5 Writing Tips To Be A More Productive Writer

Written By Tan Hai Liang

The majority of us are not proficient in writing. I remember in my younger days, I hated composition in English as well as in Mandarin. The reason being, I have to write on something that I’m not interested in and have to hit a minimum word count.

In my university days, I hated large reports especially those 3,000 or 5,000 word report that will decide my fate whether I pass or fail certain papers.

Photo by mezone

I have been growing up associating negative stuff such as “difficult”, “boring” and “torturous” to writing. This is made worse by all the past teachers’ and lecturers’ ridicule and negative comments on my writing.

Moving forward, I am now blogging and publishing articles to market my sites. I have reached one full circle of hating writing to having to do it for my work. The law of attraction really works. What you don’t like, you’ll attract it! Anyway, that is a different topic altogether…

Now how do I get over my dislikes and difficulties in writing?

First, you need to get rid of your old thinking. It is not as fearful or difficult as you think. Your mind will try and protest and tell you it is difficult because your mind is comfortable with not writing!

Whenever you think it is difficult, say out loudly or shout “STOP!” and say loudly “I can write!”.

Don’t ever think that you can’t write, remove that thinking from your mind and thoughts.

How about language? Well, the good thing is We Are Not In School anymore. The beauty of internet marketing is nobody cares about your grammar in what you publish. As long as it can be understood by a 12 year old, then you are fine. In fact, your grammar deficiencies, if any, brings life into your work. People will find it more believable that it is written by you.

So be confident because nobody is going to point out your grammar mistakes when you publish your blog or articles. Just make sure simple things such as spelling mistakes are corrected. Spelling mistakes is a sign of sloppiness. Any current wordprocessor have a spell check, so use it before you publish.

Now, what are the 5 writing tips that can make you a more productive writer?

1. Discipline

If you are blogging or doing article marketing, writing is your marketing effort, thus, it is your business. You need to discipline yourself to allocate a fixed time everyday to write something. You may or may not finish your writing in a day, that is ok.

Photo by sa_ku_ra

You need to discipline yourself because your mind will find you all kinds of minute excuses to do something else. You need to discipline your mind. Tell it, you are the boss and you want to write. Find yourself a quiet spot that you won’t be distracted or alternatively switch off everything and try to concentrate on writing about your topic or your niche.

Some professional writers even go to the extend of working in an isolated room with no sound or light from outside.

You need to find a working spot at home that you can be left in private to work. If you have an office, then either use the Do Not Disturb sign or close the door.

Allocate the same time each day for your writing. This is to train your mind set to get into the mood of writing whenever the allocated time draws near.

Unless you are a natural writer, I find discipline very important.

2. Identify Your Productive Time Zone

Remember when you work, there are certain time in the day that you are exceptionally alert and your productivity is high? That is your productivity time zone. I find that I work best after breakfast at home and also from 5pm to dinner time. Early afternoon I have problems in concentrating and do things more slowly.

So what is your productive zone?

I used to try a habit of writing my blog post or articles in the afternoon, but I can’t get things done until 5+ when suddenly I hit a turbo button and I could write fast.

Now I write mostly in the morning after breakfast at home. I realised that in the morning I can concentrated easily and get into the writing mood fast and get the work done at shorter time. So that is my habit nowadays. To produce a blog post or article in the morning after breakfast.

You need to try out yourself when is the time that you can concentrate and get into the writing mood fast. Then allocate that time each day as your writing time. This way, you don’t have to waste time making yourself to get into the writing mood.

3. Allocate Reasonable Amount of Time

In your writing time slot, allocate a reasonable amount of time of 1 to 2 hours. Don’t allocate too little or else you run out of time before you start writing seriously. Writing is like driving a car, when you start with 1st gear, you start from stationary and your speed is slow. As you build momentum, you move up your gears. As you gain more and more momentum and speed, you change gears all the way to 5th gear when you are moving at top speed.

Photo by fdecomite

Likewise, writing you start slow and slowly build up your speed as you write more. So if your time is too short, before you hit 5th gear, you run out of time.

4. Write free flow

As you sit down to start writing, you can start with a simple structure of your post or article. Then you write free flow, ie, just write everything on the topic right off your head. Don’t attempt to disrupt the ideas and points coming out from your mind by proof reading it. Just write everything down, connect your thoughts directly to your pen, pencil or keyboard.

Leave the formatting, paragraphing, commas, fullstop, spelling and grammar for later.

Photo by angela7dreams

After you have exhausted all your ideas and thoughts, and are satisfied that you have finished writing, you do your proof reading. This is when you make sure ideas flow from point to point. You will need to reformat your sentences and paragraphs. Rewrite some sentences to change the structure, commas and fullstop to make it more readable. Checking your spelling mistakes or even some grammar mistakes is also done during proof reading. This is the only time that you make your posts and articles readable and presentable.

If its a blog post or article post, then you may want to search for photos to attach in your post or article.

If you are going to submit your articles to e-zine and newsletter publishers or article directories you can ignore the photos. I would also suggest that you leave your final piece of work alone and re-read it again the next day. This will help you fine tune your articles and pick out mistakes you left out earlier in your proof reading.

You don’t want to let the world see silly mistakes that you missed out doing proof reading, do you?

5. Reward Yourself

After completing your post or articles, remember to reward yourself. We need to re-train our mind that writing is good. In rewarding yourself, you attach a positive association to writing. This will slowly remove the past negative association we have build around writing.

Treat yourself with ice cream, take a nice stroll and enjoy the scenery, have a good meal, or even just a feel good pat on your back. Vary your reward and love yourself for the work you have done.

Photo by zerojay