Monday, December 30, 2013

Planning Your Writing Times


With the New Year come opportunities to plan your writing times. Even though you may not put your plans on paper, there are a few things to consider when sitting down to write.

  1. Clearly determine the purpose of your writing.
  2. Do you need any resources for ideas?
  3. What are the goals of your writing?
  4. Do you desire someone to review your writing?

Determine what you would like to write about. Is this a personal writing or a work assignment?

Determine if you will need any additional resource material. Are you writing about something you will need to find more info about?

What are the goals of your writing? Do you wish to point out certain aspects of a particular subject? If this is a writing assignment, some goals may already be presented for you. Otherwise, think about some of the sub-points you would like to make.

Would you like someone to review your writing? If you are working, then you may use an editor, or your assignment will be reviewed by someone within the company.

If you are writing personal pieces, you may desire to gain comments from blog posts such as this one. You may desire to have a friend, or family member, look at your writing.

With some pre-planning, writing time can be more focused and productive. This can be a wonderful thing!

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Writing Powerfully and Effectively – Tips for Writers


First and foremost, what is your reason when you plan of writing something?  This must be your initial question to yourself to better understand your needs and the outcome-to-be of what you are writing. This will help you to focus on a specific topic and never get lost about what you are writing. Remember, being a good writer, you must stick to your title and provide specific details that support your ideas to further influence the reader – that what you are writing are covered with truth, fairness, idealism, and integrity. This will help you to obtain a positive result and approval of the community.

Writing powerfully and effectively doesn’t only count the hardness of words you are using. You must understand what your readers expect from you and meeting their expectations through providing them concrete details is an advantage of being a good writer. Never include stories which are not part of what you are writing. This will only add boredom to your reader’s part. Gather lots of information from reliable sources such as Magazines, News paper, Books, and the Internet. Upon doing this will make you obtain the highest form of informative writing. Lastly, be responsible in writing anything and always consider the welfare of your readers.

Monday, December 23, 2013

7 Tips for Writing Essays


If you want to enhance your writing ability especially in making essays, you have to be focus on 7 factors that may assist you to come up with a good output. First and foremost, you must understand what an essay is. An essay is a short piece of a story that is informative, written in either journalistic form or in an interpreted manner that focuses on a single topic. This topic can be in general form, or you can be more specific to give narrow details of what you are trying to say. Now that you know what an essay is, it’s time for you to learn how to write it more efficiently and effectively.

Generally, you have to choose your TOPIC for your essay. Think of your purpose why you wanted this topic to be written. Second, you have to prepare of your own OUTLINE/DIAGRAM about your topic to give a clearer meaning. Next, start writing your THESIS STATEMENT and proceed on writing your INTRODUCTION. Then make a unique BODY and be sure to include the main points, sub-points, and try to emphasize your sub-points. Always give the best CONCLUSION that further explains about the topic you have written and lastly, make some TOUCHES to your piece. These 7 tips for writing essays will give you the opportunity to improve your writing skills today.

Friday, December 20, 2013

Tips for Writing Summaries


Being a good writer doesn’t only focus on the style of writing, but the quality itself to give clearer information of the general topic, or specific issue that you are writing. Always remember that a professional writer, like you, conceives the power to influence people – so be smart enough and be responsible of whatever you write. Literally, writing a summary is always part of most scripts and for you to create an effective piece of summarized topic; you must simply follow these 8 useful tips for writing a summary to give new touches to your work.

The first thing that needs to be done is DIVIDE the general paragraph into smaller sections to shorten the story. Second, READ and collect the necessary information’s that highlights the story you are writing. Third, RE-READ again and make sure that you are not missing something. Always keep in mind that a summary holds the general information of the entire story. Fourth, create a SHORTER PARAGRAPH and write a THESIS STATEMENT. Then, DRAW all the information you gather and transform it into a higher level of statement. Make sure that you CHECK your grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Lastly, check for ACCURACY of the information you are using because this helps a lot.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Tips for Creating Poetry


Creating poems is one alternative way to express your feelings, dedication, and passion in writing. You can always choose what topic to write and make it your own; from the simple love poems to romantic poems and even friendly poems. Anything that you can think of and put it into a single collaboration of rhyming words can be considered as poems. Being a Poet, like William Shakespeare, that creates highly-recognizable work of art poetry, you must indulge yourself to several guiding tips that will help you to improve your work. It is good to know that people get fascinated of your work most often.

