How to decide what to write;

•    Consider your objectives – what is it you need to write, want to write?

•    What is the tone – is it professional and formal, or lighthearted and simple?  The tone in your professional resume certainly will be different than in a funny note to a friend.

•    Consider your emotions. This is critical.  Are you writing under duress anger, or in an agitated emotional state?  Or are you writing with ice-water-in-the-veins calm about your subject?  If the former – you’re angry – here’s my advice.  Just write, without much thought or organization.  Blast it all out.  Get it out of your system in a cathartic session.  Don’t worry for a moment about spelling, grammar, style or anything else – just write.  Let your writing software program take care of all of those qualities.  You will feel so much better simply by writing.  HOWEVER – this is the important part – do not send what you write! To do so can be very dangerous and embarrassing later.  Once disgorged, set it aside for as long as it takes to dispel your emotion – a minimum of one night’s sleep, but it could be a month or more.  Never send something written in anger!  If it is written in passion, like a love letter, that can be different, but be careful even in this case.  If you truly are angry, wait.  You can’t wait long enough.  The reason is, as good as it feels to write in anger, most of what you write is nonsensical drivel!  This is not prose worthy of the light of day, without serious editing.  Oh there will be some kernels of wisdom in this putrid pile of festering emotions you have now put into words, but you need a calm mind to sift through them and find the good stuff.  Wait.

•    Consider your restrictions. Are you limited by a maximum number of words?  When is it due?  Does your writing need to fit a form, a template, a philosophy, an argument, or other?  The list is endless.

•    Consider your preparation. Are you sufficiently informed about your topic?  Although it never has been a requirement to know anything about what you write – as evidenced by the work of numerous newspaper and periodical columnists – still, it helps to be somewhat informed.  The more you know, the easier it is to write about it.

Once you are clear about most of the above, the task is fairly well defined. You know who your reader(s) are, you know what you wish to say, you have some organization of your thoughts or arguments, you understand your emotional state, and you’re ready.  All that remains is to do it.   Write!

And, your writing can be enhanced with a remarkable English writing software tool like the WhiteSmoke 2009 grammar check and error correction program.  It not only fixes all of your grammar, spelling and punctuation errors, but also enhances your writing style for more effectiveness in your text.  It is far more powerful than a mere word processor, and is like having your own personal editor by your side.

After you have determined what you wish to write, have formulated your main points – either in your mind or in an outline of some form, and have created the proper environment for best concentration (quiet with no distractions), then you are ready to write.  Suppose you have done all of the above, and still no words come spilling out.  What then?

As frustrating as this may be, it is not uncommon.  Writers – all writers – seem to vacillate between two states.  Either the words pour forth in an explosion of ideas and thoughts in such profusion and quickness that you almost can’t get them all recorded – this is referred to as the “fire hose” of writing – or you stare at an empty page interminably, with nothing.  If the latter happens we suggest the following;

•    Ask yourself some questions (no, not why you are enduring this?).  If you were the reader, what would be your questions?  What would you like to read?  What would interest you in the subject?  Ask as many questions of yourself as you need.  Eventually in asking yourself questions, you will spawn an approach to begin.  Once you have the beginning and are underway, it often gets easier and the ideas (and words) begin to flow.

•    Pick a single thought and focus on it. Sometimes it is tough to begin because there is too much clouding your mind.  Simplify.

•    Calm down. Sometimes when you are so emotionally strung out about something, you can’t productively begin doing anything.  You may need to pause and walk away for a while.  Better to do this and come back later productively, than to continue to stew and waist time doing nothing.

•    If still nothing, abandon your outline. Just pick something, somewhere in your topic and write about it.  What you select may be the section you know the most about, the portion you perceive to be the easiest, or even may be the ending – that great wrap-up you have in mind.  Just begin and then usually the rest will fall into place.  Remember, you will edit it all later and put it together in finished form.  Your WhiteSmoke error correcting writing software can help you immensely – think of it as your own personal professional editor.

