Dear Writer, Have Some Fun!

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A writer once experienced difficulty in writing. He tried all he could till he was spent, all to no avail. Frustrated, he went outside for a nice swim and a warm chat with a friend. When he returned, he was able to gather his thoughts and write seamlessly.

We’ll take a wild guess, your nerve ends are tingling, your brain just blew a fuse and your fingers are blue from continuous typing. You need to let out steam. This is practised by all, but for writers, it is a necessity because our productiveness depends on the state of our minds. If a writer is overwhelmed and stressed, he/she becomes inefficient.  

As a writer, a good day in the sun, sumptuous food in your belly, and breeze in your hair will do you more good than a high pile of cash.

You don’t believe us? Are you of the school of thought that agrees that back-breaking hard work is the way to success and nothing else?

Ha!

If you don’t slow down, you’ll be dead before you finish your bestseller (that is if you can write the ‘bestseller’).

Still not convinced?                                                                                                    

We have proof—science!

Science says, ‘Your hormones get ugly when you’re stressed’.

When the secretion of hormones like cortisol which plays a very important role in helping the body respond to stress and regulating blood pressure increases, it leads to a rise in blood pressure, weight gain, insomnia and worse, reduction in blood sugar.

So yes, your body goes flip crazy when you’re stressed. Not to mention depression and other mental and emotional pay-offs of stress on the body.

Pray tell, with the above-listed effects of increased cortisol hormone levels, do you think you’ll be able to make it down the road to success?

Science also says, ‘Your brain is less creative when you’re stressed’.

Have you wondered why you write creatively in your head but struggle to put words down the minute you power on your computer? The reason is simple—your brain works better when you’re not trying!

Negative emotions like tension and stress hamper your mental activities. They throw creativity out the window and lock the doors. The next time you’re searching for an opening line, a brilliant conclusion or a catchy first paragraph, take a ten-minute stroll, connect with your environment, breathe, take a glass of water then, return and write.

Again, science says fun and games boosts your creativity and stimulates your imagination.

Creativity and imagination are the power couple of writing. Inspiration, creativity and a sharp imagination are key when writing.

What if you have none of these?

What if your brain is so swamped that your imagination is crying for help?

In this state there is very little you can achieve. In times like these, writing becomes as painful as having your head trapped in a bear’s jaws. Much as writing is never easy, it shouldn’t be loathsome.  

Today, take the day off, relax your bundled up nerves, breathe, breathe again. A happy brain is a creative brain.

Spice Up Your Writing in Four Steps!

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Is your writing the kind that makes the reader’s eyeballs bleed?

Do your family members cringe at the thought of reading something you wrote?

Have you ever heard your best friend whisper under her breath, ‘Is this content or torture?’

Do you get reviews like ‘your work is…eh…not quite there?’

Say no more.

We have compiled four practical ways by which you can make your writing more appealing and readable.

  1. Write more in the active voice than in the passive voice

The eggs were eaten by the boys.

If no one has had the heart to tell you, we’ll do it: most of the time, writing in passive voice makes your readers’ get bored. Take it from professionals, there are healthier and reader-friendly ways to pass your message across.

For example, instead of that half-dead sentence, how about we say, the boys ate the eggs. This conveys a sharper image of the idea.

Passive voice isn’t bad in itself, but it fails to have as firm a grip on the reader’s mind as the active voice. If you must write in the passive voice, do it minimally.

2. Be concise and creative with words

If you’re a writer, then you must love words. However, you don’t need to remind people of your affection for words by pouring out all the contents of your logophilic brain in one blog post. It is the fastest and most guaranteed way for a reader to lose interest.

What to do?

Lose the extraneous material. If your sentence still makes sense without it, cut it out.

Just—cut!

Suddenly—cut!!

Really—cut!!!

Keep your writing as simple as possible while switching up the lengths of the sentences to ensure variety. Conciseness is one of the easiest ways to achieve a brilliant flow.

Also, choose words that compel your reader’s mind into action, words that stimulate the senses. The constant appeal to their imagination will keep them hooked to every page. Word use is an intentional process.

