1. Evaluate yourself as a writer. Who are you? What topics interest you? What do you want to express – in this tweet and over time? If you haven’t asked yourself such questions starting out, you’ll come to them before long.

2. Make style reflect content. What writing style comes naturally to you – informational, snarky, amusing, inspirational? What style best suits your writing aims? Do they match?

3. Evaluate your audience/readership. While a few writers only want the joy of self-expression, most want readers too. Microblogging is a crash course in reaching out.

4. Be concise. A fundamental of good writing.

5 Weigh the words. You’re told how many characters you’ve used, when you’ve gone over the limit and by how much. In working out which words to remove/alter to make your message fit, you get a writing tutorial.

6. Get clear. No room for faff and imprecision.

7. Choose strong verbs and nouns. No room for unnecessary adverbs and adjectives either.

8. Stretch vocabulary. You’ll need to dig deep into your vocabulary to find the best, shortest word.

9. Respond appropriately to feedback. On Twitter and other microblogging sites, the feedback loop is instant and unforgiving. If you’re not making sense or adding value, you don’t get retweeted or followed.

10. Play with the words. Have fun with it. What words will inspire people to follow you, take an action you’d like them to take, click on your link, retweet your tweet? Microblogging works best for writers who treat it as a word game – like a crossword or Scrabble.

Remove Distractions

If something is distracting you then it doesn’t need to be in your work area. Distractions are different for everyone but once you identify something as a distraction than you should remove it immediately. Sometimes this means removing posters, changing the color of the walls, or simply cleaning up around your work area.

Take a Break

During work, concentration can often be improved by taking a break. Though this seems counterproductive there are sometimes when you are simply unable to concentrate because you are tired or have worked too long. If you feel you need breaks often then keep them extremely short, one or two minutes. Even a minute of doing something besides the task at hand is considered a break and can be one of the most effective concentration techniques.

Practice Regular Meditation

Meditation has been scientifically proven to change the way the mind works. Meditating regularly can greatly improve your ability to focus and concentrate. Since meditation is in fact itself a form of concentration it can be difficult for some. Do not worry; regular practice will soon culminate in results. Start out with ten or fifteen minutes every other day of meditative practice and slowly increase it.

Push yourself Just a Little More

One popular concentration technique that is used for sufferers of ADD is the method of pushing the attention span just a little bit each time concentration starts to slip. Concentration is in many ways a learned activity. When you feel that your mind is beginning to wander stop and make a commitment to yourself to concentrate on you set task for five more minutes before taking a break. Then make it ten, fifteen, so on until you feel your concentration is up to par.

KNOW.

Writing is not just about relaying what other people have already said or written about – that is plagiarism. Instead, writing is about saying something original, something that is a product of the writer‘s own mind. For this to be possible, it is important that the writer has, at the least, some working knowledge on what he is going to write about. It is at those times when the writer feels that he knows so much about the topic that suddenly, a very smart idea comes along.

FEEL.

Objectivity is a vital part of writing. Even those opinion articles that we get to read in a newspaper should still exhibit a certain form of objectivity, as any plausible argument should always be hinged on a well-established fact. However, a lot of writers tend to write in a way that is devoid of emotion or anything that resembles humanity.

To be able to write effectively, a writer must be comfortable with the way he writes. Since we are all human beings, we cannot help but feel emotions, especially when we write about something that we are quite passionate about. Hence, letting an emotion or two flow into your text is not necessarily a bad thing. Instead, it can actually be the perfect way for you to be able to connect with your audience.

BE.

Oftentimes, we become so preoccupied with how the prospective audience will receive our work, how they would react. This is a legitimate concern, especially for those whose continuity of work relies heavily on their article’s marketability. However, we must remember that we were allowed to write because we can write.

By saying that we can write, it means that we have the capacity to create material that is not like everybody else. Be yourself, then write. You need not be someone else.

After all, it is every person’s uniqueness that makes this world a less boring place.

I wrote my first book in 30 days and no, I did not attend a workshop and or training to learn how to write my book. What I did do was use two model books to provide a foundation for structure purposes and as a road map for book development.

The bottom line is this, writers write and no matter how much technology there is out there, in the end one has to put pen to paper if they want to write and finish their first and or next book.

