Category Archives: Writing

Three essential steps to great blog posts

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You’ve heard the mantra: content is king. If there’s one thing you must do to have a profitable, high-traffic blog, it’s provide excellent content. How do you ensure that you’re doing that?

1. Provide Details

Whether you’re writing a recipe or telling someone how to start a home business, give plenty of details. People want to know exactly how they can do what you’ve done, and they’ll appreciate the time and effort you put into the post.

  • What tools do you need to start with? Whether software or power tools, knowing that you have everything you need before you begin is essential.
  • How long does it take? If I’m starting a blogging business, I’d like to know if it’s going to take me six months or six years to get it off the ground.
  • What skills does a person need to accomplish the goal? Will your readers need to be able to use a table saw, write HTML, or operate a sewing machine with some degree of skill? Tell your readers the minimum skills they’ll need.
  • Tell exactly how you did it. Don’t write about increasing your traffic unless you tell how you increased it.
  • Talk about what works, and what doesn’t. If you tried something and it failed miserably, write about it. Your readers may be able to avoid your mistake. At the very least, they won’t feel so foolish when they make big blunders of their own.

2. Revise

No matter how tempting, don’t hit the “Publish” button without first taking time to re-read and revise what you’ve written. Stephen King once said, “Only God gets things right the first time,” and there’s a lot of truth to that. If at all possible, let the post “rest” overnight or even a day or two before going back to it. The fresh perspective you get will help you spot problems.

First Pass

On your first revision pass, look for problems with the overall message. Asking yourself these questions may help:

  • What is the point you’re trying to make with the post? Is it clear?
  • Do you provide enough examples to make your point or support your position? This is a good time to show your work to someone else and ask if they can follow it. If they have questions, you can bet your blog readers will too.
  • Do you contradict yourself?
  • Do you come off sounding angry, defensive, or negative? Is that how you really want to seem?
  • If a new reader to your blog read this post, would they understand it?
  • How is the organization? Do ideas move smoothly from one to the next in a logical progression?
  • Do you have a solid opening? Remember, this is the “hook” that will keep people reading. Or not.
  • Do you have an effective conclusion? Do you wind things up for the reader, point them to other sources, or provide some sense of completeness? Don’t leave your readers dangling.

Second Pass

Once your ideas are on paper — or, more probably, on screen — in an organized way, it’s time to get a little more serious. Begin looking at the overall structure of your post.

  • Do you use headings, bold, underline, etc. to break up the text and make it easier to read?
  • Are paragraphs relatively short? Remember, longer blocks of text are tough to read on the computer.
  • Do you stick to one idea per paragraph?
  • Look at individual sentences. Are they well thought out? Do you vary your sentence length?
  • Look at your word choices. Do you repeat words a lot? Using the same words over and over (like I just did) can distract a reader.

Final Pass

On your last revision pass, you’ll catch any errors that you’ve missed up to this point. Although some would argue that blogging is a more relaxed form of communication and doesn’t require such careful proofreading, I disagree. Any time I read a post with grammatical mistakes, spelling errors, etc., I notice, and others do too. Don’t you owe it to yourself to put your work in the best light possible?

  • Check grammar. Some typical mistakes are subject-verb agreement, incomplete sentences, and misuse of the apostrophe.
  • Check spelling, and don’t trust the spell checker software to catch all your mistakes.
  • Look for commonly misused words, like their/there for example. It’s and its are also commonly confused.
  • Check punctuation. This is a great time to make sure you don’t overuse exclamation marks! (wink)

3. Provide Links

Link to other posts on your blog that cover the same topic. Your readers are eager for information, and they’ll appreciate the fact that you took the time to point it out to them. You’ll benefit from having readers delve deeper into your blog.

Blogging is a conversation between you and your readers, AND it’s a conversation between you and other bloggers. If someone else has written something similar, then link to it. Link to it even if their opinion differs. Your readers will appreciate the extra sources of information, and your open acknowledgment of other viewpoints.

Put it together

Learning to write top-notch blog posts doesn’t happen overnight. Even if you’re already a good blogger, or a great one, you can always improve. Look at some of your older posts and think about what you’d do differently now. Read other blogs and make note of what works well and what doesn’t. Use those as clues for what to look for — and work on — in your own posts. Better writing means a better blog and better reader experience. Both you and your readers will benefit from that.

Further Reading

In Novel Editing, I talk about how I go about doing a first pass revision on a piece of fiction.