Among the guidelines for creating effective poetry is to “pay attention to the things around you” like animals, plants, events, people, songs, music, and many more. Try “listening to the words and sentences” you use in creating a poem and determine their relevance’s. Make a noise and “read the words or sentences out loud” to see if it rhymes perfectly and find ways on how to improve it even more. Think “positively” so that you can come up with a good result. Always consider the possibility of “revising the context” of your poems and make sure that you know what you “want” to finally hit the target topic and theme of your creation.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Ways to Increase Productivity in Writing


When someone writes a thing or two, there’s got be an audience, or followers, who will patronize that particular form of writing – whether it is an article, poem, essay, news, or a plain research paper. Every creation has its own style and focus on its targeted topic to drive the audience and encourage them to read more. In accordance to Internet terms, writing positively in an informative manner can drive traffic to a website that will generate more audiences later. This is because a particular writer knows how to create eye-catching topics and provide information related to what is being discussed.

This kind of writing skill can help to increase the productivity of your creation that can lead for bigger opportunities in the future. Here are some tips that can help you to increase the productivity of what you are writing;

  1. Set your time accordingly- always make it a habit to spend a specific number of hours in your work every day.
  2. Make plans of reaching a quota- consider yourself a fast writer if you can make 30 pages a week depends on the availability of your time.
  3. Give yourself a reward- if you are able to reach your target quota, treat yourself.
  4. Apply productivity tools- make deadlines on your calendar, use a whiteboard to track your progress, and use a recording gadget to keep your goals and accomplishments always monitored.
  5. Be passionate- this is one of the useful elements in writing effectively to gain productivity in your creation.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Choose Writing as a Career


There are so many working opportunities for a starting writer – like you can avail anytime if you only have the passion, courage, dedication, and the skill in doing so. In today’s time, writing is no longer a habit that can run-out your boredom at home but you can make lots of money out of your creativity. Yes, you read it right; you can make thousands of dollars if you know how to write effectively enticing your reader’s attention. You can choose to become a technical writer for a certain websites, a content writer is also one career that you can choose to be, or a blogger that posts educational threads in informative manner.

Being a freelancer that works for online companies, you must understand the latest trends in writing effectively; to further compete to the growing demands of highly skilled writers. As a newbie, you must indulge yourself in defining the proper way of determining correct and error in terms of punctuations, grammar, spelling, and sentence construction. Never hesitate to explore and try new things that can aid you to write efficiently. You can always look for better alternatives on how to make your piece remarkable and perhaps enroll in an online tutorial for writing professionals. These are just a few of so many things that can make your writing skills improve and do it as a career – today.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Benefits of Having Daily Writing Times


Just like in any other form of work, you have to pay attention and set specific working hours every day in order to attain a positive outcome of what you are writing. Being a writer, it is very important that you understand the underlying pressure that waits ahead of every work-of-art you make. First and foremost, what are the rules of engagement that need to be taken care of – the competition among writers are very strong, or did you catch your reader’s attention about the topic you are writing? Things like these are highly important to understand and because of these reasons, you need to have an allocated time to write every day.

At first, you will feel the tension of being under pressure because you need to work on a specific time frame but as your work progresses, you will understand the vital role that writing on time is essential. There are several benefits scheduling daily writing time can give you such as: the raise of productivity, increasing your writing priorities, and reducing the percentage of distractions. This will improve your writing skills; it helps to make your goals and deadlines to become achievable, and pushes away your doubts about your talent. You can attain all of these useful benefits if you only find time to accommodate your needs in writing and spend more quality time doing it.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Ideas for Creating a Writing Notebook


Being a writer, or a student, who plans to make writing as a future career, it is vital that you have the potential in creating unique content that is not only educational, but at the same time fun and intriguing. Sometimes, a writer tends to make journals and articles that are purely based on a single idea which can make it boring. As an independent person who has the skill in formulating educational, fun, and intriguing content, you must know how to write informatively and be willingly to submit your personal opinion of what you are writing.

When we speak of a writer’s notebook, it doesn’t mean a typical diary that you can write about your daily activities and your personal life. This is more complex, so to speak, because writer’s notebook is a student notebook that consists of ideas, quotes, poems, thoughts, pictures, and artifacts. You can start personalizing your notebook by collecting stickers, old photos, colorful clippings, and you can even use ribbons and beads. Start covering your notebook with your favorite wrapper and make sure that it is wrapped properly. Mix and match your accessories and be sure to tag your personality to the kind of notebook you are making.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Seed Writing Ideas


If you are a freelance writer who involves yourself in daily writing, you must feel the pressure from younger writers who have more scoops of information and stories to tell the world. Maybe you would say that you have already run-out of ideas and your writing strategy is no longer effective compared to the newly arising group of writers who are talented in terms of creating unique content. That may be one big reason for you to be left out, but don’t you know that you can still make it up and compete among these writers by showing your brilliant seed writing ideas that will extremely fascinate the world? That’s exactly what you need to show them.

