How Can You Say What I’ve Written Needs Work

By Joyce Shafer

You must fall in love with editing and rewriting or with your editor if you want what you write to be a good read for others. There really is no way around this. You can choose to improve your skills or you can choose to find a freelance editor you trust and work well with.

Some new writers don’t realize that what they’ve written needs more than words spelled correctly. They write it, read through it once, and consider it done. They may even think, "Maybe someone needs to look at it just in case I missed a comma or two." Here’s another quote you might wish to take to heart:

When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. -- Enrique Jardiel Poncela

. . . Or, it’s at least a fair number of hours spent on revisions. It’s rare that I don’t spend several hours revising a 600-word (or less) article I’ve written, after I’ve put it aside overnight. The more you do this, the better and somewhat faster you become; but a fact is a good job takes as long as it takes.

A few words about editing: we usually write to either entertain or inform. To even consider becoming a writer, we have to feel passionate about what we choose to share with others. This means in some way, we write from our heart. This is why our egos might feel bruised if an editor suggests we change something (or lots of somethings) about what we’ve written and poured ourselves into. With publishers, if you don’t follow their suggestions, they may drop your contract. If you self-publish, you have total control over everything; but you really do want to make sure you offer a quality product.

I helped one client with a non-fiction book that ended up being nearly 400 pages long. He felt it was ready to go to the formatter, though he understood I needed to read through it with my editor’s cap on. He said, "I read it in about four hours, so it shouldn’t take you longer than that to work on it."

Well, it took 43 hours to go through that draft and make all the (necessary) changes. The total number of hours it took to get it to publish-ready copy might astonish you, so I won’t tell you (he added new content until the day before it went to print). Consider this: When was the last time you read a comprehensive 400-page book in 4 hours, or 6? And, that didn’t involve looking at it for ways you could or needed to improve it.

I can’t fault him for this assumption. It’s tempting to read narcissistically (in love with what you’ve written and yourself for writing it) rather than as an editor would and must. This is why I recommend putting your piece aside for at least a day before you read it again. Sometimes what thrilled you when you wrote it causes you to cringe when you read it. It’s also called evolving; and you and what you write evolve together.

Once you write and publish your first creative or professional work, you’ll begin to appreciate this part of the writing process because your goal will be to do the most excellent job you can with your material.

An editor’s role, and this includes you as the writer, is to focus attention on content from the perspective of readers and the writer. When I work on behalf of a client (and their readers) I can’t afford to speed through it the way my client did. Since you’re serious about your writing career neither can you.

Joyce Shafer is a writer and life coach. Get Write, Get Published, and Promote: An Easy e-Guide for New and Aspiring Writers direct from her at discount and receive the free pdf of How to Have What You Really Want: An Easy Guide That Can Take You to the Next Level in Any Area of Your Life. Ctrl + click on link http://www.freewebs.com/writegetpublishedandpromote

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"What Should I Write About" How to Select Your Topic

By Katharine Hansen

At the beginning of this process, you may feel as if you have entered a strange territory without a map. You need guanidine for choosing your topic if you must select your own or for narrowing a general topic assigned to you. This section shows you how to get ideas for topics and what subjects are best to avoid.

Three Criteria for a Topic

Whether you write a literary, argumentative, position, or description paper, the subject you select must meet three important criteria.

• The topic should interest you.
• It should be written your abilities.
• There should be enough information available on it to complete a paper.

The first criterion is the most important. Something besides fear of failure has to sustain you through all the hours it takes to research, write and revise a report of term paper. Make the paper a process of discovery for yourself, something you want to know or say about a topic. That desire will help to see you through to the end of the project.

The second criterion is also essential. You may be interested in a topic, but not have the background of ability to handle it in a paper. Say, for example, you are interested in the flights or voyagers 1 and 2. You want to do a report on some of the computer programs that send commands to the small spacecrafts. The scientific journals are filled with complex diagrams and explanations, but you find none of it makes any sense to you. You have no background in computer programming and no ability to translate technical information into plain English.