I highly recommend you decided on what type of book you want to write, will it be fiction, non-fiction and or a novel? The choice is yours and the primary thing you must do is clear your head of any doubts, because they do not help you write and ultimately publish your book.

You must be determined, set a schedule for writing and carve out quiet time for writing. Avoid any and all distractions as best you can and I am confident you will be able to write a book in a month, like I did. I wrote Living on Higher Ground: How to live with passion, motivation and joy in 30 days.

The bottom line is, I had said on more than one occasion that I was going to write a book. I removed all of the excuses I placed before me and wrote a writing schedule, reviewed my book models and started writing. The approach I took and recommend is to write one chapter per day.

My book has 13 chapters and on the days I did not feel up to writing, I would proof read, correct typos and review my progress. After a short break I would start writing again and before long, the first draft of my book was written.

After finishing the first draft of my book, I hired a book cover designer, interior designer, copy expert and book printing expert. All in all, if you look at my book you would automatically think a major publishing house did the work because my book looks great.

The look and feel of Living on Higher Ground is an extension of my brand and thus I wanted it to look professional and position me to become an author of several books over the course of several years. Guess what, I want you to become an author and do what I do, here is to your success as an author.

However, there’s just those times when we simply can’t write. Moreover, this becomes an even bigger problem when our editors and big bosses have previously given us deadlines to meet. Before you gnash your teeth and lose hope, let me give you one good on how to find something to write about.

Music.

This medium has that magical quality that lets people think of things that they would have thought of otherwise. Music can make us remember things that has happened in the past, things which we were passionate about. Moreover, it also has that uncanny ability to even make us recall those nitty-gritty details that we thought were never there.

For example, when I hear any John Mayer song, I remember those times when I was in college, the time when I was still allowed to be stupid and carefree. On the other hand, when I hear the Pokemon theme song, I remember reading books about World War II. The ideas that come are so random, and this is what I writer wants.

Okay, suppose you followed my tip and it took you one whole sleepless decade to listen to your entire song collection and yet nothing still came out.

Listen to a song that you do not like, something that makes you want to throw and break stuff on the wall. Some of the more popular choices are Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato.

Now, ask yourself why you detest that song. Ask yourself if you accidentally remember something awful whenever you hear it play. Ask yourself why you are convinced that it is so bad. Ask yourself how it can be better.

After being able to answer any of these things, you should be happy.

Why? Because now, you have something to write about.

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• Decide on the purpose for the story. What is the main point you want to make? Slant the telling of the story so that that point is clear.

• Create the backdrop. Describe the scene so that the audience can picture it in their minds. What is the time, location, weather? What is going on emotionally, physically, or spiritually?

• Introduce the main characters. Help your audience to picture the important characters through detailed descriptions. Become them; describe their relationships, quirks and personality. Add character voices or mannerisms to make them different from your own.

• Begin the Journey. What is the task, the goal, and the journey to take? What are the challenges that need to be faced?

• Meet the obstacle. To avoid boredom something must happen to get in your way and make it interesting. This could be a person, a self limiting belief, or a challenge to overcome. Exaggeration will add humour.

• Overcome the obstacles. What had to be done to overcome the obstacle? What inner resources did you have to summon? Did someone help you? A hero? Or you? Be specific. Break your solution down into a few steps in sequence. This is where the teaching happens.

• Resolve the story. How did everything turn out? Tie up the loose ends-what happened to the other people? To your hero?

• Make the point. A story needs one clear point to have more points confuses the issue. Write out and memorize the point, work on the words to make it simple and easy to remember. Find “the phrase that pays”.

• Ask the question. Make your story personal to the audience. “Has that ever happened to you?” Turn the main point into a question. Push their buttons!

• Practice, practice, practice. Tell your stories to anyone who is willing to listen. Get feedback, make adjustments, and tell it again. These steps will ignite the WOW in your audience.

Remember the best story you will ever tell is your next story!

Barbara White helps speakers develop dynamic
speaking skills
through workshops, training and coaching. For more articles on speaking skills
visit
http://www.livingbeyondbetter.com and

http://www.articlesbeyondbetter.com

Writing is a very personal thing, I discovered. Some people have the talent for writing creative stuff. Some people have the talent for writing ads. Some write excellent factual stuff. Well, I fall into the factual stuff category. The boring-writing-technical-mumbo-jumbo writing stuff. How I fit into this category, I don’t know.