If you are wondering what “seed writing ideas” are all about; it is a collaboration of information, facts, events, and experiences that you can use to create bigger set of information. This information can either be a blog post, articles, or a story that provides truthful ideas for the readers to anticipate. You can make use of these 5 Seed Writing Ideas:

1. Daily response of blog posts from different bloggers.

2. News and forums.

3. Detailed problems that your society is facing, including yourself.

4. Gained knowledge based on your learning at school.

5. Possible questions that haven’t been answered ever since.

Being a writer is not an easy task, so if you want to make this as your future career, try planning ahead and practice more to become the best writer of your time.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Benefits of Using Online Writing Tools


Do you always dream of becoming the best writer of your generation? That is not hard to achieve as long that you have what it takes to become the person who shakes the world with its unique writing ability. If you want to become a successful writer, you need to have passion in formulating a unique piece of articles, poems, or reviews in order to impress your readers and it will keep on following your ideas. On the other hand, courage and perseverance is absolutely needed if you want to reach your dreams and attain your goals in life as an aspiring writer.

But don’t you know that there are more things to do if you want to become the finest freelancer? Using your gained knowledge is an advantage of being a good writer but sometimes no matter how good you are, you can never expect that your work-of-art is 100% perfect.

This calls for the aid of using “online writing tools” like “Grammarly”. It is an ad-on for Microsoft Office that checks your spelling, sentence construction (that suggests revisions), and determine if your writing piece is plagiarized or not. Another useful online writing tool is WhiteSmoke that helps to make your writing error free. You can have some of these tools for free or purchase via the Internet and start creating top-of-the-line articles today.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Poetry Project For Kids


Some children seem to get the idea of poetry like some people naturally understand music or art.  Other children struggle to see the point and are resistant to lessons about poetry. The poetry project is a collection of the favorite poems of the various people in a child’s life.  When my child did this I was totally amazed at how many people had one or more poems that were special to them.  It is also fun to see what kinds of poems are important to whom.  In addition, it involves writing practice which is always a good thing.

Introduce or review poetry basics at an age appropriate level.  Explain the project.  Spend a few minutes brain storming who the child would like to invite to participate.  Family, friends of all ages, neighbors, care givers, and city leaders are a place to begin.  If a child has a hero, it would be fun to include them.  Help the child write a skeleton letter which can then be personalized for each person being approached.  Over the next few days, the child will write a note or letter to each person.  Mail the letters or send the emails.

As the responses come in, read the poems together.  If the contributor provided a note of explanation, read it.  Read each poem out loud a couple of times to hear any rhymes and feel the rhythm. Discuss the type, the images created, and the feeling conveyed.  Discuss why the contributor might like the poem.  Encourage your child to make notes about the poem to keep with it and to use to write a “thank you.”

The collection of poems can be made into a scrapbook or computer file.  It is fun to add a picture and bio of each person.  The project is likely to become a prized possession.

Friday, November 29, 2013

How To Write A Compelling Article?


The internet has created an excellent platform for the writers to come out and show their talents to the rest of the world. If you want to write articles for magazines, websites, newspapers and so on, you need to know how to write an article that will keep the audience engaged.

An Appropriate Title: Any guide that gives you an idea on how to write an article will tell you about the significance of providing an attractive title. Title should be attractive as well as appropriate to the content of the article. A title would create an expectation in the reader’s mind on what will be covered in the article. Hence if the content doesn’t match the reader’s expectations, he won’t find it interesting. So spend some time to come up with a good title for your article.

A Valuable Content: At this point you would have decided on what should be your article’s area of focus and how to write it. Now go on creating a grammatically error free content which is simple to understand. If your article is to be published on the internet, make sure the content is unique and it is not copied from any other resource.

Information is the key part, which makes your article stand out in the crowd. So provide more focus on the nature of information that you would like to offer to your readers. These are the primary factors that will influence the quality of your articles.

So when you have decided what to write, decide on how to write it and then start writing.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Ways to Recycle Writing


I suspect many homeschoolers (like me) have files of old papers.  Stories written a few years ago or a few months ago, essay questions, reports, and simple research projects are hanging around waiting for something but what? To be recycled, of course!  These are not wasted computer memory space or piles of future kindling.  They are piles of possibilities.  Here are a few ways to recycle writing.

