Good content establishes your authority

10 Reasons NOT to become a writer

Yes you read correctly. The word “NOT” is too clear to go unnoticed. Scanning random articles on the internet, on ‘writing’, I came across lots of pieces wherein I was being goaded into ‘101’ ways to write effectively or being told about its top ’25’ benefits and sometimes also being reminded about the ‘few’ essentials to keep in mind if I was to build a profitable writing career for myself. While all of that was very good advice( I also love sharing my own experiences with “how-to” articles like these), I think first and foremost, an aspiring write MUST answer the most fundamental question – “WHY DO I WANT TO WRITE?”

I thought of and listed below a few reasons why many budding writers take up writing in the first place and if you answer ‘yes’ to any of these, then either re-think your answers, choose not to answer the questions, lie to yourself or re-visit the whole writing business idea. I’m not exaggerating.

I LOVE Shakespeare and want to be like him someday: Heady goal! And good to know that you aim high, but if becoming a splitting image of the famous bard is the ONLY reason driving you to take up writing as a career, think again! It takes a LOT of natural talent to be like William S and also, he lived in a time when there was only the pen (although that has trials of its own)! No TV’s no radios, not as much competition as one would have to face these days (not undermining his capabilities in any way…I’m a BIG Shakespeare fan myself). But you have to be realistic. Morphing into a modern day Shakespeare is possible, but very difficult and you have got to have a reason stronger than that.
I want to be famous: A stylized version of the above mentioned point with many more connotations and possibilities. And a high probability of the same end result. There is a famous spiritual concept which essentially says that one must not be attached to the fruit of one’s actions, but only perform the action (to the best of his abilities). All aspiring writers should make this the mantra of their lives. And this applies to basically everything in life. Whatever you do, if you do it just for the sake of attaining fame, you probably won’t get famous at all and even if you do, it won’t last and even if it does last, there will be a part of you which will always know that you didn’t do justice to your work.
I want to get rich: A subset of point number 2. And equally disastrous. I would be wrong in saying that writers don’t get rich. Dan Brown and JK Rowling among others would raise their legendary eyebrows if they heard me make an absurd statement like that. It is a known fact that lots of novelists, short story writers, biographers and even freelance writers have made plenty of money, thanks to lots of efforts, time, luck, more time and a lot more effort. But I doubt they started out with that aim in mind. I firmly believe they began writing because of sheer love for the art. If you want to make money, get a high paying IT job, become an investment banker, go to a French culinary school and become a world famous chef, but do not get into writing solely because you want to get rich. For most writers, writing is a time consuming, low paying (at least in the initial years) and sometimes heart breaking affair. So think again.
I used to write in school: Yeah? So? If you really think that having written a few poems in school and a handful of funny short stories in college are enough to make you a published writer overnight, I’m sorry to burst your little bubble. It doesn’t work. Writing is a skill that has to be honed and sharpened each and every day. It doesn’t just “come” to you overnight. It takes a LOT of hard work, a LOT of time, MANY rejection letters and a good many years of patience and undying faith in your abilities and aspirations. To those who go through these trials by fire, and still emerge victorious with a stronger determination, I wish you all the luck! You are on your way to becoming successful writers.
I’m fed up of my day job: Woah! That sounds like something that 90% of the world’s working population is saying at this very moment. If everyone with a boring job quit their work to retreat into the solitude of their homes to become writers, not only would the world become a much quieter place, but at the same time, there’d be chaos on every level of the global economy! Most people who currently hold a day job, but WANT to write, are usually advised to continue writing on the side and I must say, that is VERY sound advice. To such budding writers, I would say, “Get a foothold in the business, get your bearings and when you feel financially stable and emotionally independent, quit your job and take up writing full time-but until then have a steady source of income to feed your dreams of becoming a writer.” To the rest of you guys who want to write because you hate your jobs, I’d say, “Don’t do it! You’re making the biggest mistake of your life.”
