Elizabeth Daugherty
Get a good laptop. Get Word. Forget Notepad. You want a Word processing program so that you can edit effectively.
Just write. Even if what you are writing seems better put in the middle of a story, write it out and then write around it or edit it to fit what you wrote.
Get it out of your head and on to paper.
Also: READ. I cannot say it enough. READ. Read everything. Read books, read magazines, read graphic novels, read magazine mastheads, read Wikipedia...don't use it as a source but read it for the information. Read White House.gov and find out who your representatives are and what they're platforms are and their biographies. Look up the lyrics to your favorite songs and then ask yourself why they are your favorite songs. Dissect them. Read recipes. Then go back and re read it all over again.
This does several things: It immediately increases your vocabulary and you get used to sentence structure and sentence syntax and will help you construct your own sentences. Reading also improves your spelling ability. As young as eight years old, I could correct the grocery lists my sisters, six and seven years older, would write out. Indeed I was much better at writing than my mother who could, legitimately, be classified as a functional illiterate.
Reading makes you a better writer and there is nothing on a cell phone text message that is better than reading books. Get the Kindle app and Nook app for your phone and load it up with books, magazines and newspapers. The best invention in the world, for me, was digital books applications. Instead of lugging around books with me, I now have stacks of them in digital format. There is always a need for a good book or magazine: waiting in line at the DMV, at the doctor's office, on an airplane or train or bus, anywhere you have to sit and wait, is a good place for a book.
Reading is not just fundamental, it's knowledge and knowledge is power.
Just write. Even if what you are writing seems better put in the middle of a story, write it out and then write around it or edit it to fit what you wrote.
Get it out of your head and on to paper.
Also: READ. I cannot say it enough. READ. Read everything. Read books, read magazines, read graphic novels, read magazine mastheads, read Wikipedia...don't use it as a source but read it for the information. Read White House.gov and find out who your representatives are and what they're platforms are and their biographies. Look up the lyrics to your favorite songs and then ask yourself why they are your favorite songs. Dissect them. Read recipes. Then go back and re read it all over again.
This does several things: It immediately increases your vocabulary and you get used to sentence structure and sentence syntax and will help you construct your own sentences. Reading also improves your spelling ability. As young as eight years old, I could correct the grocery lists my sisters, six and seven years older, would write out. Indeed I was much better at writing than my mother who could, legitimately, be classified as a functional illiterate.
Reading makes you a better writer and there is nothing on a cell phone text message that is better than reading books. Get the Kindle app and Nook app for your phone and load it up with books, magazines and newspapers. The best invention in the world, for me, was digital books applications. Instead of lugging around books with me, I now have stacks of them in digital format. There is always a need for a good book or magazine: waiting in line at the DMV, at the doctor's office, on an airplane or train or bus, anywhere you have to sit and wait, is a good place for a book.
Reading is not just fundamental, it's knowledge and knowledge is power.
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