Editing practice: Pick an old piece with lots of spelling and grammar errors for a child to edit now that he or she has learned new skills.

Experimenting with the part of speech: Pick an short old story or essay and have the child change all the adjectives and/or adverbs to discover the transformation of the piece.

Writing Prompt: Choose an introductory paragraph of an old essay to be the starting point of a new essay.

Story development: Return a story that was written at younger age and have the child rewrite the story with a more developed story line.

Story reformation:  Allow the child to pick a story he or she really likes with the job of adding a new character to the story.

Writing Challenge:  Provide one child with something you or another child wrote with the task of writing something entirely new using the ideas or concepts.

Creating arguments: For an older child, provide an old piece which takes a stand on an issue and ask them to write a piece in response from a different perspective.

Monday, November 25, 2013

Ten Best Tips For Writers


Following are ten of the best writing tips that are given by experienced writers and this will help make you a better writer.

  1. Before writing your content, make a list of all the points that you want to cover. This will help you not to lose track of your writing.
  2. Try not to reuse the same words more often within your content. Instead, check out the vocabulary to find another word that has the same meaning.
  3. Once you have finished your writing, read it from the reader’s perspective and you will tend to correct all mistakes.
  4. Use Simple words that could be easily understood by everyone who reads your content.
  5. Always provide a short introductory passage that gives an idea about the reminder of your content.
  6. Make your sentences short and simple. Long sentences might reduce the quality of your content.
  7. Try not to edit your first draft. We can always edit after the draft is complete.
  8. Do not include any words that are not necessary within a sentence.
  9. Do not feel shy to get writing tips from other experienced writers.
  10. And lastly, be a good reader.

Follow these writing tips and your journey as a writer will be more exciting.

Friday, November 22, 2013

The Benefits of Journal Writing


A great way to encourage writing is getting a journal for your child. Journal writing has several benefits. First, it gets your child writing more and developing their own voice. It also gives them a space where they won’t feel like they are being graded or judged. Make sure that you give them their space and that they understand that private is private.

Don’t worry too much about if they are spelling things right or if they are writing their letters right – this is their space to try and explore. Journal writing can be an extension of private speech for younger children. Developmental psychologists have found that private speech (when children engage in their own private dialogue) helps young children internalize rules and morals. It allows them to “think outloud” as they are trying to figure new situations.

This can also be helpful as they are starting to learn to regulate their emotions in age appropriate ways. They may want to share what they write with you from time to time, but make sure that if they want privacy that you give it to them. Developing a relationship of trust will be invaluable as your child is older. You can give them a small speller or dictionary if you want them to do their best with accuracy, but remember, the focus of a journal is just to get them writing, not necessarily to do it perfectly.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Academic Writing (Tips and Tricks to Help You Write the Best Essays)


Freelance academic writing tends to be very hectic. There are strict deadlines, too many rules and regulations as well as formats which should be followed. Academic essays also demand a lot of research and referencing using the recommended styles. However, if you know the tips and tricks you can use to write compelling academic essays, there is a guarantee you can make a lot of money.

There are numerous academic writing sites all over the internet where people from different levels of education submit essays and hire people to write them. If you want to write exceptional academic essays and make a lot of money from it, below are some tips to guide you in the writing process.

  • ResearchAcademic writing is all about doing the proper research. Research information from multiple sites to get valuable content into your essay.
  • Formatting and Structure - If the essay is properly outlined from the introduction, the main body, and the conclusion – the general appearance will be enticing and appealing to the reader. Make sure the paragraphs are properly spaced, use a correct font and size as well as also make sure the margins are correctly spaced. A compelling academic essay should be well formatted and structured to attract the reader to read more of it.
  • Referencing The most important aspect about academic writing is referencing. Generally, specific guidelines are always given about what styles are to be used in the writing of the essay. Research about various referencing styles such as APA, Harvard, MLA etc. If you’re unfamiliar with a certain referencing style, research more about it before you make a mess of your essay.

In conclusion, once you have mastered the art of academic writing, you can take it up as a hobby. Register on different academic writing sites and take up assignments where you can earn money.

Monday, November 18, 2013

How To Be A Writer


Not everyone can be a novelist or write bestselling novels. Anyone with the right skills, a computer and access to the internet is capable of becoming a writer and even better earn from it, especially stay home moms who may find some time on their hands.  All you need is the right mindset and an attitude to match. Along with that you need to know a few things as explained below:

Know your content

The first thing you need is to be self-aware and the audience that you want to attract. As a person you need to know what are your strong points and weaknesses in relation to your desired audience. Know what you are good at and stick to it. So that when it comes to writing, you will only write content that is close to your heart and will also speak a great deal to the audience that you are reaching out to. You might enjoy yourself in the process.

