed the way I view myself and how I interact with others. Writing has allowed me to find what it is I am most passionate about.

Because of writing, I know I will be able to share with the world my passion for changing the world. I will be able to show others that they are capable of doing anything they want. They do not have to follow the path of what is considered “normal”.

I believe that in itself is a recipe for how writing can change the world, but let’s dig deeper.

I thought about what I could do to show you how writing can change the world. I came up with a list.

A list that is more like a timeline, that represents the path from placing your hands on the keyboard, or picking up a pen, to making a significant change in the world. Remember, there is more than one way to make a change.

I will show you how I went from wanting to make a difference to using writing as a tool for world change.

Here is that list…

Find out what you are passionate about
Understand that your passion should be spread
Find a platform to share your passion
Write about what you are passionate about
Connect with others who share your passion
Learn how to get your writing noticed
Build a community
Help your community with what you have learned
Show your community how to spread their own passions
Write and Repeat…

Long Story Short

The list above is an accumulation of events and processes that took me about 2 years to get through, once I discovered my passion, which took 10 years to discover in the first place.

Don’t let that scare you off. No two paths are the same, and mine was never a continuous process. Today, there are many more opportunities to help you find your passion.

What the list, or timeline represents, is a process of how writing can be used to change the world.

The End Process is the World Changer

So we come to the end. The truth is there is no end. To make a change is to keep making changes. To change the world will forever be a never-ending process.

By doing what we love and following our passions we are opening a door.

The door we open is a door to unlimited possibilities and showing others that those possibilities exist. If I write about what I am passionate about because of someone else who has been writing about what they are passionate about, that person has changed my world.

By doing what you love and showing others how to do the same, you are starting a chain reaction of people everywhere, changing the way they view the world (for the better), and changing their worlds entirely. Reminds me of Rocky IV after he wins the big fight against Drago: “If I can change, and you can change, everybody can change.“(Rocky IV).

See, if I can change my world and you can change your world, then everyone can change their worlds, which will help the entire world to change.

This is how writing can change the world. One word, one message, one voice at a time, we can help each other. Together, anything is possible.

What are you doing to change the world with your writing?

Justin Harmon writes for Unplugged Recreated. He believes everyone deserves fulfillment in life. We can do it by changing our world. Justin also helps people make changes in their own lives which echo into the outside world. Be a part of the journey to Recreate, Restructure, & Redesign Our World.

The Easiest and the Hardest Thing About Writing

Are you living the dream?

I repeat those words back to myself whenever I start to feel resentful, entitled, competitive or unappreciated with regard to my writing: “It’s not the world’s fault that you want to be an artist…now get back to work.”
~ Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Love, Pray

Three hundred and twelve pages later and I’ve completed the third draft of my first novel.

I wrote this draft over the course of several months, every day for at least three hours a day.

I wrote it across from a fellow writer as we sat at her dining room table, our collective creative energy wafting around the spacious windowed room. We ate tofu and avocados, drank press pot coffee and kept our heads down. We wrote, not because someone was paying us or forcing us to do it, but because we both have a very clear vision of what we love to do and a dream about doing it for the rest of our lives.

We also both have writing projects we are passionate enough about to have said, “It’s time”.

Somewhere around page two hundred, it hit me.

We were living it.

We were in the dream. Simply by sitting down and writing, our dreams had come true. This was the writer’s life we were pining for. It wasn’t some far flung fantasy. We had made it happen in the simplest of ways – by writing.

We’d squeezed it in between appointments, work, family, dogs and renovations. We’d banged away at our keyboards every freakin day for months. There’s nothing really amazing about what we did, nothing heroic or earth shattering. We were just writing. But what is amazing is how easy it was and yet how hard it can be to just write.

If you’re a writer, you likely already know how difficult it is to self motivate – to sit down every single day and write – no matter what. Because ‘what’ comes up. ‘What’ nibbles at your self confidence. ‘What’ tells you not to get too high and mighty. ‘What’ reminds you the dishes are dirty and your favourite TV shows on. ‘What’ sucks the life out of your writing.

