Month: September 2010

Creative Writing Skills: Do You Have Them All?Creative Writing Skills: Do You Have Them All?

Do you know that creative writing isn’t easy?

Silly question, I know. But do you know that there are a certain set of skills which you need to master if you want to be an expert in it?

And the questions that comes out of this are: what are these skills? And are they important?

Read on for the first question. As for the second, of course you already know that the answer is going to be:

“Of course!”

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Web Writing vs. Print WritingWeb Writing vs. Print Writing

Before the invention of the World Wide Web, there was only one kind of writing: print writing. All the writing that was done had been done on paper and its alternatives. But the computer changed that, and now we have two types of writing: web writing vs. print writing.

That is all fine, but the question that comes to our mind is: which of them is better, and which should I target?

As with all writing answers, the answer to the first question is: “there is no such thing as ‘better’ in most situations.”

And the answer to the second is: “it depends.”

Now, before you throw something at me, let me elaborate. (That’s what we do here, after all).

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Pen and Paper vs. Computer – Which Do You Use?Pen and Paper vs. Computer – Which Do You Use?

There was a time when every notebook I used to buy I filled it up with words. Nothing but words. There were stories, information about sports I was interested in (at the time) and a whole lot of other idiotic stuff. Whole pages and pages were drowned in words, and I used to love my notebooks.

A year or two later however, we got a new computer. I improved my typing skills (and learned touch typing). I also learned to use programs like Microsoft Word for writing. Henceforth I was using this almost exclusively for my writing. My notebooks, which were once so full that there wasn’t even space to copy down a phone number, now were empty. What happened?

The thing that happened was that I had changed my writing medium from pen and paper to the computer.

But of them is better for your writing? Which is better – pen and paper or the computer keyboard?

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Improve Your Writing by Using Figures of SpeechImprove Your Writing by Using Figures of Speech

Do you want to improve your writing?

If the answer is a loud “Yes” then you know that there are certain things which are recommended in writing. Some of them are:

  • Having a proper writing voice
  • Having some personality
  • Using emotive language

Today, we’ll look into an element of grammar that achieves all three of the recommendations in an excellent manner. What is this element of grammar? And how does it improve  your writing?

The element is figures of speech, and to find out how using them improves your writing, read on.

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1 Year Later: How I Improved My Writing1 Year Later: How I Improved My Writing

One year and a day ago, I was writing a post for my blog.

The post was just a normal post. At the time, I just wrote it and left it in the blog archives. And then, nearly a year later, wrote another post. The two posts were written by the same person: me. But I was shocked when I read both of them together.  I couldn’t believe a simple fact. My writing had changed. It had improved.

And the scary thing was: even though one year had passed, I hadn’t really spent much time on obsessively improving my writing. Yet the facts were there. More people were visiting my blog now. More traffic. Why?

The difference in my writing.

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