Be flexible

If you choose writing, you should also know that different opportunities will present themselves sometimes unexpectedly. That might be your opportunity to showcase your skills and excel at it. Sometimes an idea may come to you at odd hours and you may have to wake up in the middle of the night, you will have to wake up to write it so that it does not escape you.

You need to read a lot

As a writer you need to have command of language and be knowledgeable beyond question, otherwise you might not be taken seriously. Therefore, you need to invest a lot in reading various materials to add to your well of knowledge improving your language skills as well making you familiar with various writing styles which may give you ideas of what to write about.

Friday, November 15, 2013

Tips On How To Write Exceptionally


You may find some time on your hands and decide to spend it writing. You may do it as hobby, or you may take it further and try to earn some money from your writing. Especially for stay home moms, who may find sufficient time to sit in front of a computer and write something either for the fun of it, or for money. However, like every one – you would want to read your work and be proud of what you have written. Here are few tips on how to achieve that.

Make a plot

Every good story has a plot that is consistent all through the story. So the first thing that you should do as a writer is to establish a storyline and outline your points to flow consistently (before you sit in front of a computer to write). This will bring coherence in the flow of your writing which hooks your reader.

Pick themes and tones that best suits your writing

As a writer, creativity is important. You can choose to write about anything; the options are endless. However, depending on the audience you are reaching out to, you should choose tones and themes that are common to them. For example, if you are writing for children the theme should be one that excites them like magic, and the tone should be playful and not serious.

Make a rough copy before writing the final copy

Write a sloppy copy first. This will help you look for coherency and the flow of the story. This is not for spell checking or adding missing words to the story, it’s for the purpose putting your thoughts down in writing. This also will allow time for you make all the necessary changes that you feel will make the story better and more attractive to your audience.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Three Valuable Tips For Using On Page SEO


Learn the tricks to using on page SEO (search engine optimization) and get more traffic flowing to your website. There are five critical things to consider when starting to create web content with on page SEO methods.
Text Is Critical: The search engine spiders keep crawling through the web pages and index them based on their content. These spiders are programmed to crawl through the textual references within a web page to identify its nature of content. Hence making your website rich in text content, will make it visible to the search engine spiders.

Manage Multimedia Content: If you have some design oriented content like images, javascript or flash, make sure that they don’t fill the biggest part of the web page. If you have a video, create a sufficient amount of text content that describes what does the video emphasizes.
Build Text Links: Another crucial factor involved in on page SEO is the number of quality back links that each web page has. So make sure that your web page is being linked from some other website that has a similar field of interest.

With these few tricks, you will begin your journey of using on page SEO in your web content. Continue adding high quality content to your site while considering this method to help gain the most from your online writing efforts.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Why Use On Page SEO With Web Content?

When you publish something in your website, how do you make sure that the content is visible to all the internet users? Every page in your website has to be search engine optimized, to make your website visible in the search engine results.  Hence, on page seo is the key to your website’s visibility over the internet space.

Popular search engines like Google have a specific algorithm to find out appropriate webpages and get them listed in their search results. Though understanding the algorithm is complex, the primary focus of these algorithms will be on the text content that is present in a website. Following the right on page seo techniques, will help the search engines to find your web pages and get them displayed on the search results.

Those webpages that do not adopt the on page seo techniques will not be identified by the search engines and hence the possibility of the website getting displayed in the search results in very minimal. So a website without SEO, will always be invisible to the rest of the world.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Welcome to Helpful Tips For Writing

Welcome to Helpful Tips For Writing
 
Writing is easy for some and not so easy for others. At one time in my life, there was no joy in writing. I didn't even want to think about it! Today, is a different story!
 
Approximately five years ago, I decided to go back to school to earn my master's degree. During my new educational pursuit, not only did I do well and graduate in the top of the class - I learned new writing skills. Many hours went into writing during this time and now I can say that I enjoy taking the time to write! I am even writing web content for small number of businesses online, so that I can be home with my children.
 
This blog is created to provide inspiration and ideas which are helpful tips for writing. You may be a student in public school or college; you may be a home school student or mom looking for ideas. Regardless, I hope you will enjoy the posts added over time here on Helpful Tips for Writing.
 
Thank you,
Barbara
AKA TheRealHomeSchoolMom
"You can be a real home school mom, too."
"You can be a writer, too."