This article helps anyone get started writing, whether for school, pleasure, or business. It is aimed at you if you are not used to writing, not comfortable writing or just not satisfied with the way you write. I will start you out with a method known as “Free Writing”, a tried and true way to get anyone over the initial fear of the writing process. Then I will guide you through editing your writing with your reader(s) in mind. Creative, expository (or academic) and business writing have different goals and different audiences, so your product will be edited differently for each form. Its just a matter of learning what each form demands, and then applying due diligence. I will provide the former and the second part is up to you. Remember, anything that’s worth doing gets better with practice.

How to get started writing

Make sure you have a comfortable place to write. Pay attention to ergonomics; and create the right setup for the health of your back, hands and eyes. It is relatively easy to find information on office setups, so I won’t go into this topic here. Lighting is also important. It should come from behind you and shed light on the task in front of you.

Practice with the Free Writing method that I describe below. Find out through this practice what works for you and use it. These practice sessions will result in raising your comfort level with writing.

• pencil or pen and paper

Many writers have rejected technological innovation and feel that writing with pen and paper connects them to their work.

• old-fashioned typewriters

Maybe it's romantic, but some writers swear the clicking of those metal keys inspires them

• PC or text editor

You may start out with the above tools and find that you do a lot of “cutting and pasting.” I have been known, in my bad old paper days, to cut up a page into separate sentences and rearrange them with tape until it looked like a complicated jigsaw puzzle. Text editing was a lifesaver for such as me. If you find you go a little crazy with scissors, the PC will turn out to be your best friend. You will get used to composing your work in a word processor. You may find that you will occasionally print out your work for a run-through with the red pencil, and then make changes to your electronic copy.

Discover your writing temperament.

Some people work obsessively. Many times the same people who have a great deal of difficulty getting started on a writing task, also have difficulty getting stopped. If you turn out to be that sort, force yourself to take breaks for the sake of your fingers and back.

You may find you work best in spurts of energy; writing for a time, then stopping and doing something completely different. If you’re able to return to your task, even after a prolonged interruption, it’s perfectly fine to work that way.

Find out what ambience or writing environment works for you.

Make sure the environment is pleasant and has some diversions, but is not so distracting that you will forget your main purpose is writing. I always set up to write near a window that looks out on glimpses of nature. Even lightening storms can be inspirational. Right now the tree outside has a cardinal family in it. Perfect.

Some people like to have music playing in the background. Others need complete silence. Still others will wear headphones that provide white noise and prevent any other distractions from getting through. Practice with each approach and find your own preference.

You may work better when people are around, or at least within earshot. Others need to be alone. I have known writers that work best in libraries because they have the best of both worlds – people around, but generally quiet people.

Three Practices useful for writing, no matter what

The Free Writing Method: Just start. Write your thoughts as they come. Don’t edit as you go. Don’t worry about periods, commas, spelling or even making sense. Just write. You’ll organize it and edit it later. If you accidentally put in punctuation, don’t stop just keep going. At this stage, you can do no wrong. That’s a great feeling.

Research: Research can be done in the library, on the Internet, or just through careful observation. It can start before you do your free writing. After you do some initial free writing however, read what you wrote: Ask yourself, “Is this what I want to say?” If not, do some more free writing until the ideas you want to communicate come out on the paper. Then ask yourself, “Do I know all I need to know to write about this idea?” If not, do more research. The biggest reason people have trouble writing is they are not sure what they want to say. If you know your subject intimately – that problem will gradually go away.

Outlining or organizing your work. It is very useful to outline your thoughts, but don’t get mired down trying to make it look like the outlines you did in school. Whether you use A. B. C. or get your roman numerals right is immaterial. The idea is to organize your thoughts. You can start by dividing it up into the beginning middle and end. Then divide these into main ideas. Remember a paragraph has one main idea and then a few supporting points, or in the case of creative writing, expanding details or actions.

Look at your free writing – how did it flow? You may want to change the order in which you present your ideas. It will depend on what kind of writing you are doing. Outlines can prevent confusion (i.e. too many ideas in one paragraph), show you where you are missing information, and prevent repetition and inconsistency.