3. Let your work show confidence

You title a book, How to Make Five Billion in a Week and the chapters are rife with ‘maybe’, ‘might’, ‘you should’, ‘you may’, ‘it could’. That, dearest writer, is unacceptable.

You write to let your readers know what you know; you want to inform or teach them. For your message to be compelling, your writing must be devoid of every form of doubt and vacillation.

This brings us back to word choice. Replace words that suggest probability with words that carry an air of finality without sounding highhanded. Write in a way that makes the words come alive to the reader. This helps them connect to you and the content on a deeper level.

Shine through every word.  Give your readers a peek into the wonders of your mind.

4. Be an avid reader

In the words of Joseph Addison, ‘Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body’. This gives further credence to the fact that a writer should read, must read and has to read.

Writing and reading are like living and feeling—they go hand in hand. To develop a distinct voice in writing and speaking, you must read. Reading gives you diversity and weight. It enriches the quality of your work. Not to mention its profound effects on your grammar, vocabulary, and style.

If you will take no other advice, take this: Read.

Can Everyone Become A Writer?

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 We would prefer not to say this, but it falls to us as professionals to debunk all assumptions associated with writing and writers.

First, God did not create writers on the eleventh day; we fall right in place with the rest of the world on the sixth. 

Second, much as we hate to cut ties with our fabled origins, we have to say it: writers are not born but made.

In other words, anyone can learn to write. But to achieve this, you need a few things. 

  1. Passion

It is not enough to like writing; you must be passionate about it. Passion is what helps you to push you through tough times and makes you a victor at the end. 

Are you passionate about writing? Do not begin this journey unless you are.  

  • Tenacity

Your initial works are like a calf’s first steps—wobbly, embarrassing, almost painful to watch yet rife with promise. As pathetic as they may seem to you, they are signs of great potential.

A lot of people will throw it in the trash. You too will do that sometimes. You will compare your work with that of others and burst into tears. It will discourage you, yet you must keep trying.

If you’re tenacious enough, you’ll grow from an amateur to a pro. You’ll find out that you wanted to do it and you did it because you kept pushing.

  • Consistent reading

If you’re going to write skilfully, you must dedicate yourself to the consumption of good content. In other words—read. Eudora Welty says, ‘Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading’.

The merits of reading to a writer are innumerable. Reading supplies you with a wealth of knowledge that enriches the quality of your writing. As you read, you become conversant with style and element, develop an aesthetic for quality writing, and your instinct heightens so you can better judge the work you create.

 Also, a writer must have an impressive command of English, should boast of a robust assortment of words, know how to spell and use them appropriately. One way to have this expertise is to read grammar textbooks and use a standard dictionary constantly.

Read twice as much as you write but write a lot.

  • Consistent writing

Of all the tips we’ve given you, this is undoubtedly the most important—write.

It does not matter if at the moment you find it nearly impossible to produce a well-articulated Facebook post. Just keep writing.

Write every day, through the months and the years, until writing becomes second nature to you. You learn to write by writing. 

Finally, if the struggle of writing is too much for you or you do not have the time to accommodate it, but still wish to write, we are here for you. We can make you an author without you stroking a ‘t’.

Three Secrets Of Great Writers

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‘Are you a writer?’

‘Yes, I am’.

‘Nice. May I see some of your works?’

‘Hmm, I’ve been so busy, and I haven’t gotten around to writing much these days’.

***

Everyone knows the job of a writer is to write. And no, there is no universal conspiracy to make you look lazy neither is the universe cheating on you by giving others additional hours as opposed to the regular 24 hours. If you aren’t writing as much as you want to, you’re not doing something right.

So how do efficient writers make it work?

  1. They Make Decisions

It always begins with firm decisions.

If you’re reading this, you probably have a penchant for books and writing, but it is not enough. It is one thing to ‘like’ writing and another to be ‘dedicated’ to it. If writing is something you do for fun, you don’t need this post. But if writing to you is life and death, listen, writing is going to cost you. You will write on good days, you will write on bad days, when the sight of your computer makes you nauseous, and you can’t pull stunts like these without an intense depth of conviction.

