Tips to Improve your Writing

Every writer needs tips on how to improve their writing. Whether you are just stuck at a certain point or need general ideas on how to edit you writing, we all need help sometime.

I found an excellent article today on how to improve your writing. Several different authors contributed to the article, which, in my opinion, only makes it better.

In essence, the article provides twenty-five helpful hints on how to improve your writing, including tips on what to do when you are stuck and the scene refuses to flow, where to find inspiration for your writing and several self-editing tips. The problems the writers state in the article are not new, but some of the solutions are quite engaging. Imagine talking to your piece of writing when you get stuck. Would you have thought of that? I never considered the possibility for fear someone might overhear and think I finally lost all my marbles. At least now I have an excuse by saying I read in an article that it might improve my writing.  

So although some of the 30 minute solutions sound a little (maybe more than a little?) crazy, I can whole-heartedly recommend the article 25 Ways to Improve your Writing in 30 Minutes a Day. You never know, someday you might be stuck and one of these solutions might just work.

Please read the article and tell me what you think. Do you think us beginner writers need more articles along these lines? Do you think that experienced writers could also benefit from the article? 

My First Book on Smashwords

Today I managed to publish my first Afrikaans novel on Smashwords.com. It was a long road before I finally managed to have the courage to attempt this. Smashwords.com publishes mainly English books, but I felt that people should have a choice to read some Afrikaans as well. 

Smashwords.com makes it easy to publish with them and if you follow the style guide they provide, you can format your book with relative ease. Hopefully I will be able to publish more of my novels there in the next couple of weeks. 

Sample or purchase Gogga op 'n Harley: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/82039

How to Blog From Your Desktop to Blogger

Most writers need to do more than fiction writing in order to keep the wolf from the door. One of these methods it to blog. Some choose to write blogs on an established site belonging to other people, but others choose to have their own blog from where they try to supplement their income.

If you want your own blog, there are plenty of sites offering free blog space like Blogger, which is powered by Google. The advantage of having a blog hosted by Blogger, is that you get indexed in the search pages of Google relatively quickly.

The problem I had until recently is to update the blogs hosted by Blogger from my desktop and include pictures in the update. A lot of software allows you to update the text directly to Blogger, but the photo’s remained a headache. That is until I found Windows Live Writer.

The program allows you to update blogs from your desktop after a minor setup process. The real neat feature is that your pictures are displayed as you put it in the text and up to now, I haven’t found any date being corrupted by the update from Windows Live Writer.

With a host of features for hyperlinking, editing photo’s, adding tables, maps, video and much more, this is a program which should be considered by any serious blogger. It also works perfectly with self-hosted web blogs. 

What Beginner Writers Could Learn From Nanowrimo

As previously stated, Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month and it is traditionally held in November each year. If you participate, you are required to write 50 000 words of fiction in a novel format and upload your efforts to be verified. (You may scramble your upload, but it is deleted in any case automatically after the computer verified the word count.)

Nanowrimo 2010 just came to an end and many writers proved to themselves and other participants that they are able to write 50 000 words in the space of a month.

I have read many arguments for and against participating in the Nano exercise, but here is what I found from personal experience:

1. Writing 50 000 words amounts to just under 1700 words per day for the whole month in order to finish comfortably. That is not an easy feat if you have a day job which pays the bills and a family to take care of.

2. Nobody knows if the word count you submit is true or if you submitted a lot of the same words or paragraphs. Nano is not a competition against someone else, it is a test of you own abilities. To cheat at Nano, you only cheat yourself out of a well-earned and morale boosting experience. Nothing gets the creative juices flowing better than seeing your word count climb and knowing that every single word was written by you in a story that you may someday be able to send to a publisher and be proud to do so.

3. If you procrastinate during the first two weeks, you will find yourself with a seemingly impossible word court to target every day just to finish on time.

As you can see on the graph above, which I copied from the Nanowrimo website, on the 9th of November 2010 I had a meagre 1791 words written. By the 14th I had only 4000 words and started to panic. Real panic only set in around the 23rd when I only reached halfway with just over 25 000 words and the requirement to finish on time climbed to over 3500 words per day.

4. It is possible to write a lot of words, while still keeping to your plot and being true to your characters, in one day. All the writing may not be good and some will be positively horrible upon reading it again, but some parts will actually be pretty wonderful. The best part is that you won’t recognize the good parts until you get to the editing stage.

5. Participating in Nano without having your novel planned out beforehand – like with YWriter or Storybook, makes it much more difficult to stay within the confines of your plot. You don’t have time to go back and check if what you wrote now didn’t contradict something you wrote two days ago and by properly planning your novel in advance, the writing just comes easier. 

Would I recommend that beginner writers participate in Nano?

The answer is an absolute yes. If this is your first attempt at writing a novel, there is no better place to start writing it than during Nano month. What a feeling when you realise you just wrote the last word (although it is a first and very rough draft) of your first novel.  This is an excellent exercise to see if you have what it takes to one day realise your dream and become a full time fiction writer.

Nanowrimo Time Again

November is National Novel Writing Month. Writing a novel of 50 000 words doesn’t seem so bad – that is until you try doing it. This year I am determined to finish it – I need a rough draft done of a romance novel I have waiting in the wings for some time.

So how does nanowrimo work?

Easy. You register on the website, do a little planning if you like and come November 1, you start writing your novel and update the word count on the website. From November 25 you upload your writing (which can be encoded) for verification and if you succeed in writing the 50 000 you get a badge for your website.

So, now to finish everything else I might need to do in November in order to get ready to write!