How to Boost Your Writing Power

     Writing is not as simple as sitting down at a notebook or a keyboard and making words come out of your brain. Aside from the obvious need to be able to construct a sentence with good grammar so that it can be understood by those who read your words, there are other factors to consider when you set down to write about a subject.

     Most importantly, unless you are in the habit of writing a lot, you may find that once you sit down at a keyboard or notebook, the ideas do not flow easily. You may find yourself lost as to where to begin, and give up soon after you start.

     This article will quickly go over two techniques that, if you use them, will give you plenty of ideas to write about in no time.

Take Notes

     To help keep that from happening, it is a good idea to keep a notebook and pen with you. Much of our ideas for writing come to us when we are busy with other things. Some of my ideas about what to write are either off the cuff, when I feel a moment of inspiration and have a keyboard handy, but a great many more come to me through interaction with the world in my daily life. I will have a conversation or witness an event that causes me to think deeply about some subject or another. That's when I like to whip out my notebook and jot down a quick sentence or two; something I can look at later and pick up that thread of thought and start writing.

     Without my notebook, hundreds of ideas would pass undeveloped. You never know what you could have created from all the lost ideas. Simply telling yourself to remember to write about something does not mean you will remember, and even if you do, you might not pick up the same thing that inspired you.  Whenever you see something that moves you, or you hear someone say something profound, poetic, or insane, your writing will improve tremendously if you can get the first few words down while the idea is fresh.

     If you can't (or don't want to) carry a notebook, you can substitue it for a portable voice recorder, which are easily obtained. You can then just speak your ideas into a microphone and play them back to yourself later. In this case, it's a good idea to transcribe your recorded notes into text when you start writing, in case your sound files are lost or erased. This is also a good way to get started flowing with your writing

Annotate

     There's an old saying: "To learn, teach." When it comes to writing, I say: "To write, read." The more you read, the more experience you will have with the way language is structured and how ideas are commonly presented.

     In addition to that familiarity with language, which will only come with time, practice, and as much reading as possible, there is another method of using the writings that you read to give yourself ideas for your own writing. I speak, of course, of annotation.

     Annotation is taking notes on what you read. I don't mean in the third grade book report sense, where you are essentially telling your teacher what the book or article was about; that's reporting- not annotating.

     Annotation is writing down the reactions and thoughts that arise when you read something. Perhaps it is a sense of how poetic and well worded a particular sentence, paragraph, or passage is. Maybe it's about your agreement or disagreement with a particular idea. Sometimes it's rewording something in your own language to make sure you have an idea firmly understood, and at other times it is questioning the meaning of something.

     There are often times when one writer will quickly pass over an idea and move on, when it is something you would personally like to explore more deeply. Rather than simply tell yourself, "I wish I knew more about such-and-such," or "so and so is brilliant/ stupid/ insane," and move on, you can annotate that thought and come back to it later.

     Here, simply put, are the basic rules of annotation:

1.    First, read through the work to become familiar with the basic feel of what you are reading.

2.    Reread it, more slowly. Taking your time in the second read gives your mind time to have reactions you might not have in the first read through.

3.    As your ideas and reactions come up, use either a separate sheet of paper or the margins of your book or article to write those reactions down.

4.    If any part of what you annotate confuses you or raises questions in your mind, you should also write those down. Rewrite the parts that seem confounding in simpler terms. Look up the definition of words. You will be surprised at how many words there are where the meaning is not clear in your own mind.

Get Writing!

     Keeping a notebook of ideas and annotating may seem like simple steps. They are. But no two writing tools you can have will help you more in communicating and developing your ideas than these.

     Read, keep notes, and annotate. In a short time, you will find that you have traded not knowing how to begin for deciding which one of a hundred ideas you will work on first.