Miscellaneous tips for advanced writers

Sometimes I choose to put a part of a sentence or even half the page down off of the wordpad window, in order to start fresh with the elaboration of the topic.

There are many times, I rewrite the whole essay this way. Usually I will not even look at that remnant until the whole fresh essay is complete.

I never play the sentence/paragraph/phrase cut and paste game. If you are communicating something, you have to do that clearly... and that means that every sentence and phrase along the way towards the next paragraph is important...

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Oral communication is really the plumbline that I find the best for establishing whether my writing is clear and eloquent or not.

Every writer who is writing something to be read by others, ought to read the thing aloud before he presents it. And for new writers, it's a really good excercise to speak as you write. However there are problems here, one's diction can get rusty. How humiliating is it for a person who is becoming such an eloquent writer, to be also poor public speaker? and you have to have a fan blowing a light breeze into the room from another room.

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You never want to debate with yourself whether to delete a particularly nice phrasing, when you know you've found a clearer and even nicer way to say the idea. That becomes a totally inefficient way to work.

I never use a thesaurus - even in highschool, I have distanced myself from this practice. It's entirely inefficient. However, I think that different people might be different places in the history of their relationship with writing... and thesauruses might be a very excellent tool for certain people.

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One core ethic a writer has to have, is that he must get ideas down on paper in real time, as they come to mind.. Generally, this is very important... when a brilliant idea comes to mind, you must get to a computer and write it down within a minute or two, or you will never be able to write proficiently about it in an hour. The ideas are aligned in your mind, in a certain way, and they won't be set up that way later in the day.

This is also an important ethic, when you are writing at the keyboard. You have to be a very efficient typist. You have to not be struggling with that best word or phrase which is just on the tip of your tongue; you have to not be concerned with punctuation or eplicit readability of your sentences and phrases as you write them. Because these things will hinder the flow of the ideas onto the screen.

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Writing with a pen and paper is a very different and unique experience. There are occasions when I'm on vacation and I can't use my notebook computer, and I have to use a notebook. You get a lot more depth to your ideas in fewer sentences. It's a very delightful experience.

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spelling - you never leave a typo uncorrected if you see it. The fact is, of course that an essay once written, might not be looked at again for years.

There are certain pet words where I would frankly like to change the way the english language spells them..

complete sentences - unimportant. There are times I do use complete sentences in my essays, and times I leave my writings as notes... I always make sure, however, that I format in clouds, so that whether its sentences, or notes, it's legible to me tomorrow. I think that complex word processors have done a very grievous injustice to writers - because you are encouraged to write in columns, and without manual carriage returns.

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windows 98 It's a funny system which will oftentimes freeze and lose unsaved wordpad work. This only happens if your computer is generally not tuned up - and it's generally unstable... and of course it happens more if you have less hardware memory installed. I have cursed the wall and threatened bill gates with a lawsuit thousands of times in the privacy of my room. But, what I actually find is that when I am forced to spend the next hour writing the important essay(s) again - the ideas are exponentially more developed.

I would almost humourously recommend novice writers use windows 98, and wordpads, because they'll surprise themselves at a moment where it's very important to be learning how much ability they actually have tucked away beneath their self consciousness..

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microsoft word, open office, lotus wordpro, or other complex word processers. They are useless for a real writer, except on that rare occasion, where you are actually printing out your work, or presenting it in pdf form for publishing.

A writer needs to write. Formatting is really tangential to the whole process.

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Never do I title my essay before it has taken shape. It's just not the way the agenda works. If you place a title on your work before you start, you're handicapping yourself. Writing is in it's core essence, the process of learning - and learning will take you wherever it will take you. And frankly, it's humanly impossible to give a title to describe something which has not taken form yet.

I'm amazed that no mainstream word processing software takes this fact into account. They obviously aren't avid writers themselves who design these things.

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broad models No one has had a detailed experience in every area of life, and so what is a writer to do? He has to draw up his ideas in the framework of models... I often present my models on discussion boards fully confident in them, even though I realize that pieces of my essay may reflect inaccuracies, because of lack of experience in the field where I'm drawing together that part of my idea.

That doesn't matter. It's the thrust that is important. The thrust has to be true. It has to be true in the sense that it is accurate, and in the sense that it is an honourable thrust.

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As a writer, the more time you spend with your pen, the more depth you'll have to your insights and models. If you deal with one topic over here, today, and one topic over there, tomorrow, they might dovetail... and where they dovetail, you have a synergistic effect.

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First drafts are oftentimes better than revisions. The fact is the first time you write, the words are all set down in a single flow of communicated ideas. When you revise or edit, you will change a word here, a phrase here, a mark of punctuation there - and sometimes even a paragraph will shift places. This means that conversational tone of voice is lost... and the word flow will, I oftentimes find, become far more pithy and unapproachable.

Thus, if I'm working on something which is going to be presented to someone else, I find it wise to save my first draft.

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A writer writes for himself, first and foremost. Honesty is very important that day if you are writing something for yourself. And honesty is exactly what makes the most profound essays.