Five Timeless Tips on Writing
Published by Henrik Edberg June 6th, 2008 in Personal Development and People Skills.
So here are five timeless tips on writing. I suppose this article could be useful if you are a blogger but also if you’re a writer of some other kind. Perhaps one with an unfinished novel still waiting in the drawer.
1. It won’t always be easy.
When I started writing articles about music and film in Swedish quite a few years ago I used to wait for inspiration to come. I did the same thing when I first started blogging. I don’t do that anymore. Inspiration can show up on its own, waltzing in through a door or a window. But doing things that way makes work inconsistent – both in quality and quantity - and you spend a lot of time waiting. It’s often better to just start working. For the first minutes what you do may suck quite a bit and it’s hard going. But after a while inspiration seems to catch up with you. Things start to flow easier and your work is of a higher quality. So don’t limit yourself to the moments where you feel inspired or you feel like the moment is just right to do something. Act instead. A lot of the time you can find inspiration along the way.
2. Remove.
Get to the point quickly and you’ll have a better chance of getting through to the one you writing to. Just like when you are talking to someone in real life.
3. Be wholly alive and be present.
Be present and alive with whatever you do. Focus on what’s in front of you. This is not an easy habit to cultivate.
But I have found that over time you can learn to spend more and more time in the now. In this space your writing will be easier and you may be surprised at how wonderful some of the things that flow out of you are. Again, this is useful in conversations too. When you start to think too much you are going down a slippery slope. Your communication becomes overly complicated, unclear and with less emotional power behind it.This is not easy though. And the people that do it a lot often have a lot of courage. But I think it’s something to strive for.Few things under the sun are new. Things often just seem new to someone because that person hasn’t heard about them before. But most of the time some guy talked about it many hundreds or thousands of years ago. In personal development, loads of people borrow from people like Buddha. And he probably borrowed stuff from some guy no-one can remember anymore. I’m not saying that people do not add new things and parts of themselves when they express truths that have been said over and over throughout the ages. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t get too hung up on being original because a big part of human interaction and communication is being able to really connect, relate to and understand each other in some way. And you can do that by telling your truth.