Editing and Proofreading Strategies is geared more to academic writing but still offers some excellent tips that can apply to bloggers as well. Do you even remember what a thesis statement is?

Ten Tips for Effective Editing gives some more advanced pointers and is a good resource, but I disagree with her opening statement, “Great writing probably requires genius.” Unless you define “genius” as hard work and persistence, of course.

This post is a contest entry for Daily Blog Tips.

Your Writing Dreams: 20 questions

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A little while ago, I did an entry on Achieving your Writing Dreams.

I thought it would be a fun exercise to think about your ideal writing day. You’ve “made it.” You’re doing exactly what you want to do.

  1. What time do you get up? What’s for breakfast? Do you go right to work with a cup of coffee by your side, or do you do something else first?
  2. What are you working on? Are you writing a novel? Freelancing? Writing a non-fiction book?
  3. Where is your office? Is it where it is now, whether your bedroom, kitchen table, or spare room? What’s the furniture like? Or maybe your office is portable? Where do you do your writing?
  4. What’s the next thing you do? Do you take a break from writing and exercise, research, grab a snack?
  5. Do you have an assistant? Do you team up with other people to get your work done, do research, run errands?
  6. Do you keep your kids with you during the day? Are you shuffling other duties along with your writing?
  7. Lunchtime! How much writing have you done? What’s your plan for the afternoon?
  8. Do you head back to writing or work on something else? Maybe a trip to the library, or a walk to clear your head?
  9. Do you cook dinner, go out, or does your significant other take care of that?
  10. What’s your evening look like? Writing? Editing? Do you show someone what you’ve worked on today?
  11. When do you go to bed?
  12. Do you have an agent? An editor? Are you self-publishing?
  13. How many of your books are already on your bookshelf?
  14. What kinds of promotional activities do you do? Book signings? Conferences? Do you attend, or speak?
  15. What problems do you no longer have because of your writing career?
  16. What problems has your writing career created for you?
  17. Are you making enough money to support yourself? Your family?
  18. What’s the best thing about your writing life? Is there anything you’d like to change about it?
  19. Whom have you met since achieving your writing success? Whom do you still want to meet?
  20. Has a stranger recognized you? Do you want them to?

I believe that in order to achieve your dreams, you have to have a concrete idea what your dream is. That means accept the good, and the not so good, that will come to you because of it. For example, you might love staying home but miss the social life of the office. You might be able to keep your kids with you, but that would take away from your writing time. You’ll meet new people, but some of your current friends may not feel comfortable with your new success.

Have fun with it! Post your answers in the comments if you like.

Writing Inspiration, or Sex on a Bicycle

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I don’t know about you, but I get inspired by all sorts of things, many of them downright weird.

I love to listen to people talk. I overheard one of my coworkers the other day, “It’s like having sex on a bicycle. You never forget.” As my husband put it, “That’s f-ed up. And down. And up. And down….” I bet you can get a story out of that.

Or the quote that kept running through my head last week. “This is my blog. There are many like it, but this one is mine.” Any fans of Full Metal Jacket out there? My husband loves the movie, which means I love the movie (whether I really do or not). Actually it’s pretty good, when I’m in the mood for that sort of thing.

Sometimes I think about the people I’ve known, the stories I tell. Like the time the dog tore out the arm of the couch when I was in the bathroom. Or the neighbor who tormented her, with complete disregard for his own safety. He once put his face only a couple inches from hers while I had her out on the leash.He didn’t seem to mind that I could barely hold her, or that she was snarling and completely enraged by his teasing. What an idiot he was!

Or how about the coworker who married a woman he’d seen in person off and on for a week; she worked at a resort where he was staying. After a few phone calls, he married her and set about trying to get her in the country. I couldn’t help but wonder about that.

Or my grandmother, the mother of nine children, about twenty years from oldest to youngest. And she happened to be one of the most patient people I’ve ever known. I guess she had to be.

Or our family friend, who totaled her husband’s car because she was sick of his drinking. Did I mention she used a hammer to total it? He sat in the house and watched, too afraid to try to stop her. I wouldn’t have tried to stop her either!

I bet you’ve got some stories that would make great stories as well.

Achieving Your Writing Dreams

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What do you want from your writing? Do you dream of being a poet, curled up in front of a fireplace with your notebook? Or maybe teaching a group of young writers? Perhaps you’re like me and want to write novels for a living. You dream of sitting in your office, coffee at hand, pecking away at your keyboard, creating characters and worlds your readers are dying to read about.

