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Dear Fellow Writing Success Achiever,
Today's writing success tip has a caveat. In A.S.P.I.R.E, the RnR Success Method,
S is for Skillfulness
Be Good at What You Do
...but don't go beating yourself up about it.
The relationship between your internal world and the external manifestation of it is a complex one. You've heard the phrase, you get what you focus on?
Well, this is true but it also has a down side. If you have a habit of berating yourself over your failings and beat yourself up over your lack of success, guess what you're more likely to create in your life?
Uh-huh, more failure and lack.
I never thought this was true until success started to happen to us and I began to look back over my life with a more dispassionate eye. And I realized that all too often when things weren't going well, I got depressed and beat myself up. For all the right reasons of course - I was trying to do something about it, examining my tactics, whipping myself back into shape... but to no real avail.
Have the Courage to Let Go
Success began to happen when I let go. When I realized nothing really mattered that much - and when I had faith that things were going to turn around, they began to.
I guess because I was focussing more on the positive, which sent different messages to my subconscious, which enabled me to make more effective decisions about how to spend my time.
Nowadays I have Robyn to remind me not to dwell on the negative. It's a hard habit to break but well worth the effort.
Time hating yourself, your lack of talent and your failure to achieve the things you want is wasted time. No-one's ever going to know about, nor benefit from this state of mind. You owe it to yourself to consciously and deliberately turn your mind to the positive.
Okay, when you're stuck in a low gear it's sometimes hard to change but it's trying that counts. It's cumulative. The more times you force that change in your thinking, the easier it becomes - until it becomes automatic
Pride Shows
Feeling good about yourself and what you do has a terrific impact on your writing. I've seen thousands of manuscripts in my time and I can tell you one thing. A MS that is alive with thought - even if there are technical errors - is far more compelling than a dry, perfect MS from a dull writer.
It's about engagement. If you are fully engaged in your writing, a state that occurs naturally when you're excited and happy, your mind can grasp the whole concept, the wider perspective and that somehow transfers itself to the page.
When you're low and struggling over every word, your vision becomes narrow, critical and often, self defeating. And that too shows on the page.
You can be good at what you do if you let go of the critic. Believe in what you do and believe that you are giving your best and your writing will begin to soar.
Practice
Apparent skilfullness in writing is brought about by practice. You have to get used to seeing and hearing with words. It's a knack you can train your brain to do. After a while, you no longer receive impressions about the world and people in a nebulous way - your brain starts to order the impressions into words and sentences that you can pluck from your mind and put straight onto paper.
Studying writing is good, up to a point. But I don't mean sitting down to analyze words, writing style and writing conventions. I mean merely being open to how words are used all around us to convey meaning.
Reading everything, writing, keeping a diary, it all helps. Even watching TV and movies is good - as long as you're thinking about words and how they're being used to convey fiction or facts - and how you might use them yourself.
Ideally you should practice writing every day. Get used to ordering your thoughts through words on paper.
Deliberately put off thinking about things until your writing time. Thinking achieves little when it comes to writing.
Thinking about writing or being a writer is not actual writing - to state an obvious but often ignored fact with would-be writers.
Aim to be good at what you do, yes, but also believe that what you do is good - and your writing, and your writing based life, will begin to prosper.
The next message in this series will arrive in your inbox shortly.
To Your Writing Success!
Rob Parnell
Next tip: P is for Persistence
Grammar, writing tips, and articles
they’re: contraction for they are
.
Grammar rules to remember:
1. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
2. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
3. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive
5. Avoid clichés like the plague.
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
12. Kill all exclamation points!!!!
13. Don't use no double negatives.
14. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
15. The passive voice is to be ignored.
16. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary.
17. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth great ideas.
18. Never use a big word when substituting a diminutive one would suffice.
19. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
20.One should NEVER generalize.
(taken from Dan Rosenbaum: "Rules for Writers")
Prepositions usually are short words that link parts of
sentences.
1. Prepositions change nouns or pronouns (and their modifiers) or any
word group functioning as a noun into prepositional phrases.
Examples of nouns: cat, table, book
Examples of prepositional phrases (preposition + noun):
whiskers OF the cat
bowl ON the table
pages IN the book
. Prepositions that are used to form two-word verbs are called
"particles."
Joseph RAN AWAY from the problem. ("ran" = verb + "away" =
preposition/particle)
Gerald TURNED IN his essay. ("turned" = verb + "in" =
preposition/particle)
Other examples of two-word verbs using prepositions which function as
"particles"):
aim at
bring about
call up
head out
mark up
put out
turn out
. Prepositional phrases often serve as modifiers within a sentence:
The whiskers [of the cat] began to twitch.
That bowl [on the table] is cracked.
The underlined pages [in the book] are smudged.
