Content Creation Secrets

Ray Bradbury is a science fiction writer. What can he then teach you about content creation for the web? Plenty, if you read his all-time classic, Zen in the Art of Writing.
Here are some of his pointers that content creators could put to good use.

Write with Zest and Gusto
Bradbury says whatever you write you must write with vigor and love. Are you writing with zest and gusto? Well, if you’re writing about something you’re passionate about, then the zest and gusto are natural byproducts.
 
Ray Bradbury says,“If you’re writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fever, you are only half a writer. For the first thing a writer should be is – excited.”

The web is full of half-writers who write in profitable niches with very little of the zest and gusto Bradbury is talking about. They write in profitable niches or on high-paying keywords or on keywords with high search volumes.

Ask yourself whether you want to be half a content creator like them or do you want to write with zest and gusto about what you’re passionate about to offer something genuine and of value to your readers.

Write Fast
One of the greatest enemies of content creation is hesitation. If you start worrying about whether what you’ll be writing will be without mistakes or interesting, you put a tough brick wall in the path of your content creation process.

Ray Bradbury says, “In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write. The more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style instead of leaping upon the truth which is the style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.”

The next time you sit at the keyboard or pick up the pen, write as fast as you can, without worrying about the things you’ve learned to worry about. Pump it all out until you’re finished.

Do you notice a kind of energy in your writing when you do that?

Writers come in different packages. Some would not write a word unless they have the material planned to the minutest detail. The research must be done, facts and figures double-checked and everything else needed for the writing must be at hand.

You have a planner here.

The second type of a writer also does his homework before beginning a writing project.  But his planning is not as in-depth as the planner. He’s ready to go after gathering the minimum amount of material. Long planning makes him uneasy. He wants to get into the momentum of writing at the earliest opportunity. He just makes some notes and is ready to go.

If he needs to add extra information, he takes a break from writing, go into the research mode and gets back to writing as soon as he finds the necessary material.

Then there’s the writer who believes in no planning at all, who believes planning will stifle his writing momentum. He looks at the topic, spends a few moments thinking and is ready to go. Here is a diver.

He writes away without worrying about what is to come. He doesn’t fear wasting words on paper. Words doesn’t cost him anything. He uses as many as he likes.
He doesn’t really expect to go anywhere in his writing. In fact, he’s ready to go where his writing takes him. He is sure his writing will take him somewhere worthwhile. He begins writing with this belief.

Usually, he ends up writing long pieces and it will not be long (if he knows his subject) before he hits the bull’s eye and take off from there. Then all he has to do is cross out what’s not needed and retain the relevant parts.

In my twenty years as a writer and editor, I’m often asked which is the best among the three methods is. I have no concrete answer.

It depends on the writer and the writing project. I have used all three methods at one time or another.

If I am writing a technical piece where I’ve to get the facts and figures correct, I would want all the material at hand before I begin.

When I’m writing on a subject which I’m familiar with but have no in-depth knowledge, I get started with what I have and later fill in the gaps with research as I go.

Yes, I also write without a concrete plan. I’ve done that for the most part of my career as a fiction writer. You just have a general idea about a character and his goal or a sticky situation he or she is caught in and you take off from there and see where it all ends up.

This freewriting method also comes in handy when you’re writing a direct personal experience piece. Say for instance, if you’re writing an ebook entitled, How I made a Million Dollars on the Internet in Seven Days, you would not want to plan to the last detail what you’re going to say. You would just want to go with the flow because the material is all there in your head.

Whether you should be a planner or  diver or somebody in between, depends on your temperament and  nature of your writing project.

Keep experimenting to determine which method works for which project.

Here are some questions worth considering:

Are you Writing What You’re Passionate About?
The easiest source of energy is your passion. When you’re passionate about something, you don’t have to consciously generate energy. Energy comes from some deep, mysterious source. The moment you write something that your heart doesn’t desire, your energy saps.

Are You Writing When Your Energy Level is High?
Ask yourself how much energy you need for writing. Much more than needed for other activities? Then write when your energy level is high. If your day job exhausts you, write before you set out to work. Take about fifteen minutes or even half an hour to write. If you commute by train use the time to write. Write during tea or lunch breaks. Write on the way back from work. Don’t wait until your day’s energy drains away before writing.

Do You Waste Your High Energy Level?
Do you undertake menial tasks when your energy level is high. Do you read emails, make phone calls, surf the Internet or do anything else which doesn’t require much energy when you can write?

Never do anything else but write when your energy level is high.

Recently, I saw a blog post where the blogger was looking for writers to supply content for his blog. He was courageous enough to say that when he started the blog the going was good. Months later, he found himself running out of steam. So, now he’s looking for writers who can provide him with content. To qualify, the writer must have a good working knowledge of SEO. It’s not a profit-sharing thing. He is buying content from freelance writers to publish it as his own.