I want to make my family proud: Neil Armstrong’s family was proud! But he wasn’t a writer; he just helped mankind take the metaphorical giant leap. My family’s proud of me and I’ve never even set foot in a rocket ship-neither am I another Chetan Bhagat (yet). If you want to make your family and friends proud of you, then do fantastically well at something you’re really good at or alternatively something that you are passionate about. Don’t use writing as an excuse to sort your life at every turn. Do what you want to do. And the pride will emerge unhindered.
I like to express myself this way: This is one of the most common reasons people want to spend their time writing. And I agree, it’s one of the best ways to let one self go. There are few mediums of expression that work as well as writing does. However, I staunchly believe that this alone is not a reason to turn to writing as a career. It may be a good reason for some people, but on an average a freelance writer has to spend hours researching markets and stories, structuring, editing etc. For the daily grind in a freelancer’s life, there is usually little space for expression. However, with creative writing it does help, but to reach a stage where creative writing is profitable for you and where you are known well enough, it takes time. So if you want to write simply for expression, do it as a hobby. If you want to turn it into a full-fledged career option, rethink, revise and review the strategy.
I want to see my name in print: Lots of people don’t really want to get famous, but they harbor a dominant fascination to see their names in print-either under an article in a newspaper, a filler in a magazine or on the back portion of a hard cover novel with one of those pictures of the author in a philosophical pose, finger on the chin and a faraway look in the eyes. Lovely thought. Very romantic idea. But not the right way to go about doing it. Wanting to see your name in black and white may be the motivation and the drive you need to keep working at it and churning out material in bundles. But very often in such a case, where ambition alone fuels work, the quality of the work suffers. And once the trained eye of your audience (or editor as may be the case) begins to see the difference, you literally fall in popularity and may find it very difficult to pick yourself up again. My advice would be to write as well as you can. And again, the name in print will follow.
I have a luxurious ‘work from home’ dream: Ah! The age old desire for the perfect job. Flexible work hours, wake up when you want to and sleep whenever you wish, go to work in your pajamas, be your own boss, have a beautiful study with a mahogany/oak desk, a little green lamp on the side, surrounded by carved wooden cabinets stuffed with books, glass window overlooking a lake…watching the swans while you type. It’s amazing how Hollywood movies imprint themselves on our minds and weave their ways into our dreams. The scenario I painted for you is the average dream of just about every second writer you’ll ever hope to come across. It’s the Universal Dream of writers worldwide (I dream of the oak desk too!) However it takes significant accomplishment to get the desk and even more efforts to get a room big enough to hold the humongous quantities of books. Don’t even get me started on the amount of work you’ll have to put in to get the swans! There are hundreds of thousands of writers worldwide and each one has to put in his fair share of struggles and strife to earn a comfortable living. You will too, in all probability, so keep your goals realistic.
I love books and I love to read: That’s wonderful! Devour as much as you can get. But I have to tell you, that just loving the smell of a new hard cover book, or the rustic look of an antique one, loving to read or being fascinated with libraries and book collections, are indeed pre-requisites to becoming a good writer, but not reason enough to decide to be one in the first place. Every writer must read. He/she must incorporate as much of reading into his/her lifestyle as the writing. But if you drop everything to write, just because you visit your local library every two seconds, you may find out along the way that you’re either not good at writing or you just don’t like it as much as reading books. So if you love to read, do so by all means. Just don’t let that motivate you into switching to a full-time writing career. It may do you more harm than good.

