Write Like It's Your Second Language

A limited vocabulary isn't limiting, it's liberating.

Here's why. Over the past two years, I've been attempting to take my tourist Spanish to a level where I can read, write and speak competently. And in Spanish, everything I write and say is simple--mainly because my Spanish vocabulary is less than a tenth the size of my English vocabulary.

In Spanish, I can't seek out the optimal word like I usually do in English. There is no optimal word. There's only the word I know. Therefore, not only do I never have to agonize over what word to choose, I'm practically guaranteed that big words and flowery, arrogant language will never pollute my writing.

God, what a relief.

Readers, have you studied a second language? How has it affected your writing?

Deciding That Writing Tips Won't Work For You

There's no shortage of writing tips on the internet, here or on any of thousands of writing sites. Sure, some tips are idiotic and useless. But in most cases the usefulness or idiocy of a tip is a matter of perspective.

Here's the thing: You actually have to think creatively to take a tip that works for someone else and figure out why that same tip won't work for you. Did it occur to you that it takes the exact same amount of creativity to take that tip and tweak it so that it can work for you?

That's why the next time you see a writing tip that won't work, change your perspective.

The value isn't from the tip itself. The value comes entirely from your reaction. If you approach a tip from the perspective of someone actively looking for solutions and ideas, you'll find them. However, if you slip into ego-protection mode and you find yourself defending yourself from advice, no tip will ever be good enough for you.

The irony is both are self-fulfilling prophecies. If you think a tip won't work for you, you'll be right. If you think it will work, you'll also be right. Both perspectives are true.

Which perspective is a more productive use of your energy?

Do you defend yourself from advice? Or do you seek it out and embrace it?

You Have My Permission

Do you remember when you first started to believe in yourself? Most likely you were helped along by constructive feedback from a kind, encouraging and generous person. A teacher, perhaps. A loyal reader of your blog. Or perhaps a mentor, boss, or family member.

My blogging career owes a great debt to three readers, each of whom took it upon themselves to give me much-needed encouragement at my food blog Casual Kitchen. One reader emailed to tell me that I changed the way she eats. Another loyal reader told me I completely changed how she thinks about the food industry. Finally, a third reader, who runs a well-established food website, repeatedly tells her readers that Casual Kitchen is her favorite and most thought-provoking food blog.

It's impossible for most people--even highly talented people--to get to a stage of self-confidence where they believe they deserve to be read by other people. These three people essentially gave me the permission I needed to keep going.

Because of these generous souls, I'm still writing. And this blog, Quick Writing Tips, is my way to saying thank you to them. It's my effort to pay it forward, to encourage you to write.

So write! Take my permission and run with it. What are you waiting for?

The Daily Action Pack

This post explains an incredibly useful technique for making steady and significant progress on any large project--it even works for completing multiple large projects at the same time.

The technique is called the Daily Action Pack. I'm not sure who invented the idea, but I first heard about it at Trent Hamm's blog The Simple Dollar.

Let me start by explaining two basic principles. First: every project, no matter how large or complex, can (and should) be broken down into small, discrete and quantifiable steps. Second: every project that you make progress on every single day will eventually be completed. And probably far sooner than you'd think.

The Daily Action Pack process is simple. Make up a daily list of small actions that you can take to make progress on each of your projects, and do those action steps each day before you do anything else.

That's it.

I'll share an example of how I used this process to generate content for Quick Writing Tips. Each year, over a single period of about eight to ten weeks, I write one full year's worth of posts for this site. To get started, I set a modest daily goal for generating ideas: generate a minimum of five new post ideas per day. It may not seem like much, but after three weeks, I was sitting on more than 100 post ideas.

Next, I wanted to turn those ideas into workable posts. And so for the next three weeks, I set a new Daily Action Pack goal: generate five reasonably complete first draft posts per day. The posts here at QWT are short, so it wasn't too aggressive a goal. And on the days where I was reasonably efficient, I was able to completely this goal within about two hours. After three weeks I generated about 105 first drafts. Not too shabby!

One more example: I'm working on another large project--an investing guidebook on how to make money with stock options. This project has been giving me a lot of problems, mainly because it's so huge that I'm often too intimidated to work on it. Thus I've set a Daily Action Pack goal of spending just thirty minutes a day editing and working on the manuscript. Again, thirty minutes may not seem like much, but this modest goal helps me avoid the urge to procrastinate on what would otherwise be an intimidatingly gigantic project. After all, who can't work for a lousy half hour on something?

Right now, my Daily Action Pack list includes three items: generating drafts for QWT, writing a minimum of thirty minutes a day for my food blog Casual Kitchen, and spending at least thirty minutes working on my stock options guidebook. Each goal is extremely modest, but I know that every single day I am taking concrete steps towards completing each of these projects.

Take small steps, every day. The rest will take care of itself.

"I Don't Remember"

This is a writing exercise I shamelessly cribbed from Natalie Goldberg's striking book on writing, Wild Mind.

1) Write for ten minutes, using the introductory phrase, "I remember..."

2) Then, write for ten more minutes using the phrase, "I don't remember..."

It's a simple, but brilliant, exercise. Why? Because the "I don't remember" sentence gives you full permission to be unembarrassed about what you write. You can describe anything, because none of it really happened. You don't remember!

Suddenly, you have permission to take yourself to unreal, dreamlike and ridiculous places. And that's where all the really good ideas are.

Here's a variation: try the same exercise use phrases like:

I want/I don't want,
I know/I don't know,
I feel/I don't feel, and so on.

Have these techniques helped you? Why or why not?

Don't Waste Time Seeking The Right Word

"I have a terrible time finding the right word. I'm writing along and I want to say something, and I can't think of the damn word! It makes writing so slow for me that I can barely stand it."

This anguished comment comes from, of all people, my own father, who is actually quite a capable and insightful writer. He's worrying about the right thing--but at the wrong time.

When you're writing first draft copy and you can't think of the right word, that's your internal editor talking. You cannot afford to listen to your editor when you are writing first drafts. His time comes later, when you're making revisions.

"But I'm looking for a word! How can I shut that off?"

You shut it off by not looking for that word. Use another word, or just put an asterisk there--and keep writing. That specific word just doesn't matter. What matters are the broader thoughts you are putting down. Keep moving.

Remember, never listen to your internal editor. It will crush the life out of you.

One final thought, which is a truism for anyone who has edited their own work: We know during the editing process that we'll change a ridiculous number of words and rephrase a ridiculous number of sentences. We will make significant changes that never even ocurred to us while we were writing our first draft.

Think about this for a minute. Consider how arrogant it is to think that your internal editor could possibly know what "the right word" can be when you draft anything for the first time. Right now, at this moment, you have no idea what future changes you will make to that sentence.

Get over yourself and keep writing.

Putting Self-Doubt To Work

Every other month I am ready to quit writing.
-- Natalie Goldberg

Unfortunately, in her otherwise highly inspiring book Writing Down the Bones, my BFF Natalie Goldberg doesn't give readers all that much help with handling self-doubt. She says things like "don't listen to doubt"--advice both obvious and impossible.

Let me share a technique you actually can use to handle self-doubt.

Use it.

Employ self-doubt as a source of material. Write about your doubts. Address doubt as a concept or a theme in your writing.

In other words, mine this dark and unconquerable subject for ideas. Examine your own doubts and the doubts of others. Tell your readers openly about your doubts, how you're unsure of yourself and yet you try to write anyway.

Our stories, our thoughts, even the essence of life itself--it's all about facing and accepting our doubts, isn't it? Start putting them to work.