Editing: Beyond spellchecker:

Creative, expository (or academic) and business writing all call for different approaches to editing. Each has a different purpose, a different audience, and so your role as writer changes too. I will give you an idea of how to approach editing your work (beyond the obvious spelling and grammar), for each form of writing.

Creative Writing – to express creative ideas and communicate them to others.

Your role: You are a leader on a journey. You write to spark the reader’s imagination and take them with you on your journey. You need to keep them interested.

Reader’s Role: The readers are your partners or followers. They get to decide whether to go with you or not.

Your method: You have the broadest freedom with this kind of writing. You can be descriptive, wide-ranging, and you can use surprise as an element of creativity.

Writing: You will go back and forth between free writing and editing. You’ll have to develop your own rhythm. How to write creatively is a large topic. The best advice I can give you is just do it. Reading a lot will help. Eventually you will find your own voice. Below are some general guidelines.

Make some general decisions at the start. Pick out your theme; what is your overall idea? Will the characters speak for themselves or will there be a narrator? Decide on your mood: Dark, light? Humorous? Choose your voice: First person? Third person? Are you going to be writing in the past tense or present tense? You may change moods, voices, even tenses, but VERY carefully. Even your changes must be consistent with themselves and each other. You may surprise your readers, but don’t confuse them.

Show it, don’t tell it. Grab the reader’s interest – the first sentence in every paragraph should both seduce the reader and continue the story. You can do this in a number of ways. You can start with dialogue, or a question, or in the middle of an action. The beginning of each paragraph should represent the main idea of that paragraph and make sense within your story. Clue your reader in with actual events or dialogue; don’t simply describe what you want them to know.

Your characters have to be believable, so make sure you understand your characters. Why do they do what they do? Your characters experience each event you describe – they must react to it and be changed by it. They have to grow, just as all human beings do. Build your characters right in front of the reader. Nothing kills a reader’s interest and throws them out of the story as much as feeling manipulated. If you think “but he wouldn’t do that!” you lose interest in the character, and in what happens to him or her.

The Most Important Hint: Keep your verbs active, not passive. This is so important that I am going to repeat this for each form of writing. It applies to ANY writing you ever do. For example, write “They argued” instead of “there was argument among them.”

Research: I believe it is right to tell a beginning writer to write about what you know, but I interpret that word “know” broadly. You may never have lived in the middle ages, but if you research it well enough and know your subject deeply, you can set stories in the middle ages. If you write about another culture or create a new one – you must first know how culture works and see the world through the eyes of someone raised in that culture. Your characters and the feelings that you invoke, however, should arise from your own experience. People who have been in love can tell when a “love scene” has been written by someone who has never been there.

Outline: Each paragraph expresses one idea. When writing creatively, you provide details or action that expand on the idea of the paragraph. You may use an outline to give yourself a skeletal plan. You may also create a timeline that shows the sequence of events in your tale. You may decide to bounce around in time with flashbacks or other literary devices, so it is even more important that you keep track of how things “really” occur in the story.

Expository (or academic) Writing – to explain and describe ideas. You are transmitting knowledge that you have.

Your role: You are the teacher. You still want to make your subject interesting, if not entertaining, but your real goal is explaining or describing a set of ideas in a concise and accurate manner.

Your Method: You will want to have one main idea and a limited number of supporting points. In choosing your topic, don’t take on too big a subject. Focus. Any topic is related to many other ideas. You can allude to some, but don’t go off exploring in many directions; it’s too easy to lose your reader.

Right from the start, tell your reader everything you are going to explain or describe. The first paragraph should summarize your entire paper. So you may write it more than once. You may write it last. Do NOT keep anyone in suspense about what you are getting at. Surprises in this form of writing are a source of confusion, not entertainment.

Be assertive, forget the words “maybe,” “perhaps,” or “I think.” State your thesis and support it. If you question your idea, so will your reader. Also, be brief and to the point. Take out any unnecessary words. This is not the place for flowery description.