Think about what you want for a few minutes. Will you quit your day job? Work at home? Will you have an office or continue working wherever you work now? What will your day be like? Will you sleep in, or will you rise early and greet the day at your computer?

Think hard about your ideal writing career. Make some notes, or write a journal entry about it. What will THE CALL be like, the one where an agent calls to say that yes, you’ve been published? Imagine how that’s going to feel, how excited you’ll be.

Now take a deep breath for one more question.

What have you done today to bring yourself closer to the writing dream you just imagined?

The truth of the matter is that the dream will remain only a dream unless we work to bring it about. I have to remind myself of this almost daily. It’s not enough to dream or plan, I have to do something to make it happen.

Do you have a novel languishing, crying out for your attention? Queries you’ve been meaning to mail? A poem or article to finish? Whatever it is, stop surfing (and reading this blog!!) and spend some time right now working on it. Don’t go to bed until you’ve done something to bring your dreams about.

And do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and so on.

If you’re like me, there’ll be days when you don’t manage to do anything, but over time, those days become fewer and fewer.

Prioritizing writing

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I’ve been thinking a lot about writing, especially for those like me who write across different areas. It’s hard to balance fiction, blogging, and non-fiction. To make it more difficult, the writing I enjoy the least (non-fiction) is the only one that actually brings in any money. The blog actually costs me to host and to maintain the domain name.

My goal is to publish my fiction (and, presumably, make some money from that). I find it hard to balance my writing time. It’s easier, and sometimes more rewarding, to do a quick blog entry or article instead of slogging my way through editing the novel. I don’t want to sound like I don’t enjoy the novel, I do, but the novel certainly is more in the delayed gratification category.

What kinds of things do you do to balance your writing life? I’ve tossed some ideas out below. They’re things I’ve tried, and they might work for you.

1. Write first. This works relatively well for me. At the very least, I get some fiction writing time. On the downside, it makes working on the novel seem more a chore and less something to look forward to.

2. Set goals. This works a little better. I do NaNoWriMo every year, and the sheer audacity of it keeps me writing, and I’ve gotten two decent rough drafts in the bargain. I stumble when it comes to follow-through (editing).

3. Divide into small chunks. This works very well for me. I’ve managed to work my way through the editing of the novel so far by taking it one step at a time. I set a goal to work on 5-10 pages at a time, and I’m making steady progress.

4. Focus on one thing at a time. One thing I tend to do is get overwhelmed. I need to edit, proofread, check the timeline, check for inconsistencies, and it’s easy to feel that there’s so much to do it can never get done. I’ve focused this time on looking at each scene and how it fits into the plot overall. Does the scene work? Does it belong at all? Does it end well? Do I see any major inconsistencies? By focusing on the work as a whole and how each scene fits into it, I’ve been able to stay focused on the editing at hand and make progress.

5. No magic bullets. You may have a favorite way of editing, or a favorite piece of software you use. I’ve tried several different ones, and while some are pretty good, I haven’t found anything that doesn’t end up distracting me from the work at hand. I’m better off with my word processor.

On this editing pass, I’m making the following notes.

  • What is the subject of the scene? Very briefly describe what’s happening.
  • What is the major conflict? Is there one?
  • General notes (anything that I want to remember to check or change)
  • How does it end? Does the ending work? Should it be merged with another scene.

For example, notes from one of my scenes may look like this.

  • Summary: After a sermon, Fred returns to his dressing room to find his son, who has been dead two weeks, waiting.
  • Conflict: Major conflict is Fred trying to absorb the situation, trying to come to terms with what’s happening. Conflict is rather weak.
  • Notes: Scene is a bit short.
  • Ending: Ends with Fred realizing it’s not precisely Jeremy at all. Should the scene continue? Is the ending a cop-out?

I’ll post an example of my editing in the next day or two so you can see what kind of things I’m doing. Maybe it can save you some headaches.

Dreams as Inspiration for Writing

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How many of you have ever used dreams, whether yours or someone else’s, as inspiration for a story idea?

I sometimes have very vivid dreams, and I do use them as the germ of an idea for a story. I’ve been known to use my husband’s dreams too; he tends to dream spooky stuff! In fact, I’m working on a story right now that was inspired by one of his dreams.

Where do you get your writing inspiration?

Family Stories

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I was going through some photos the other day on the camera and ran across these.