Well, SEO article writing is very much like that. First, you decide what topic or keyword that you want. For instance, you’re selling decorative lamps, right? in the SEO article writing process, list down ‘decorative’ and ‘lamps’. Then think about other words that relates to ‘decorative’ and ‘lamps’…words that people use all the time to describe them. This is a very important part of SEO article writing because these are common words that your potential site visitors will use to find you.

How about ‘light’, ‘bright’, ‘pretty’, ‘lighting’?

Ok, now your SEO article writing keywords are:- decorative, lamps, light, bright, pretty and lighting, right? So, on to the SEO article writing process. First you write everything that you need to write down first. Beef up the article. As a general rule of thumb, SEO articles should be no less than 300 words and no more than 500 words. Any more than that, you’re wasting your writing a novel for your SEO article. Read through the SEO article now and replace words and reword sentences to fit in those keywords. Yes, you’ll have to restructure some the SEO keywords here and there, but do it anyway.

Make sure the sentences make sense, ok? Because although the search engines won’t know bad grammar from good grammar, your site visitors will. And most of them, site visitors who visit your website based on those SEO keywords DO mind the bad grammar. And once you turn them away, it’s almost impossible to bring them back!

The final step to SEO article writing is…..proofread your SEO article and make sure they flow. The problem with SEO writing is that your thoughts might come in buckets….a splash here and a splash there. So, during the SEO article proofreading process, you’ll have to make sure one paragraph flows on to the next.

Good luck!

The deal is depending on where your article gets republished your links may not be “live”. Writing articles and posting them is a great way to drive traffic to your site. Search engines love it and if done correctly it will help drive new visitors to your site and get you listed higher in the search engines. The problem comes when article writers and authors and publishers don’t all follow the same rules. The main problems are:

1. Original article not formatted correctly
2. Article copied and pasted into new webpage without links
3. New publisher doesn’t make links live

Lets start with #1 “Original article not formatted correctly”. Not all article sites are the same. On some sites you can simply put in plain text and it will format it correctly, paragraphs will be correct and it will recognize http://www.yoursite.com as a live link. Some sites you may need to format it all in html. Sometimes the easiest way to do that is type your article in a web design program such as “Dreamweaver” and then view the source and copy and paste the code. If you don’t have access to such a program then you should learn a few basic html tags:

View the source of this page to see the html tags.

This is a “break” tag, The break tag is used when you want to end a line, but don’t want to start a new paragraph. The break tag forces a line break wherever you place it, a very common tag and one that is recognized by most all article sites.

Bold anything you want in bold should go between these tags

italic anything you want in italic should go between these tags

http://www.yoursite.com–some sites will recognize this as a live link. Many will not! This is where you are going to lose your links! If your article is copied and pasted into another web page or ezine your link will not be clickable. Someone who really wants to go to your webpage can copy and paste it into their browser but it is alot easier if someone can just click on it! If it is not a clickable live link search engines will not follow it not matter how many times it is republished. Imangine your article being reprinted 1000 times, a potential of 1000 back links to your site but without it being a clickable link you won’t reap the benefits of those 1000 links. Your links to your sites should always be formatted this way:

YourWebSite

If you follow the correct html formating for links your website links will always be clickable. To learn more about html tags search google for “html tags”

2. Article copied and pasted into new webpage without links. Your article may be correctly formatted on the article site you posted to but when it is copied and pasted into a new webpage or ezine it may lose some of it’s formatting. Some of the better sites have a choice of “ezine ready”, this will display your article in the correct html formatting which makes it easier to copy and paste.

3. New publisher doesn’t make links live. All article sites have a policy that clearly states “you are free to republish the article as long as the links and author bio stays with the article” Some don’t realize your links are no longer live or don’t know to make them live. Others leave them off all together or don’t make them live on purpose. Not much you can do except write to the website owner and request they make them live. Some will comply, some won’t. Chalk it up to the cost of doing business. For everysite that doesn’t make your links live, 10 will.

Keep publishing! Writing articles and posting them across the internet is still a great way to drive traffic to your site. Content is king and website owners, and ezine publishers are hungry for fresh new original content.

This article is free for republishing TJ Smith is the creative force behind several websites including
Article Boy article submission site and content archive and
The Blogger Nation Blog Directory