The trouble with proofreading your own work is that you see what you expect to see, so you read what you think you wrote, and not necessarily what you did write. If you first and last letters of a word are in the correct order, you may not see typing errors in the middle of the word.

Firstly, use a good spell and grammar check. This will never pick up all of the errors, especially the words that sound the same but have different spellings for different meanings, such as there, their, and they’re. However, the spell check is a good place to start.

Secondly, read the work looking for the common errors you often make. If you are not sure about the meaning of particular words, use a dictionary and a thesaurus. If you commonly make mistakes in comma placement, print out the page and highlight every single comma. Re-read the comma rules one by one and check each highlighted comma on your printed document. If you can’t find a rule that explains why the comma is there, take it out. Although you can miss commas, overuse of commas is the more typical mistake to make.

Read your work aloud. This helps you to catch the awkward or repetitive phrases, as you tend to stumble over these passages as you read aloud.

Check your work for consistency. If you start spelling Summer with a capital, make sure you consistently spell it with a capital throughout the document. Don’t say 2 apples in one paragraph and three oranges in the next.

Finally, put your work aside for at least a couple of hours and reread it again before you send it off to the publisher. You must look at the work as if someone else has written it, not you to be a good proofreader. Assume you have made mistakes and look for them.

I hope this blog on proofreading articles helps. On a private note, I’m sorry I have been very quiet on this website lately – I’ve been sick and just been keeping up with the paying work. I’m getting better now, so hopefully, I’ll be more active on the forum again soon. Take care,

Hayley Hunkin

www.expandingcreationswriters.com

During the renovation process, I discovered that I really enjoy home renovating. This brings me to the topic of this blog post, finding inspiration for your writing.

I am taking the Comprehensive Writing Course with the Writer’s bureau and have been making a slow go of it for about six months. To date I have completed the first two assignments and have been procrastinating at writing the third. Whether it was out of fear or insecurity I kept putting off writing it.  All I kept thinking was what if I didn’t take the right slant on the article? What if I never get published? This thought started to really bring me down. I realised that I need to write about topics that I enjoy or interest me.

Finally I said to myself “Okay, Allison, enough of this you want to be a writer so be one!” I realised that I was doing anything and everything to avoid doing the one thing that I have always wanted to do. Why? Because I was afraid of rejection. 

Overcoming these negative thoughts can prove difficult at times, but the most important thing is “Don’t Give Up” and remember You can Do it, just keep writing.

Until next time

Happy Writing Adventures

Allison

With all the submission opportunities Dawn has been posting lately, you will know there is more to writing than just writing for yourself. However, when you start writing for money, writing is not always as easy. Writing for someone else’s requirements means you may have to modify your writing style to suit a particular audience, write to a schedule to meet a client’s deadline, or learn new writing tricks.

Writing can become like any other job – sometimes enjoyable, and sometimes just a hard slog. Maintaining your passion for writing can be difficult at times, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are three ideas for renewing your passion for writing:

Take a Break

Everyone needs a vacation or a holiday sometimes. Take a couple of days off from writing and see if you feel refreshed for writing again. If you can’t take a couple of days off, give yourself a mental break when the going gets tough. Go for a walk and get some fresh air and exercise. When you come back to the computer, you’ll find the writing flows again.

 Write Something for Yourself

Give yourself just 15 minutes to write for yourself to start each day. This gets your creative juices flowing and helps you to settle down to writing other things.

 Find Your Passion for What You ARE Writing

Write for jobs that you find interesting. As a freelancer, you are free to choose which jobs you accept and which to ignore. Find jobs on topics you personally find interesting. Sometimes though, it is better to pay the bills than to turn down writing gigs. If you cannot find the topic interesting in itself, focus on the craft of writing. Put your creative energy and passion into writing the most interesting article you can by using language and writing techniques.

Whatever it takes, remember the passion you first felt for writing and renew your passion for what you doing.

 HayleyWriter

http://www.expandingcreations.com

 When you need inspiration, Newbies Writers offers a daily prompt to get your creative juices flowing again in the Need a Prompt section. Even if you write in a totally different genre, such as a novel, or factual articles, it can be very helpful to warm up with a quick writing exercise from the prompting section. Give yourself 10 minutes and write whatever comes into your head after reading the daily prompt. It might surprise you how easy it is to get back to your other writing afterwards.

Just about any creative writing exercise will help you to get over writer’s block and get writing again. One of my favourites is to look at a picture and describe a story from the picture. Look at the people in the picture and imagine a character for each person. Where does the man in the brown suit live? What relationship does he have with the woman in the yellow hat? What are the people thinking when the picture was taken?

Another good exercise is to cut up headlines into separate words from a newspaper and mix the words in an envelope. Take out five or six words, make a new headline and write a fake news article about your new headline. This is a great exercise to get you in the mood for writing again.

 Allison’s recent blog on outlining also offers some great ideas on how to avoid writer’s block. Outline your novel, article, short story, or poem, so that you have something to refer to when you get stuck. If you are staring at a blank screen and have a definite project in mind, start an outline and you will soon find it easy to write again.

 If you write fiction, try interviewing one of your characters about the other characters when you get writer’s block. You may not use the interview itself in your work, but you will definitely get some great ideas and inspiration to keep you writing.

Whatever you do, don’t just sit there or play games on the computer. Start writing anything and you will find you will be able to concentrate on whatever you need to write sooner. Free write or give yourself a short story break rather than give up on your writing altogether. You will find inspiration will strike again soon!

HayleyWriter

Visit my website: http://www.expandingcreations.com for free articles about writing.

My two year old will walk over to where I am sitting with my laptop and close it on my fingers as I am trying to type.  This is a daily occurrence for me.

It is 11:30pm and I write this blog in my son’s dimly lit room impatiently waiting for him to give in to sleep. If I am lucky I will write for a half hour and become victor over this cute but stubborn blond haired boy who is desperately fighting sleep and he will it is only a matter of time.

I acquired a notebook which I carry around with me should my muse strike. I often find myself writing in the strangest of places… the bathroom while I am washing, the kitchen and even the laundry room. I savour the moments when I can as is Dawn’s favourite saying  “JUST WRITE SOMETHING.”

In parting, I would like to leave you with this question. How do you find balance between your writing and your responsibilities?

Until the next time happy writing adventures.

Allison

Writers all too often wish to show off their intelligence by using complex language and  assuming a certain amount of knowledge from their readers. They think that by ‘impressing’ their reader in such a way, they will appear as superior intellects. However, all this does is alienate their audience.

The trick with non-fiction writing is not to make YOU appear intelligent, but to make the reader feel that THEY are intelligent. By explaining complicated matters in a simple, easy to read manner, the reader will grasp the concept and come away from the experience feeling better about themselves and you as a writer. I experience this all the time when reading certain popular science books on Quantum Physics. Pick up any book by Brian Greene, or Michio Kaku, and they will make you feel like you are an expert in the impossible. Richard Dawkins is also another excellent proponent of this method. They don’t shy away from using simpler language and concepts to portray their message.

A lot of writers when presented with this advice do not wish to ‘dumb-down’ their writing; they still cling to their desire to use complex language and terminology, as they fear that not doing so will make them look like incompetent writers. They feel that they have to use long, rarely encountered words in order to demonstrate how educated and eloquent they are as writers; all they accomplish, however, is to annoy the reader, bored with constantly reaching for the dictionary.

So, whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction, keep it simple! Your reader will thank you.