Which One Are You - Part One.

Hello to all!

How are you with writing? I mean, do you agonise over every word or do you get it written, cast a quick glance over it and get rid of it, often without really seeing what you have written? Both methods are fraught with trouble. Let's deal with the first one now:

1. Agonise over every word?

While this is fine, it also wastes a great deal of time you could be writing with. Do you check every word as you write it, correct spelling mistakes, grammar and think another word would be better there? Also good, but NOT WHEN YOU FIRST WRITE. In case this does not make any sense, ever since experts have started studying the brain, they have thought we own 2 sides to it.

Possibly very true. But the problem with using BOTH sides at the same time. You can use the more extroverted side at first. This is your creative side. ONLY then do you use the critical side, which screams at you that whatever you have written is no good at all, and worse, YOU yourself are hopeless.

This critical side can wreck your writing career before it has even begun. Nothing it sees is EVER going to be good enough. So you see, you cannot use both at once. Your writing will be bogged down from the start.

NO ONE ever writes a perfect draft first-up. Stephen King said, in his book: On Writing: Write the first draft behind a closed door. What this means is simple: Write fast and keep that draft to yourself. No one, even your best critic, is to see it.

If you can, walk away from it for a while. Even 5 minutes will do. Then come back and let your critical side loose. You lose some personal contact with the article or manuscript in even that short time and you can look at it more impersonally. So changing words etc is not so important then. You can live with slight imperfections. Not in spelling or grammar, of course, or very uneven sentences, but the rest - hell- even the best make mistakes. We are all human. We ALL make mistakes. I know, I know, you will ALWAYS run into someone who THINKS they are perfect. Take that with a grain of salt. No one is, even so-called saints. What we are is human.

Once you have let your inner critic have their say, take another break. Then come back and have a final look at your writing. Check for punctuation and everything you didn't look for the first time. Your manuscript will be ready for publishing. If you can, get someone else to cast an appraising eye over it, but it doesn't matter if you don't.

All the updates which are going on require content that is for human consumption, not robot consumption.  According to Jason Fladlien, you should be able to write a 400 word article in 10 minutes or under. What! I can hear you shriek. I have used some of his teachings and he is right. However, that is just HOW to write the article in under 10 minutes. To get your 400 word article as good as it can be should take you 10 minutes, with practice. His actual words are: How to Write A High Quality Article In 7 Minutes.

Personally, I  never endorse products, even if they work just fine for me. I am just too lazy to. :) But, if you can grab a copy of Jason's early products if you are just starting to write articles that will get accepted, go see if you can find a copy of his: Write Articles In Less than 7 Minutes, or words to that effect. I've lost the front page, unfortunately. But there is a front page I have got: How To Turn 1 Article Into 8, which is another one of his creations.

So there is a basis if you are wondering how to write your articles more quickly. I will help with the ones of you who throw something together, scan it briefly and send it, or, worse, DON'T do anything with it except submit it next time. Promise!