AaronTurpen.com

I’ve talked about proofreading and self-editing before, which I consider The Most Vital, Yet Boring Skill Good Writing Requires.  It’s essential, though, to going from an amateur with a lot of hopes and dreams to being considered a professional who’s considered to be such by his or her peers and publishers.

In that last article, I covered general proofing and editing.  Today, I’m going to show you three basic steps that, once you make them a habit, will immediately improve your writing.

1 – Learn to Proofread Effectively

The fastest and most profitable way to do this is to do it for someone else.  If you have a friend who’s a writer, can find jobs doing basic editing or proofing work, etc. then this is a way to learn to become effective in proofreading.

I do a fair amount of editing work now simply because I took these jobs as fast money turnarounds and have found them to be educational as well as profitable.  An editing job on a 30-page ebook, for instance, won’t pay too much (maybe $50), but it can be done in an hour or less if you’re in a hurry and in two hours if you do a good job of it.  I do a good job of it.  What I learned by taking these quick payoff jobs is that they also train you to be a critical reader.

This skill is important, especially for a writer.  As a critical reader, you’ll begin looking at your own work and realizing what is too wordy, what kind of punctuation is distracting or over-used, when words are too often repeated, etc.  Probably the most common thing that writers do beyond using boring cliche’s in their work is to repeat words (especially adjectives) too many times.

This: “I went down to the store to get some great ice cream because there’s nothing better than eating great ice cream on a Saturday afternoon.  It’s a great way to cool down and feel relaxed.”

Becomes this once the over-use of the word “great” is changed: “I went down to the store to get some cold, tasty ice cream because there’s nothing better than frozen cream on a Saturday afternoon.  It’s a great way to cool down and feel relaxed.”

Neither paragraph is going to win a Pulitzer, but the second one is obviously much easier on the eyes.

2 – Recognize Your Weaknesses

Everyone has them.  Superman had kryptonite, Rocky had Adrien, and I have the over-use of contractions.  For most of the writing I do, a colloquial style with spoken-word type writing is what the editor wants.  Sometimes, however, it isn’t and I usually hear from them (loudly).  I will admit that the hardest thing for me to do when writing is to edit out the contractions and use the long form of the word or phrase.  “Can’t” must become “cannot” and doing it too much gives me a headache.

Many writers have similar weaknesses in their general style that they have to overcome for some projects.  Other writers, especially those starting out, will have a lot of them that they haven’t quite ironed away with habitual practice.

For some, it’s spelling, as the dreaded red underlines appear continually as they type.  For others, it’s the repetitive use of a handful of words.  Others still find that they swap heterographs or homophones.  “Their” becomes “they’re” and “to” becomes “two” more often than not.

Whatever your weakness, pinpoint what it is and work hard to eliminate it.

3 – Outline and Organize Your Work

Nothing spells “unprofessional” or “rewrite” in bolder terms than a disorganized article.  Even the most professional of writers will occasionally slip up (i.e. “get in a hurry”) and produce a badly-organized piece of drivel.  It happens.

Personally, I use several techniques to organize my writing, depending on the size of the piece of how involved it is.  Small 200-word (or so) pieces really don’t require a lot of organization to make them right.  For those, I focus on making each paragraph a separate idea and can then go back and just reorganize paragraphs fairly easily if the flow isn’t quite there.  Shorter pieces require less concentration, though, so they usually come out right the first time.

For a longer piece, say 500 or 1,000 words, I’ll use a simple outline.  The outline for this article, for instance, had the three points I wanted to hit and a few phrases under each to illustrate (to me) what I wanted to include there.  In this way, each section of the work becomes a miniature article that’s easier to concentrate on.  Incidentally, this also makes it easier to come back should I be interrupted while writing.

For a very long piece such as an article series or a small booklet-sized piece, I use mind mapping.  If you don’t know what that is, Google it.  I don’t use any fancy software, just a pen and a legal pad.  Sometimes I use colored pencils if it’s a longer piece as the colors can be used to organize articles within a series or ideas that are distinctly separate.  It’s a great technique and I’ve find that when I’m having a rough time coming up with a “hook” or an “angle” for the article in question, the use of a mind map often makes one readily apparent and boosts insight in tying disparate research together.

As an example of mind mapping at work, I did a series recently for NaturalNews.com on mercury toxicity.  It launched because a single article I’d written on mercury toxicity, dental amalgams and the FDA’s upcoming reconsideration of their safety promoted a tidal wave of reader feedback and information.  So it was decided that I should do a longer, more in-depth series on dental amalgams (“silver fillings”) and mercury toxicity.  I didn’t have a real angle in mind as I did preliminary research, but one quickly emerged as I tied some of that research together in a mind map and saw how much of it revolved around dental professionals.  Viola!  An angle for the series was born.  That series should be publishing very soon.

Wrapping Up

These three things should help you become a better writer, and quickly.  Just remember to proofread and to do it for others as well as yourself, to know your own weaknesses, and to organize your writing before you write.