I know that by now, I must have deflated your enthusiasm for the writing arena almost completely and my sincerest apologies if I did. That was not the intention. My aim in sharing these thoughts with you was to enable you to get a clearer picture of what YOU want from a writing career. For me it boils down to just one simple truth. I LOVE TO WRITE. And that’s why I’m doing it. And NOTHING compares with the satisfaction I feel after I’ve completed a well rounded article, poem or story.

I firmly believe that if one is passionate about something, one should go after it as if one’s life depended on it. If writing is your passion, if your head is exploding with ideas, if you see alphabets doing little jigs in front of your eyes, if you dream at night about things that you immediately turn into possible storylines, then by all means go ahead and write! If you want to become a writer simply because you LOVE to write and have even a smidgen of faith in your capabilities, go for it! I wish you luck!

10 ways of generating interest in your readers

3 Replies

The image shows an old man reading a book with rapt interest

Generating interest in your readers

The whole purpose of writing and publishing content is that your readers must read it and benefit from it. If they don’t read it, there is no sense in publishing it.

In fact, the fundamental concept of content marketing rests on generating enough content that is interesting, useful and relevant, and then broadcasting that content using all the available channels.

Hence, you should always be worrying about generating interest among your readers.

There was a time when content was mostly written for search engines. Business owners thought that if they could generate enough targeted traffic, some traffic would convert and their business would grow.

It actually worked in some cases. But as more people stumbled upon this “great” idea, competition increased and within a span of a couple of years, everybody wanted a big part of the traffic pie.

Search engines became mainstream and finding the most relevant content for the keywords and search terms used by search engine users turned into one of the most advanced streams. Hundreds of thousands of programmers, analysts and mathematicians are constantly working on improving algorithms that help users find the most appropriate information they are looking for.

Hence, the search engine algorithms don’t want to find just any content. They want to find content that is “most appropriate” according to the searcher’s intent. If these search engines cannot achieve this, users will stop using them, because nobody wants to find spam.

There are two ways you get traffic to your website (or blog): via search engines and via social networking and social media websites (including social networking apps).

On social networking and social media websites, people are not going to share your links as a humanitarian gesture. They won’t even click your links if your titles are not enticing enough. Even if your titles are enticing, if you are not providing quality content, they will soon become wary of your timeline and may even stop paying attention to your updates. Worse, they may even warn the others against going to your website.

Search engine specialists have incorporated this human validation factor even into search engine ranking algorithms. The algorithms can figure out if your content can generate interest or not and then accordingly, we shuffle your current rankings.

The Google ranking algorithm takes into consideration all the social signals like how many people have liked your updates and how many have shared them.

Google can also figure out how much time people spend on your website after finding your link on search results. If within 5-6 seconds people come back to Google from your website and carry on with the same search, Google assumes that they didn’t find what they were looking for, for the search term that they had used, and consequently, reduce your rankings. This is called bounce rate.

This goes on and your rankings keep going down with every new visitor spending little time on the link he or she has found and then coming back and continuing with the same search.

The more bounce rate you have, the worse become your rankings.

On the other hand, if people find relevant content and then positively react to your content, your current rankings begin to improve.

Suppose someone finds your link on the first page, but on position #8. He clicks the link, spent some time reading your blog post or webpage, explores other portions of your website and then doesn’t continue with the same search on Google.

When more people do this, Google assumes that they are able to find what they’re looking for, for the search term they are using. After a while, your position becomes #7, and the more people follow the same pattern, the higher you begin to rank.

So, you see, both on social networking websites and search engines, it is very important that you are able to generate interest in your readers with your content writing.

Listed below are 10 ways you can generate interest in your readers.

1. Identify your reader

You can write something interesting and meaningful if you know for whom you are writing. Take for example this blog post. I’m trying to explain how to generate interest among your readers with your content writing. This is something that you want to learn. Hence, I’m focusing on this topic.

Although above I have touched upon the topic of generating traffic from search engines and social networking websites, that too is in the context of generating interest among your readers and why it is important.

2. Write a compelling title

In most of the cases, your title is the first thing people are going to notice. They will come across your title on social networking websites. Your title will appear as a hyperlink when the search engines crawl and index your content and then show it on search results pages. No matter how great and relevant your blog post or web page is, if your title fails to attract people to your web page or blog post, it is of no use.

3. Organize your thoughts in advance before writing

This is one of the most important things to do before you start writing. You have chosen the topic/title, you know who is your reader, and now you need to make sure that you deliver. This requires planning and research. Make sure that your content justifies your title. Deliver what you have promised through your title.

Usually when we are writing, we lose track of what we wanted to say initially. But if you can create a mind map, if you can create an outline of what you want to write, you won’t lose track and you will stick to the subject and cover all the topics that you had planned to cover.

4. Keep it short and simple

This can be a self-contradicting advice. Better search engine rankings require you to write longer blog posts, even more than 2000-3000 words. On the other hand, very long blog posts and web pages, unless they are packed with highly useful information that is desperately needed, can end up boring your readers.

My personal advice is, follow your instinct. Keep it interesting. Keep it conversational. Provide all the information you think your readers will find useful. Don’t worry about the number of words. Focus on the relevance. Even if you want to write very long blog posts and web pages, you will on your own write lengthy pieces once you have got enough to say.