So how do you get from one day to today?

How do you turn your life into your dream?

I did it by taking what seemed like the hardest thing and making it as easy as possible. I began by writing for five minutes every day. Just five. ‘What’ can’t argue with five minutes. Everyone has five minutes. You might not get there at a fast and furious pace, but that’s not the idea. Fast and furious burns out. The idea is to tone your daily writing muscle, not break it. How many pages doesn’t matter and in many ways the results don’t matter either. Showing up at the page does.

But showing up is always the hardest part.

Taking that first step, not putting it off for sometime down the road is where we all tend to stumble or hesitate or get distracted. That road can be long and filled with roadblocks and detours. I know. My road was more than a decade-long journey that had me sidestepping my dream for shinier looking ventures and safer choices that were just a little to the left or right of where I really wanted to be headed. What worked for me was following a simple set of guidelines. They helped me take that first step. I offer up this road map in the hopes that it will help you too.

1. Create a plan.

Decide what it is you want, analyze your reasons for wanting it, and then lay out the steps you need to take to get there. Clear the path by creating a pocket of time, setting up your supplies, arranging your workspace, whatever it takes to make it easy for you to simply begin.

2. Pick only one project and do it for just five minutes.

A narrow focus is key to success. Seeing progress on one project, mastering it daily for five minutes, even though it sounds too easy, gives that project momentum. Pages start to appear and a deep sense of satisfaction begins to set in. That satisfaction drives you forward and keeps you going. You’ll be doing it, not dreaming about doing it. That feels great.

3. Keep it up for at least four or five weeks everyday.

It takes weeks for it to become a habit and that’s the idea. You want it to become second nature, a fundamental part of your life, a given. With repetition, you’ll do it with more and more ease and suddenly your daily writing practice will simply be and your creative projects will be flowing along.

4. Build in positive feedback.

Find a way to reward yourself for the commitment, the dedication, the focus and the choice you’ve made to move your life forward. Even if it’s just a check mark or gold star on a calender, give yourself permission to be proud and even a little joyful.

5. Report daily to someone.

Finding a way to stay accountable can help to reinforce your journey, your motivations and can give you the inspiration you need to continue when you’re feeling like your dreams could get sidetracked. A writing buddy is a great idea. You could also blog about your daily evolution, tweet your page count, report your daily progress on Facebook, email a friend or tell someone special about your dreams and how they can help you achieve them. Ask for support. It helps when the going gets tough, just don’t let social media become a distraction from the real work.

6. Try, Adjust, Redo

Life gets in the way. Nobody’s perfect. Perfection is not the goal. Getting flow in your writing life is. So if you miss a day, change up whatever got in the way, plan differently, let it go and give yourself a redo. The idea is to keep moving forward, not beat yourself up for missteps we all make.

You will make vows: “I’m going to write for an hour every day,” and then you won’t do it. You will think: “I suck, I’m such a failure. I’m washed-up.” Continuing to write after that heartache of disappointment doesn’t take only discipline, but also self-forgiveness which comes from a place of kind and encouraging and motherly love. The other thing to realize is that all writers think they suck. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Love, Pray

My daily five minutes got me used to writing every morning. It wasn’t always good writing. Sometimes it was really bad, but I knew if I kept writing, there would be great days. Gradually, I upped the ante and I wrote for longer periods of time.

When I stumbled, I forgave myself and got back to the work.

My writing muscle grew stronger. I grew stronger and I began to believe in myself. I stumbled less. My novel was starting to take shape and I was writing with my writing buddy for several hours a day. The day came when the draft was complete. “One day” had become today.

Imagine what your “one day” looks like and start living it today. Writing every day can be hard or it can be easy. Go easy, but go.

About the author:

Katie Tallo co-created The Habit Course together with Leo Babauta and Barrie Davenport which is designed to give people the skills and stamina needed to create and sustain a daily habit. Click here to find out more.

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