Archive for Writing Tip

Writing Tip #6 – Write Often

{ February 24, 2008 @ 5:47 pm } · { Writing Tip }
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Writing Tip #6 – Write Often
By Stephanie Hancock – Editor and CEO of JustContent

One of the best things you can do for yourself as a writer is to keep writing, even when you don’t have any pending jobs. There are many things you can write about and many ways to write and keep writing – it’s more about honing your skill than anything else, regardless of which way you choose to write. Here are a few ways you can hone your skills:

Keep a blog – Any blog will do, wordpress (where this blog is hosted) is free, there’s also blogger and many others. Regardless of what you’re writing about, even if it’s just a daily rant about your life, write something every day and post it. Perhaps you can use your blog to post test articles on new subjects that you want to learn more about and want to be able to, someday, write proficiently on.

Write a magazine article – these are just like writing regular articles. If you have an idea, write the article. Then perhaps query a few magazines and turn your daily “I have to write something” into some extra cash.

Start a book – any book will do. Perhaps you want to write the All-American novel, or maybe you don’t. Write a book for your kids about their lives. This is always a great gift for somewhere down the road. You can print a real book cheap at lulu if you want to give it as a gift somewhere down the road too. This is in my plan as well – the story of “my son’s name”…someday ;) Or, perhaps you’re going to write the novel that will spur your career as a novel author.

Write an e-book – I’ve been talking about doing this for some time my ownself,  but havent yet begun. I will though, someday. However don’t let my own procrastination and lack of time deter you from getting a jump start on your own ebook. You can write and publish an ebook about anything. Sell it on ClickBank or Lulu – make some cash.

Regardless of what you choose to do, hone your writing skills. Take some free online courses to hone your skills, take some typing tests, read up on grammar and syntax. Always be willing to learn, learn, learn and you’ll always be write, er, I mean, right. :)

Writing Tip #5 – Shorten your deadlines

{ February 24, 2008 @ 4:34 pm } · { Writing Tip }
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Writing Tip #5 – Shorten your Deadlines
By Stephanie Hancock – Editor and CEO of JustContent 

Another way to get proficient at writing is to shorten your own deadlines. Now, to start I’d say don’t wait until the day before 20 articles are due to write them all. However if you have 10 articles due on Monday and its Tuesday the week before, shorten the deadline and tell yourself that they are due Thursday. Try to see if you can write them all before then (and if you cant that’s okay, because you aren’t hurting anyone by being late).

 The next time you have a deadline, shorten it even more - 10 articles due tomorrow. Find out how well you write under a short deadline and under pressure – your boss breathing down your neck to get 10 arts in right away…how fast can you pull it off?

Don’t do this too close to the ACTUAL deadline. Leave yourself ample space and time to get the work done if you can’t pull off 10 articles in one day. There will come a day though, that you will pull this off.

One important thing to remember is that you MUST keep the quality of your work high. Any idiot can write garbage in 5 minutes. You want to be able to write good articles, free of plagiarism, error free, with perfect syntax and spell checked, not garbage that your editor is going to  hand back to you to rewrite and redo.

For the authors of JustContent, I’m willing to help you with this. Write an article quickly, spell check it, read it through and send it to me. Let me know that this is one of your test articles to see how well you can write in 10 minutes. Make sure  your article is submitted well before the deadline. I’ll soon be posting ‘words to watch’ as well as some other tips and ideas for you.

Writing Tip #4 – Let Word do the work

{ February 24, 2008 @ 4:03 pm } · { Writing Tip }
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Writing Tip #4 – Let Word do the work
by Stephanie Hancock – Editor and CEO of JustContent

Microsoft Word is an amazing program, regardless of what version you have. Word checks your spelling and grammar for you.

You can also turn on the ‘track change’s before you start the spell check to see where there errors were. Then you can go back and check the errors that spell check fixed to make sure they’re correct.

Word underlines words and phrases in a green squiggly line for syntax errors too…you can type aimlessly and then let word help you edit it…really, it works…so don’t stress too much about getting the typing and everything right the first time.

Forget about the backspace key and just type. Turn on track changes and then go through with spell check.

Writing Tip #3 – Write, write, write.

{ February 24, 2008 @ 3:57 pm } · { Writing Tip }
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Writing Tip #3
By Stephanie Hancock – Editor and CEO of JustContent 

Write write write…and keep practicing your typing.

I have a Band-Aid on my finger so its hampering my typing today but unencumbered, I can type between 125 and 160 wpm, especially about something I know really well (like mesothelioma, insurance, credit cards, and mortgages – which are my ‘favorite’ categories to write about).

When I started freelancing, I could type about 45 wpm…now I type faster. I did free typing tests and when you get to about 80wpm, you’re styling.

There’s lots of free typing courses on the Internet – and believe me when I say that they are worth the time to learn to type faster and better.

However, once again, I don’t worry about apostrophes or capitalizing single i’s either…I let word fix that when I’m done.

Writing Tip #2 – Write what you know

{ February 24, 2008 @ 3:54 pm } · { Writing Tip }
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Writing Tip #2
By Stephanie Hancock - Editor and CEO of JustContent 

Write what you know and know what you write.

Writing about topics that you don’t have to research will help you write faster. For instance, a while ago, I wrote 31, 550-600 word articles on mesothelioma cancer. Now, when I first wrote about mesothelioma, I had no idea what ‘it’ was and I could barely even type the word. Now, mesothelioma sails out like nobody’s business…and I know so much about it, that I did 31 articles of 550-600 words in about 8 hours, spread over two days.

It’s true what they say, write what you know – and when you don’t know something read up on it first before you start to write about it. By reading something, you begin to formulate an idea about it and what it is and what it means. Read someone else’s information all the way through and get an idea, I also read fast, so that helps too.

For example if you know a lot about credit cards, take every credit article you can and hone in that skill. You’ve likely found that articles that are interesting to you are easier to write, those that you know about are even easier.

However, there’s a warning…if you do a lot of one topic, you have to be careful not to plagiarize yourself, especially when you are writing for multiple clients. I’ve done this, and its not pretty, lol!!

Writing Tip #1 – Speed writing and speed typing

{ February 24, 2008 @ 3:49 pm } · { Writing Tip }
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Writing Tip #1 – Speed Writing and Speed Typing
By Stephanie Hancock – editor and CEO of JustContent 

Speed writing comes with practice and writing lots. I started very similarly to most of you, Im a good writer and I could do an article of 500 words in about an hour. There were people claiming a lot more at the places I was working than I was and I really didn’t understand how they had enough hours in the day to write all these articles without them being crappy and getting fired.

Then a big job came on one board where I was working and there were only maybe 4 or 5 of us who wrote often for the board, and there were like 180 articles. They were technical, but easy, and they had to follow this certain format. I took 10 and soon realized that these were really easy…I took more and wrote them faster, letting word catch the typos where I wrote letters backwards and such.

Not worrying about typing errors as you make them speeds up your typing and as long as the basics are there, you can type much faster.

HOWEVER you have to pay attention to the words that are easily missed in spell check, to, too and two, for example, their and there, stuff like that. Know where you need to pay attention and where you don’t and just type. Don’t look at the keyboard, look at the words you’re typing, or don’t look at all. Don’t worry about apostrophes, word will include them for you. So tip #1 is don’t worry so much about perfect typing.