Curation Corner: Good writing advice…in a single photo
Tag Archives: writing tips
Curation Corner: One writer’s mindshift
Curation Corner: Writing With Continual Direction
This quote from William Zinsser [On Writing Well is his best-known work.] takes an opposite tack to yesterday’s Writing With No Direction post.
Writing is linear and sequential; Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn’t the writing; it’s the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?
WILLIAM ZINSSER
Curated from my daily email from Jon Winokur’s https://advicetowriters.com/
Curation Corner: Writing With No Direction
This snappy piece by David Ben-Ami really speaks to the value of Julia Cameron’s ‘morning pages’. (Dropping two names in one sentence. Have I no shame?)
Curation Corner: And then there’s this on revising…
The ordinary writer is bound to be assailed by insecurities as he writes. Is the sentence he has just created a sensible one? Is it expressed as well as it might be? Would it sound better if it were written differently? The ordinary writer is therefore always revising, always chopping and changing, always trying on different ways of expressing himself, and, for all I know, never being entirely satisfied.
–ISAAC ASIMOV
Visitors: Share other writing website suggestions.
↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓
Curation Corner: The Traffic Light Revision Technique
It’s easy to urge each other to crank out ideas and imagery.Let’s boil it down:
- Read over your material in a word processing document. [‘Document 1’] Color-code your sentences–green for ‘okay with me’, yellow for ‘needs some work’, red for ‘needs complete overhaul’. [Note: Use your own file-naming strategies.]
- Save ‘Document 1’, without any further tinkering.
- Create a copy of ‘Document 1’ [‘File’, ‘Save as…’], complete with the colored highlights. Name it ‘Document 2’.
- Edit Document 2, recoloring your sentences green when satisfied with the work they’re doing.
- Proofread your work [aloud is always a good idea] with the following question as your beacon:
“Do these words clearly communicate my true intent
and give my audience a cohesive presentation?”
There you go! You can now send your work on to the Pulitzer Prize committee.
Suggestion: Schedule a 15-minute visit to Copyblogger.You’re sure to leave with useful, shareable content.
Visitors: Share other writing website suggestions.
↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓
Curation Corner: Writers, don’t panic!
I recently signed up for daily delivery of Jon Winokur’s Advice to Writers, so I’m essentially curating his own curation. Today’s advice comes from Australian writer [and then some] Clive James.
“The only thing I’ve got better at as the years have gone by is I’ve grown more resigned to the fact that it comes hard. You realize that hesitation and frustration and waiting are part of the process, and you don’t panic. I get a lot better at not panicking. I get up every morning early if it’s a writing day and I will do nothing else but write that day. But the secret is not to panic if it doesn’t come.”
And whoa, what a wealth of resources you will find at advicetowriters.com.
and much more under the ‘Resources’ tab.
Enjoy.
Chime in below with your own favorite writing website.
Curation Corner: Don’t Delete!
I appreciated Mary Gaitskill’s wisdom in this item I gleaned from advicetowriters.com
Here’s an excerpt from the excerpt:
“When you’re writing on the computer, you don’t cross it out, you just delete it. But now, if I’m not sure, I don’t delete it. Instead of making the revision, I just put it in a bracket and write my second idea, and I can look back and see which I think was better, because sometimes the first thing is actually better.“
Writers Horoscope for November 18: Your latest project? Bigger than you’d planned.
So you’ve shrugged off criticism.
And writer’s guilt? Gone for now!
But someone approaches you with a profitable offer and, freed of fear and doubt, you say, “Yes.”
Uh-ohhhh.
Here are a few tips on tackling a big writing job…[Note: this is geared toward academia, but the guidelines still apply.]
On the fiction side, try some prewriting strategies.
Writers Horoscope for November 17: Everyone’s a critic.
You have to decide which ones are worth listening to.
A few gems from those who have lived with criticism throughout their entire writing life…
“If critics say your work stinks it’s because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered “dangerous” but set in place in their compartmental understandings.” — Jack Kerouac
“The thing people don’t realize, God bless them, is that my books are supposed to suck.”
— Stephanie Meyer
“I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.” — Samuel Johnson
“Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.” — Irwin Shaw
Word Inventions 