You will either have to find a book or an article that translates the material for you or find another topic—perhaps what voyager 2 revealed about the rings of Uranus or the surprises the spacecraft uncovered as it passed by the outer planets. Although the topic about the computer programs fulfills two of the three criteria—it interests you and there is plenty of information—if it is beyond your abilities, you will not be able to complete a paper successfully.

Finally, make sure enough information is readily available for you to develop your paper. For instance, you may have heard about rock-and-roll bands springing up in Tibet. The subject intrigues you, and you feel you have enough musical background to write about it. But your preliminary research turns up only a half-page article in a weekly news magazine. Obviously, you are not going to be able to build a ten- or fifteen- page report on one short article. A better topic may be the rise of rock bands in China and Japan, a phenomenon covered in the U.S. and international press.

Finding a General Area of Interest

Suppose your must choose the topic of a paper yourself. Although this task might seem somewhat overwhelming at first, it can be broken down into manageable steps. The first step knows where to go for ideas about general of broad subject areas.

There are several major sources for topic ideas; textbooks; reference books that list term paper or report topics; teachers and librarians; your own or your friends' interests and experiences; and on-line databases, Internet, and Web sites. If you must do a term paper for a history course, for example, skim through your history textbook to find a broad subject area that interests you. Perhaps you find the European voyages of discovery appealing. Or your interest may be piqued by the medical practices of the Middle Age or the complex politics of the Balkans in the mid-1990s

If your textbooks do not provide a topic of interest, investigate the reference section of any bookstore or library. You are likely to find books that list hundred of term paper or report topic under all subject areas—history, literature, art social science, political science, and psychology. One of these topics may appeal to you.

Teachers and librarians are also good sources for ideas. They can help you to pinpoint an area of interest or can suggest topics that you haven't considered. It is a good idea to get to know your reference librarian, and this can be one way to introduce you. Good reference librarians are invaluable guides through the maze of research and reference sources. Their expertise can save you hours of effort.

If none of these sources yields any result, you can fall back on yourself or on your friend. Think about the movies, magazine, books, or activities that interest you: science fiction, sports, the war on drugs, international relations, music, the environment, psychic phenomena.

What would you like to know about these topics? What opinion do you have about them? Do you think drugs should be legalized? Do you feel that the government should do more or less to help protect the environment? In your opinion, have science fiction movies or TV series had any impact on shaping our current world? Should professional athletes be allowed to play in the Olympic Games? Are psychic phenomena real or imaginary?

One of these four sources—textbooks, reference books, teachers and librarians, your own or your friend' interest—will give you a general topic area for your paper.

Subject Areas to Avoid

Part of the process of choosing a topic knows which subjects not to use. In your search for a topic, keep in mind these guidelines for subjects to avoid.

• Subjects that is too recent. If a new law has just been passed, for example, there will not be enough information about its impact to serve as the subject of paper.

• Subjects that is too sensitive or controversial. Some issues, such as the firing of a popular principal or a recent racial incident in school, are highly emotional and likely to provoke strong reaction on all sides. It is often difficult to find objective information to present a fair treatment of the topic.

• Subjects that is hard to investigate. This can include subjects that are too narrow or specialized to have much information, too technical for your own and the readers' background, or for which information is too difficult to acquire. For example, the information may be in specialized libraries closed to the public, in international institutions, or written in a language you can not read.

• Subject that are distasteful or uninteresting to you. You may be tempted to accept any topic just to have something to write about. However, material that is unappealing to you at the beginning will tend to become more so as you would on it. If you dislike the subject of your paper, it's a good bet your readers won't like the way you write about it. Your own distaste or boredom will come across in your writing.

Remember the three criteria mentioned previously as you search for a usable topic: It must interest you, it must be within your abilities, and there must be enough information readily available on the topic to complete a paper.

Site Link:

http://www.academic-writing.net
http://www.academic-writing.net/termpapers.htm

The authors wish to thank the wonderful folks for their years of dedication and faith in all our work, and all the successful students who have used our site. For information about all aspects of paper writing especially essay, term paper, research paper, thesis and dissertation please visit the author’s Web site. Katharine Hansen www.academic-writing.net

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