Now, why is he taking the trouble to buy content for his blog? Why doesn’t he just discontinue the blog or take a long vacation until he’s motivated enough to start blogging again? He can’t afford to. His is a niche blog and I guess it’s earning him some money already. So, he needs fresh content to keep the dollars rolling in. Since the dollars matter more to him he doesn’t seem to care where the content comes from.

He blogged to make money and now he has to fork out his dollars to keep his blog afloat. I guess that’s alright for people like him. Sometimes you have to use sacrifice a small fish to catch a bigger one.

What could have caused the blogger’s `writing well’ run dry? The answer must be very obvious to you. Yes, he has no passion for what he’s been blogging about. He must have started the blog to make money maybe after reading an ebook entitled something like, How To Be a Millionaire Blogger in 30 Days.

He has done his homework well, he was chosen a profitable niche, based on high-paying keywords and has spend hours optimizing his blog for the search engines.

To many like him passion for his subject is not King. Keywords are. So, there’s really no surprise that his well has run dry. How long can he blog on keywords that pay but for which he has no passion for? Not long. His writer self has begun revolting and is on the verge of going on a long strike.

If you are in his position, what would you do? Would you move on to producing content you’re passionate without worrying whether it’s in a profitable niche or whether it has keywords a high search volumes? Would you aim for endless content that not only nourishes you but also your readers?

Or would you take the path of the ailing blogger and desperately fill the dry well of your keyword-driven blog with other people’s content?

Notetaking is an essential part of the content creation process. It is especially important when you need to distill a huge amount of information to be included and expanded in your content. The manner in which you take your notes will determine how smoothly your writing process will go. Most importantly, if you avoid the mistakes below, you’ll minimize uncertainty and time wasting during the writing process.

Mistake 1 :Taking Notes You’ll Not Be Using
The question is how you are to know what to make notes on? Everything you read seems important. Yes, everything is important, but you need only what’s important for your project.

If you know what you’re looking for, you’ll only make notes that you will use during writing. So, how are you to know what to look for? Easy. Just make an outline or plan.  Or  better still, come out with a list of questions to which you need answers. When you make notes, you only concentrate on information that answers your questions.

Mistake 2: Not Making Enough Notes
Sometimes in the interest of being concise in your notetaking you leave out important information that you should be using in your writing. Insufficient notes interrupt your writing. You have to put everything aside and spend time locating your source and adding more notes.

You may even have to spend time traveling if you have been making notes from a hard copy source stored in a library. Again you can avoid wasted time by having an outline and meeting the demands of the outline.

Mistake 3: Not Recording the Source of Your
Notes
Sometimes, in your overeagerness to capture information for your writing project, you overlook the importance of recording the source of your notes.

You may not want to include the source in your writing, but you may need to go back to the source to make additional notes.

Say for instance, you located a useful website from which you have been making notes and didn’t bother to note the URL If you need to go back there again for additional notes, you’ll be wasting time and energy trying to recall the website address and locate it.

So, you could do well to bookmark a website as soon as you find it useful.  This will save you plenty of time if you need to revisit the website to look for additional information. You can always remove the bookmark as soon as you’re done with it.

The obvious advice you get about producing content is write about what you know.

That’s good advice, but wait a minute..

What you know may be important to you but not necessarily to your readers.

Readers usually visit web pages to find answers to their problems. They could be looking for ways to solve a task they have been struggling with. If your content provides solutions to their problems, they will be interested. But that does not mean readers will stick with it. They expect your content to be presented in such a way to make it easy for them to find answers to their queries. When that condition is satisfied, they expect your content to be presented in an easy-to-understand manner.

Your readers would also want your content to be accurate, current and credible. Consider this. What you know may not be accurate, or up to date or plausible.

Write from what you know but more importantly, consider what readers expect from your content.

When there are many writers writing on a similar subject, what makes one piece stand out from the rest? The content? Very rarely.

It is the writer’s voice. The piece that’s more compelling is the one in which the writer has truly found her voice.

When you say you can’t write, it’s not that you can’t write. You can write if you can speak. You can write if you can talk.

It’s just that you haven’t found your writer’s voice.  You may have stifled it over the years by trying to imitate the voice of your favourite writer. You may have stifled it  by worrying too much about style, vocabulary or grammar.  

 So, how do you free your stifled writer’s voice?

• Relax before you start writing. The more relaxed  you’re, the better your chances are  of finding your voice.
• Don’t tell yourself you are going to write. Tell yourself you’re going to talk to a friend. Better still imagine you are going to write a letter to a close friend.
• When you start writing, don’t think of anything. Just focus on the voice you hear in your head. Go on and put down whatever the voice says.

Don’t expect results when you write. Tell yourself that this is just an exercise to discover your hidden writer’s voice. Do this every day for five or ten minutes and rest assured that that you’ll begin hearing your writer’s voice louder and louder, clearer and clearer.