•    Consider the five “W’s and the “H.” These are the basic tenants of journalistic writing and they are aids for all writers.  Simply, answer the following questions: what, who, when, where, why … and how?

If still you can’t begin, after all of the above, then maybe you should set the project aside for a while, until some clarity comes.  Sometimes a good night’s sleep will do wonders – the brain works even when you are asleep.

Basically you are not happy with what you have written and don’t know how to fix it.  This problem usually happens in that fuzzy middle part of your composition.  You’re stuck.  What to do?

Some approaches are the following.

•    Relax, let your frustration calm, and don’t be hard on yourself.  Try to understand that this happens to all writers, even the great ones.  Step away from your computer (or however you write) for a while and engage your mind in something else, completely different.  Your “walk-about” can be as short as 5-10 minutes, or as long as necessary – maybe days or weeks.  Here is the interesting thing about your mind – it is still processing the problem whether or not you are consciously thinking about it.  In fact often your subconscious will find a solution and then bring it forward into your conscious mind when you are more relaxed and receptive.  Let your mind work without undue stress.  Do something else for a while.

•    Backtrack. Step back and rethink what you intended.  Where did you want to go?  What happened?  What doesn’t work?  What is logically inconsistent?  What parts don’t relate cohesively to the whole? If you ask these types of questions, often the path around the mire will become obvious.

• Write alternatives. Parcel the issue into smaller bites and then write alternatives.  This can be a paragraph or two, a whole chapter, or major sections of the piece.  It is OK to write many different versions to explore what “works.”   The solution may be a whole new continuous prose, or it may be a compilation of a number of different rewrites.  The key is to keep writing and working at it.

•   Toss it. This is may be a difficult thing to do, but sometimes you just need to toss parts of it and begin again.  Or pare down significantly.  When I wrote my first book I refined my manuscript down to 220,000 words!  Then I took it to my editor.  Long story short – it was finally published with 125,000 words (after ten rewrites), and the shorter version was much better.  Good writing comes from a distillation process. Purification is getting rid of all of the slag.  The slag comes from the mire.

All through the mire, I have found that my WhiteSmoke writing software and grammar checking program is an enormously valuable tool. When I’m stuck, it can suggest new words – antonyms and synonyms.  It can suggest new phrases and style enhancements.  Even merely correcting punctuation sometimes can help the clarification process toward better writing.  You might wish to consider having it as part of your writer’s tool kit also.

•    Tie up loose ends. This is helpful whether your document is a story with characters and situations, or technical writing for your employer.  Finish with some completeness of the loose ends.  What was important from your outline?  Did you address it properly?  Did you answer your reader’s questions?  Did you make your points?  All of these are good questions to ask your self when wrapping up.

•    Summarize your arguments. If you are writing an opinion piece, a documentary, a work of fiction, or any document for any purpose, summarize what pertinent points you wished to defend or present through your writing.  A corollary to this quite often is less is more. Long and rambling defenses, or summaries often lose the reader’s interest.  Usually the reader is much smarter than you think, so it is important to lead them to form their conclusions and then exit without belaboring the points.

•    Resolve conflicts. The key is to leave the reader satisfied.  This often is a challenge for even great writers.  We are not saying leave the reader happy, or end it the way the reader might like it to end.  Quite often we read something and are not pleased with the way it ended, but upon reflection we understand the writer’s craft and purpose.  Which leads to,

•    Make it believable. Don’t play games with the reader (and yourself as the author) just so you can make an exit.   Whatever your ending, it has to ring true with the reader, otherwise they will not like you for the deception.   The ending has to be credible – not emotionally satisfying necessarily, but believable.  Even in fairly tales, the ending needs to be believable, even if a small stretch of the imagination helps.  Respect your reader – give them something they can accept.

Most importantly though, give the reader something that is polished and well written. If your skills in grammar, writing style and punctuation are superb, that’s fine.  But for the rest of us, an English writing software program that can instantly check grammar, polish text and enhance the overall presentation of our document, with one simple click of our mouse, is a most valuable tool.  Your writing leaves an impression – make it positive!