Ask yourself, ‘Am I truly dedicated to writing or is this a let-me-try-my-hands-at-this thing?’

If you were able to answer positively, we move on from there.

  • They are Disciplined

Every writer worth their salt will tell you that self-discipline is a sine qua non of great writing.

‘I was so busy today’, everyone says, but it isn’t always true. Sometimes, we fill our days with needless activities. For example, you started to write, but you got distracted by the television. You spend two hours watching TV before realising it was lunchtime. You spend another hour preparing and eating lunch. Then you remember you’re supposed to be writing, but the food needs time to digest. You fall asleep in the process only to be awoken by a call from a friend. After a long refreshing chat, you eat dinner and then drift off to sleep—tomorrow, you say with your head balanced on a sinfully soft pillow.

Twenty four hours have gone down the drain, and there are only four words on your computer: Once upon a time. 

Do you want to be a productive writer?

Be disciplined. Pare down your luxuries—from sleep to television, to needless conversations. Be disciplined enough to finish everything you start.

Also, take responsibility for how your day goes. When you wake up in the morning, plan your day, set goals and targets for yourself—maybe two chapters a day or a thousand words a day.

  • They Keep to It

Write all the time. Productive writers know a ‘perfect time’ will never come, so they lunge at every window they find. They write on the bus, while waiting in the lobby, on their phones; they write everywhere and every time. That’s the life of an efficient writer. They don’t find the time; they create it.

That is not to say you no longer have the right to relax. Of course, you do, but you must know the things to give up and the things to hold on to.

Today, decide to grow from an abstract writer to an actual writer. You never get anything done by talking about it, and you don’t get published by writing in your head. Make your dreams come true by working towards them.

If you take these tips with the utmost seriousness,  the results will amaze you.

Learn Two Timeless Secrets Of Success

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Humans will always find the word ‘secret’ irresistible. To the average adult, a secret is a bridge between where they are and where they want to be. Even the greatest of companies and corporations have secrets on which they have built their success over the years.

Here’s a hard fact: beyond hard work and knowledge, dedication and passion, process and result, lie the secrets of everything: Time and Practice.

We know them, we hear about them, but we mostly ignore.

Let’s start with time.

Life is a superstructure of opportunities, outcomes, and choices balanced on eternally rooted pillars—rules and principles. Everything that is and becomes in life is life’s response to the application of rules and principles.

Time is one of those principles.

When a farmer plants a seed, he does not expect it to sprout in five minutes. He understands that regardless of his efforts, the seed needs time to grow. Unlike the farmer, many of us are impatient. We pluck infant dreams out of the soil because they did not burst into harvest soon enough. We abandon new enterprises, deeming them unworthy of our pursuit because Forbes did not recognise them in two years. A lot of people are so devastatingly impatient that they equate success to pace.

You must understand that time is the language of growth; the multinational corporations and conglomerates you admire are sitting on decades of effort, years of refurbished mistakes, countless hours of break-neck work. You cannot arrive at their results without putting in as much time, as they have.

Let time take your fragile dreams and build them into rock-solid achievements no one can take from you.

Be patient.

Now the second secret—practice.

Walter Pater says, ‘The way to perfection is through a series of disgusts’.

The frustration that comes with watching great people and being unable to achieve what they have is heart-wrenching. Sometimes, it seems as though they are beyond us by ten lifetimes. They know more; they’ve done more. The sight of them drives us crazy with hunger. When we ponder on it, we realise that successful people did not do anything out of the ordinary; instead, they gained mastery.

How did they come about it?

They practised.

Practice is an unravelling art; it strips bare the tapestry of any and every field, exposing it to you to conquer. It is an exploration to the haven of mastery. Stop moaning about how little you know; the difference between you and the people you think highly of is practice.

Put your back into it—practice like a maniac. Read, gather knowledge, attend classes, and then practice some more. In some years, you’ll be a pro. 

Finally, these two are all you need to be successful at anything. First, put in your best but give it time. Do not abort effort and resources because success did not come fast enough. Secondly, masters are not born; they are made. It doesn’t matter how much of an amateur you are; throw yourself into rigorous practise and see what happens.

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