Creative Writing Blog

Keeping a Journal

Keeping a journal can be a good way to subtly improve your writing skills. Doing this keeps you actively writing each day. More importantly, it makes writing a habit. The more you write, the more you will improve. Keeping a journal of your personal life can also help your fictional writing. It can aid in the development of your characters for other fictional stories. Explore the motives o the people you interact with in real life. What are their motives? What makes them do the things they do? these sort of things can aid in your creation of realistic characters in your story.

I encourage your journal to be made up of many different things. Don’t make it simply just a diary, though this is helpful. Include personal thoughts, real life experiences, fictional writing and even poetry. The idea of keeping a journal is to improve your writing through consistently writing daily.

Freedomnomics by John Lott Jr.

Recently i finished Freedomnomics by John Lott Jr. Freedomnomics is a book about various economics situations. The subtitle of the book is “Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don’t.” This is basically the thesis of the book; Lott discusses why he thinks the American free market works and why various theories don’t. Freedomnomics is also a rebuttal to Freakonomics.

In this book, John Lott discusses oil and cheaper drugs, and how higher prices help the economic. His theory is that because people pay higher prices for products, oil, drugs, and so on when other’s are paying less, they cover the cost of research and development. through this, he explains how price discrimination is a good thing.

He also discusses how reputations keep businesses and politicians honest, and explains how abortion is not the real cause of decrease in crime, but that the death penalty, law enforcement, and concealed-carry laws are. He also touched on voting, voting fraud, and other political topics. For the most part he demonstrated these economic principals accurately and well, though I would still recommend you read by Freedomnomics and Freakonomics to get an objective picture. The one thing that Lott doesn’t really cover is Freakonomics, which it theoretically is a rebuttal to. It discusses the book and it’s topics, but not extensively as one would assume.

Overall, Freedomnomics was an enjoyable economical book that I’d recommend to anyone and everyone.

Three Tips to Beat the Competition

The competition a writer has to face has drastically increased in the past decade, especially since the amount of people reading for pleasure is decreasing. While methods of publication on the internet have grown exponentially, publishing by traditional print means is becoming more difficult. For this reason, as a writer who seeks a print publication you need to be more competitive - simply because the writing market is decreasing. Here are some ideas to give you an idea you need to stand out from the hordes of writers.

Develop Your Own Style

Many writers work hard to make their style match well known authors. In my opinion, this harms the writer rather than helps them, because in the long run it’s really not a unique style. It’s someone else’s. As a reader, what I love most is an author who’s style is unique and distinct. I’ve noticed that some authors have developed their style or techniques to the point that readers can recognize the writing as the authors without knowing it’s the author’s piece of writing to begin with. This is difficult without an established fan base, but it’s something all writers should strive for.

Get Your Hands Dirty

Don’t be afraid to try new things. Try creative styles, new genre’s and new techniques. You might just like it. Experiment and find out what works. The best writers never stop experimenting; they’re not afraid to try something new.

Make Your Characters Real

If not the #1 thing that attracts readers, characterization is #2. Impersonal characters put a reader off. Personally, if the characters are personally, I’ll end up not finishing the book. Create characters that draw the reader in; make characters that the readers want to know more about. Most importantly, make characters that people can relate to, but also characters that surprise the reader.

Funny Writer’s Comic

I stumbled onto this comic from The Writer at Work and found it humorous. This post is just for fun. I thought I’d share.

Good Grammar Makes You Credible

As a reader, there’s little that will annoy me more than poor grammar.

Using correct grammar, including spelling and punctuation, gives you a bit of credibility. It makes you seem much more professional than if you’re mistaking “you’re” with “your” and a colon with a semicolon. If you use correct grammar you make your writing appealing to the reader, which should be your goal. It also makes the reader think you know what you’re talking about, or at least more than if your writing is littered with errors.

You should never use poor grammar. Typically, making grammatical errors shows one of two things: ignorance or laziness. Neither should be an excuse. If you consider yourself a writer, it’s your duty to know if a usage is correct or not; if you are unsure, it’s still your duty. Moreover, it’s your job to proofread your own work. Likewise, laziness can’t be an excuse; if anything, it’s worse than not knowing how to use a grammatical situation correctly. It shows that you don’t care. If you don’t care, i don’t care; if I don’t care, I’m not going to read your writing.

To summarize, grammar lets the reader know how serious you are about writing. It tests your perseverance and demonstrates your willingness to work and learn. The more grammatically sound your writing is, the more professional it will be.