Regardless of what you intend to write, here are some tips,

• Determine what you wish to communicate – select the subject matter. It helps if you have some idea(s) of what you wish to write.  This may seem like a silly statement, but actually it is common for people to not be clear on exactly what to write, let alone how to write it.

• Formulate your main points. This can be as simple as getting an idea in your mind, or as complex as sitting down beforehand and composing an outline.  The outline should cover the main points you wish to make, and when you wish to make them  – the sequence or placement of the ideas in the composition.

• Clear your mind of distractions. If you have details to explain and there are potential consequences to how well you explain them (like say, a letter grade for your composition, or a love letter to someone special), eliminate competition for your attention.   Very few people can write well if they are at the same moment trying to watch television, or carrying on a conversation with someone in the next room.  Any writing, but especially good writing, demands your attention and concentration.

•  Do it – write! There comes a point where you can prepare, or stare at the ceiling, only for so long.  You have to actually do it.  Even if you are not well prepared or mentally composed yet, or you haven’t completed the tips above, just do it; you have to begin.   “Just do it” was a very effective marketing slogan for a sports equipment manufacturer for many years.  At some point you need to make something happen.

• Proofread or reread your work BEFORE you send it. This is one of the most critically important tips.  Never, ever – even if you are in the greatest of hurries – send your writing without first proofreading it yourself, or checking it for errors or meaning.  Remember your written words carry impressions of you as a person.  It is very important that your work is exactly the way you intend it to be read.  What you send could exist for a very long time as a record, either for good or bad and whether the words you chose were appropriate, or not.

This last tip is critical, but there is help!  If you are in a hurry to send your writing, or are not sure of the phrasing, the grammar, the spelling or the punctuation, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have an all-serving writing wizard handy to instantly correct everything for you and reconstruct your words in the most effective manner possible?  Think of the confidence and comfort such a wizard would give you, as well as the time you could save.  

This English writing tool is that wizard. It does all of the above, including grammar checking, punctuation checking, spell checking and text enhancement, all with one simple click of your computer mouse.  It is the proofreader extraordinaire that you need by your side.  If Shakespeare only had it so easy!

An outline can be nothing more than a few mental thoughts as reminders of what you wish to convey, if you are writing a simple note, or it can be as complex as a completely structured written Table of Contents if you are embarking on a major composition, such as a book or thesis. All artists often sketch for hours if they are contemplating a work of art. They need to study certain segments of the whole canvas to see if they fit, and determine the relationships between the pieces, as well as what to emphasize and what to discard? Creating the sketches for the artist is a significant part of the whole creative process in painting a picture. For the writer, the outline can serve the same purpose.

Does this mean that you can’t, or shouldn’t begin the writing until you have the outline fully complete? No, absolutely not! The outline is only a tool that helps you begin the writing, but it usually will not fully describe the finished manuscript. Actually, the outline, or Table of Contents is often the last thing to be completed.

The truth is that most writers for most writing, have a fairly good idea of the beginning, and a fairly good idea of the ending. It’s all of that stuff in between the beginning and the ending that is fuzzy. Do not be dismayed by this, it is natural. No author begins a major novel knowing how the story will enfold in total – how the words will fall onto every page. In fact, for most stories the author hasn’t a clear idea of how it will end – but he/she recognizes that writing is a creative process and somehow the whole story will come together as the creative spirit flows. This is generally true for any creative writing, for any length, for any purpose. And it also quite often is true for more mundane writing. The key is to have an outline (plan), however rough, and then begin. Trust that it will come to you, because it will. The outline will help immensely.

It also helps the writer to have another valuable tool handy – a writing software tool to correct grammar errors, spelling, punctuation and style. Being able to automatically check the writing for grammatical structure and style offers a great freedom to the writer. He/she can now focus on the content of the writing. A good outline helps too.