Remember to keep your prose active. If you find yourself writing in a tentative, uncertain style, you aren’t sure enough of your ideas to write about them yet. Your readers may have to work at understanding your topic. Any difficulty should come from the subject matter, not from how you explain it. As my old Professor Fred Bailey at UCSD used to say, “Be kind to your reader.”

Research: Since you have to be clear about your subject matter, Do your homework and know what you want to say. What are your main points and how will you support them? Even when doing your research, stay focused on your main point. The time to explore related issues is when you are deciding on your topic. Once that is done, stay on track.

Outline: If you have narrowed your focus to one main idea, then outlining will simply be planning the order in which to present your supporting points, and making sure you explain each one fully. In this kind of writing, the numbers and letters, (I, II, III for main points, and A.B.C. for supporting points) may help you keep track of your ideas. Make it as easy and brief as possible. If its hard to outline (and you find yourself going into sub-points, aa, bb, or cc), it will be hard to write and difficult to read.

Business Writing - to communicate plans, conclusions, requests and explanations (in the form of reports and letters) necessary to accomplish tasks in business.

Your role: Seller of things, services or ideas. This is true whether you are telling someone something or asking for something. You have to be brief and convincing.

Reader’s Role: Buyer. They will either buy in to your ideas or they won’t.

Your Method: Brevity and concise clarity are more important here than the elegant use of language. You are not writing to entertain, so save your poetic phrasing for poetry.

Writing: Free write on each idea separately. In writing business reports, you can refer to the above guidelines for expository writing, research and outlining. A letter should really have only one major idea.

Research: Be thorough. Tailor your report or letter to it’s readership. Research can also be done on the person who will be reading your report or letter. “Know your market” applies, so find out everything you can about this person’s needs and motivations. The best example of this is the Cover Letter when job hunting. Good research on the company, the position and the person making hiring decisions can really pay off.

Outline: Edit mercilessly. For business letters, an outline shouldn’t be needed. The admonition to be brief is really important. In business time really is money. Cut to the chase. You need to use as few words and sentences as are necessary to get your point across.

Troubleshooting:

Use your Free Writing tool freely. It will be useful at any stage of your task. It can help any time your ideas are muddy or you’re not sure what happens next. It can also help with (sinister music rises in background) writers’ block. Scary as it sounds, writers’ block can be overcome. It occurs when frustration sets in, the task seems overwhelming and you can’t think of another word. Or you look at the mess you made and can’t think how to organize it. You freeze. You think of your deadline and you freeze more solidly. STOP. Get up. Do something else. When you feel more relaxed, come back and re-read what you’ve written. If you have the time, wait overnight. SLEEP ON IT has always been good advice.

Read or re-read your work aloud. Mistakes our eyes miss as we skim over words emerge easily when spoken aloud. Don’t worry about them – just correct them. If you got confused and had to skip or go back to make sense of what you were reading, that is a clue you need to fix your organization. Sometimes it helps to read your work out loud to someone else. In a pinch, the family cat will do, but a discerning, patient, trusted friend or relative may be even better.

Check for remaining grammar and spelling errors last. You will already have discovered many of these as you read through it for more substantive edits. Do not rely on spellcheckers in a computer. It will miss errors that involve real words and most electronic grammar checkers are too literal. They can help you find obvious problems, but don’t stop there. Use a dictionary, Strunk & Whites Elements of Style, and/or the Chicago Manual of Style. Sometimes the person you are writing for will recommend one or the other.

If you can find someone trustworthy that is helpful and knowledgeable enough to actually go through and edit your work, so much the better. It’s simply a second pair of eyes. I’ve worked in offices where the policy was that NO paper, whether report, public service announcement or letter left that office before two pairs of eyes had edited it. It was a good policy and saved much confusion and embarrassment.

Have Fun! You don’t need a project to practice free writing. Just sitting down and writing can lead to all sorts of fun results: diaries, stories, letters, etc. You may even discover you like to write!