5. Cater to emotions

Have you noticed how good advertising focuses more on emotions and less on the greatness of the product or service? Experienced copywriter’s claim that every purchase is based on an emotional decision, not a logical decision, although, we like to think that we are making a logical decision.

You can apply this approach to every piece of writing. Make an emotional connection with your readers. Let it be known to them that you understand what they are missing and you are making an effort to provide it.

6. Research and provide statistics

53 clients have benefited from my content writing services so far this year is far better than many clients have benefited from my content writing services so far this year.

What I mean to say is, use numbers and statistics whenever possible. Do the needed research. Back up your claims with authoritative sources unless you yourself are an authoritative source. It gives people confidence if you mention statistics and numbers.

For example, if I tell you that if one of your links ranks at the top #1 position on Google, it gets 30% of all the clicks on the search results page provided you are ranking for the right keywords, I can point to this trusted source for the information. Now that we are talking about the ranking position and related CTR, this link also says that the third position #3 gets you 10% of clicks and if your link features on 9th or 10th position to get 2% links.

7. Use storytelling to generate interest among your readers

Don’t we all love stories? This is because we can relate to the characters. In every protagonist and even in an antagonist, somewhere we can see ourselves or someone we know and hence, we are able to pay more attention to what is being written.

Hence, instead of telling you how great my content writing and copywriting services are, I will be more effective if I tell you about Joe who was having problems with his search engine rankings and conversion rate. Due to that, he was going through lots of professional and personal problems. Then he came across my website and read about how search engine rankings and conversion rate can be improved with quality content writing and copywriting. He contacted me and I wrote for his website…

You get my point.

8. Organize your text in a readable format

Make it easier for your readers to pay attention to what you’re saying by writing shorter paragraphs and shorter sentences.

You must have noticed these days that many writers prefer to write just a single sentence in a paragraph. There are rarely two sentences in a paragraph. Sometimes I do that, sometimes I don’t. It depends on my flow.

People read a lot on their mobile phones. It is easier for them if you express your thoughts clearly, and in short spurts.

Organize your text under various headings and subheadings to highlight important portions. This way, if someone quickly wants to browse through what you have written and get the gist of your message, he or she can do so by simply skimming through headings and subheadings.

Use bullet points to organize main points. Though, I have seen that text in bullet points looks a bit stuffy on mobile phones, so take your own call.

9. Make use of images

Images are a good way to keep your readers interested in your writing. They cause a break and help the brain to quickly reboot and refocus on the text. Looking at an image also relaxes your brain because a lot of information is already present in the image and your brain does not have to spend its resources on interpreting, the way it has to do when reading text.

10. Write in an active voice

“You are doing this,” and “I am doing that” is a lot better than “this is being done” and “that is being done”. I’m not averse to using passive voice, but avoid it as much as you can. I have noticed that whenever I make an effort to use active voice, I use shorter, crisper sentences. It also makes your readers think that you are talking to them instead of simply indulging in a monologue.

Use these golden rules as per your need, just to correct as per the need of your reader and you sure have a winning piece.

Stupid writing mistakes to be avoided

3 Replies

Language, I believe, is not as inflexible as it is made out to be by the so-called purists and impurists. Anything forced sounds unnatural. A sentence can be interpreted in thousands of ways, and you can convey the same thing in thousands of different sentences. So unless there are some glaring grammatical or spelling mistakes, I don’t think there is right writing or wrong writing — the underlying objective is to convey in the most compelling and comprehensive manner.

Here is a nice blog post on stupidest writing mistakes. I won’t say that all the mistakes listed there are stupidest, but you can certainly learn a few things in this blog post. Take for instance the difference between affect and effect. It amazes me that there are many people who don’t know the difference between the two. The writer aptly explains that an effect is a noun and an affect is a verb: your dramatics don’t affect me; your dramatics have no effect on me.

In some instances the writer plainly seems to have a difference of opinion and seems to stupidize (my word) people for having a different view. I’m not very snooty about using commas before "and" because it does not depend on the rule, but the voice and the feeling. I know it’s difficult to understand, but that’s why some people are writers ;-).

Do read the post though, some good pointers.