Tazewell

My husband and I went last year to visit my aunt, not long before she passed away. We took this from the top of the mountain. He had pulled the car as far into the weeds as we could so I could get the photo. I like how the sun is still shining on the tops of the mountains even though the valleys have started to darken. Both my parents’ families are from this area, so there are a lot of family stories surrounding the area. These are alwasy good fodder for story ideas.

Down the road

I love this photo. Doesn’t it look like the road to just about anywhere?

Neighbors

My aunt lived just down the road from here. Yes, I believe one or two of these houses is still occupied. When I was a girl, I used to spend the day with my aunt when we came in to visit. One of her neighbors lived in one of these little shacks, and she used to come to my aunt’s to shower every day or so. Yep, you guessed it. No indoor plumbing.

Hard to believe, isn’t it? There are some places even in the US that still don’t have indoor plumbing. I’d bet some of these houses still don’t have it. I’m going to go make some coffee and think about how lucky I am!

Struggling Along

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The amount of time I’ve had to spend editing the novel is pitiful. There’s really no other word for it, and I’m alternating between angry and depressed about the whole situation.

I’m sure most of you have faced the same sort of situation. There are just so many things I have to do, there’s so little time for what I want to do. I know the answer, re-evaluate what I think I have to do and move some of that to the “nice but not necessary category.” If you could see my house right now, you’d see I’ve been doing a decent amount of that already.

The reality is, we have to have clean clothes. I have to pick up, even occasionally, or eventually I’ll start to lose pieced of furniture in this mess, let alone the pets. We have to eat, wash dishes, take out the dogs, and do all the day-to-day things that keep a house going.

Problem with that is, that leaves precious little time to do what I want to do, what I need to do, really. And that makes me sadder than I’d like to admit sometimes.

Help me out here. How do you manage?

Novel Editing

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I’m still working on editing the novel I’m working on, and it’s going painfully slowly. I’m finding lately all the things I HAVE to do are taking up most of my time, so that I have very little chance to do what I WANT to do. That sucks, to be blunt. I hope that this situation doesn’t last long — it’s putting me in a real funk.
Enough bitchin’. I thought I’d talk a little about the editing I’m doing, and how I’m doing it. The novel is very rough, and I know that a lot will need to be moved around. For one thing, there are timeline problems. Some scenes need to be completely removed. Others need lots more detail or a new direction.

I’d love to be able to do a one pass revision, as Holly Lisle talks about, but I just don’t think I can do a decent job unless I focus on just a few things at once. I know a lot of people recommend her method, and she has some great material on her sight. I think it’s just a matter of focus (or lack thereof) for me.
This is my first pass, and here’s what I’m doing.

  1. Using a calendar to figure out what day it is so that I get the timeline down. Things like wordays vs. weekends, mentions of time, etc. tend to cause problems for me in the first draft. Some scenes will need moved to accommodate this.
  2. Decide if scenes should stay or go. I tend to be ruthless. If I’m not sure it contributes, it usually goes. If I like it for some other reason, then it gets a heavy rewrite. For me, scenes have to advance the plot or show some conflict that develops the characters. Period.
  3. Make notes about major things that need rewritten. These can be mistakes, or maybe the novel took a turn later that I didn’t expect in the early scenes. I don’t stop to rewrite at this point; if I did I’d write the same fifty pages over and over and never get any further. I make rough notes about what needs fixing, adding, etc. and leave it at that for now.

I tend to edit in short bursts. I find that I can’t concentrate at the level I need to for more than a half hour or so at a time. After that, I tend to get a little foggy, and I start missing things. I’m estimating that I can get a first pass finished in about a month, providing I work on it almost every day.

How do you go about editing? Care to share any tips?

Writing Notebook: Marines and Snow

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If you’re like me, you probably jot some notes down when you overhear something funny, interesting or striking. A lot ends up in my writing notebook for (possible) future use.

Today, I had a funny conversation. We’ve been getting little snow “teasers” but nothing serious. I love snow, so it’s driving me nuts. We got to talking about how in the South things more or less shut down when there’s snow since most people aren’t accustomed to driving in it.

Which brought up this…

Pete was telling us about his service in the Marines in South Carolina. In 2000 (or 2001) they got some snow and ice, which is unusual for the area, so the base called a snow day.

Yep, the MARINE CORPS called a snow day.

Maybe I have an odd sense of humor, but I think it’s hilarious.