Interesting Resources on Writing
Starting to participate in #The100DayProject by writing every day for 100 days got me into research more about writing. Writing is major part of the life as grad student. But I was far behind my writing and I wanted to improve by writing frequently. Its well known that writing is hard and it always be hard for lot of us. But writing more and more will make you better at it. Following two articles contains some interesting ideas and tips on how to get better at writing.
‘Make Writing a Part of Your Identity’ has some interesting ideas about how to make writing a habit and why it is important to make writing a habit. I strongly suggest that article to anyone who wants to be better at writing. The article contains couple of major ideas.
- You have to track writing if you want to improve writing.
- You have to make writing a habit and articles has some great advice on how to make writing a habit.
- Article introduces concept called Knowledge Cycle where writing process is a cycle of steps – research, read, take note and write.
’How to write 1000 words a day’ is mostly about large writing projects such as thesis. But below tips from that post will be helpful to anyone who is working on a writing project whether it is big or small.
- Spend less time at your desk: Don’t spend whole day writing. Dedicate less than a quarter a day or even less than that depending on the size of your project for writing, take a break and return later to clean it up.
- Remember the two hour role: Article about ‘The Two-Hour Rule’
- Make writing new stuff the first thing you do when you sit down to your desk: IMO, this can be valid if you have to write full-time or for a task such as thesis writing. But in other cases this may not be completely applicable.
- Start in the middle: Don’t attempt to write introductions, conclusions or important transitions first.
- Write as fast as you can, not as well as you can: Worrying too much about sentences you write can slow down the process. So write as fast as you can and come back later to clean it up.
- Leve it to rest… then re-write: When you write fast most of the things you have written may looks crappy. Take a break and then start re-writing.
Even though some points may not be applicable if you are working on a large writing project, I found above tips such as 'writing as fast as we can’ and ‘take a break and clean it up’ really helpful for any kind of writing.