If I Was Teaching Writing

(Disclaimer: not a professional writer or teacher)

If i was teaching writing I would teach that writing is a process.

The first step is putting all your thoughts down on paper as quickly as you can before you forget any points. This can be a point form outline or stream of consciousness text but don’t interrupt your thought process to organize the material or optimize the sentence structure, That can come later.

I have ignored this advice and regretted it as I looked at the page thinking there wa something else I wanted to say but cannot remember it now.

Next you want to order your points in the most effective order to make your arguments. This may be something you redo as you go along, particularly as you add points you did not think of in stage one. Always jot those new points down as they come to you you can order them and refine them later.

So far grammar and sentence structure has been irrelevant as it has been all about ideas.

So now let’s make it look like writing, turning what you have into organized readable writing recognizing who your audience is and tailoring the style, academic, journalistic, or other to your audience.

After you have a properly written text it is time to optimize it by making sure you are using the most appropriate qualifiers, adjectives and adverbs, and that your spelling and grammar are correct. Everyone has their favourite errors so check especially for those. One of mine is thinking like I’m talking and not paying attention to there, their and they’re.

When you think you have it right do a read through to make sure everything flows correctly and you have not missed any necessary corrections,

If you are writing for the web, nearer the end is a good time to add any “code” you need for links. My blog uses Blogger so if I am writing for that I embed the links in Libre Office because they will translate directly to Blogger, only requiring a quick edit in Blogger if I want them to open into a new window, which i always do. Alternatively, near the end is a good time to add traditional footnotes. Most word processor will handle the formatting for you.

Time for a last read through to make sure everything is correct and flows well. Unless you are me. My process includes a final read through, but if I make any changes during that read through I do another and continue until I read the full text through without making any changes.

I have saved the most important advice for the end. The best way to improve your writing is to read a lot, especially they type of writing that you want to write.

Ever Wish You Could Really Commit Something to "Memory"

If you are a blogger or student or anybody who writes a lot I am sure you do a lot of pre-writing, thinking things through and even composing articles in your head when you are not at your computer. Some of the best things I have never published have been written that way. They never got published because they never got committed to my hard drive. By the time I got around to writing what I wanted to write the brilliant piece of work that was in my mind had disappeared from my thoughts.

Don't you wish that as you composed those brilliant pieces in your mind you could actually commit them to memory somewhere for later retrieval and editing. Wouldn't it be great if you could have a memory card slot in your brain to save them too and then pop into a USB slot and edit.

So are there any techie entrepreneurs out there working on this (besides the CIA of, course, who are no doubt working on secret brain implants to record your every thought).

Do Computers Make Editing Too Easy

I am in the middle of writing a long comprehensive blog post. Actually I am finished writing it and doing the final edit. My problem is that with computers making it so easy to edit text I have developed a system whereby I keep doing a final read through until I do a read through without changes. However I seem to make changes with every read through. So when is it really ready to publish.

Stand by for my next blog post.