Whether you realize it or not, business letters likely make up a large portion of your writing.  Especially if you’re a freelance writer or business owner.  Many of your emails are probably business letters, as are your proposal cover letters, your project bids, and much of your other correspondence when communicating business-to-business.

Effective business letter writing is essential to success in freelancing, especially in the service industry (such as writing).  A great business letter will have three basic elements: it will limit its scope to the objective at hand, it will clearly state its purpose at the beginning, and it will be addressed as personal correspondence between two individuals.

The first element is scope and objective.  Your objective for your business letter, whether it be a sales letter, a letter of reference, or a project proposal or bid, should be clear, concise, and stated within the first paragraph of the letter (usually the first two sentences).  If, for instance, you are writing a bid proposal for a project on a freelance website, clearly state what the bid is for and what it entails in the first paragraph of that bid.  For example:

Mr. Langley,

This bid is for eight pages of site copy, written with moderate sales pull and SEO aimed for 3 key phrases throughout.  This bid includes two revisions, at your discretion, and is for the complete job, not as a piece rate or hourly charge.

That first paragraph covers what the bid is for, what it will entail, etc.  The rest of the proposal would include details such as what constitutes a “page,” what is expected of the buyer in this case, and how communication should take place.  Any other details pertinent to the bid would be listed through the rest.  That first paragraph, though, focuses on the nitty-gritty to tell Mr. Langley what the bid is for and how much it covers.

Having been on both the buying and selling side of freelancing, I can tell you that bids that are short and to the point, but cover all the important bases, are much more likely to win compared to bids that are verbose and rambling or bids that are too technical or filled with legaleze.  Be concise, direct, and state your business right up front and you’ll find yourself better-received by those who are busy running a business and aren’t interested in wasting time reading a too-long proposal.

Whether your business letter is for a bid or to ask for assistance or something else, busy people appreciate cordial directness.  It gets the job done and doesn’t waste anyone’s time doing so.

As you can see from the example, both the scope and objective of the letter were spelled out right off and the letter began with a personal greeting (“To Whom It May Concern” doesn’t cut it in today’s information-filled world).  That covers all the required bases of a good business letter.

For a last word, I would like to give one more piece of advice: write your letters as if you were speaking to the person.  Being too clipped and professional does have a down side, so try to let your voice come through.  Stay on target with your objective and scope, but use common words and phrases rather than jargon and “five dollar words” unless it fits with what you’re writing about.

A business letter is a professional correspondence, to be sure, but it is also a personal conversation between you and whomever you’re addressing.  Try to be somewhat personable.  Also be aware that what you’ve written is permanent.  It can be printed, stored, photocopied, etc.  Bear that in mind if you’re writing demands or issuing a grievance.

There is one skill, above all others, that is the most important and vital skill every good writer needs.  For most of us, it’s also the most boring of tasks and the hardest to force ourselves to accomplish readily.  That skill is proofreading.

Proofreading (also called “proofing”) is a very necessary process and great writers (or at least steadily employed ones) are often marked by their ability to proof their own work and hand editors and publishers ready-to-print material.  These writers are, in most editor’s view, true professionals.

Here are some examples of how quality proofing can make-or-break your career – or at least your ability to get in print.

I work with an editor at a well-known online site regularly.  I submit work and she usually accepts it or asks for simple revisions (another info source, a change of wording or removal of a corporate name, etc.).  We’ve worked together for nearly a year and she’s never once returned something for grammatical revision.  After she’d approved four articles in a row without comment, I asked her if she was happy with my work.  She responded that it was top quality and I was one of the few she worked with that required little supervision in terms of staying on subject and grammar/readability.

Curious, I asked her to elaborate and she used a well-known person who occasionally writes for the same site as her example.  This person is a medical doctor and holds two PhD’s in related fields.  She said that despite this, the written pieces he submits are horrible.  “His on-target and general flow are great, but his grammar and total lack of punctuation are painful to read.  I spend a lot of time cleaning up his submissions.  If he weren’t a ‘special guest’ to the site, I would have asked that he be kicked to the curb long ago.”

In another instance, I was bidding on a job writing a handful of technical articles based on Microsoft software for someone’s website.  He’d narrowed it down to me and one other person and suggested a “write off” where we would each write one article on the same subject, he’d pay us both for that one article, but would hire the best of the two for the rest of the job.  We accepted and I submitted my article the next day.

After I’d won the job, I asked him what had won him over about my writing and he sent me the other guy’s submission and said, “Because with your stuff, I won’t have to proof read it and make sure it’s OK before I put it online.  His stuff is like this.”  I read through it and while the writing was good, the lack of punctuation and the huge paragraphs and large number of misspellings were the obvious work of someone in a hurry.

What you’ll find as a writer is that you’re more likely to have your work accepted, to win the job you’re bidding on, and to win over your editor to get the extra assignments or better payments if you are a professional.  A big part of that is making sure you’re proofreading all of your work and submitting only high-quality, top-notch stuff.  Each time, every time.

The following is a fun little Reading Test and proof primer from Udder Buffoonery:

It appears that the Udder Buffoonery website has gone the way of the Dodo.  Oh well.