Writing Articles

Reminder: there is no authority backed up by a diploma on a writing degree or authority of pages from a textbook that gives this article that hard rock credibility for support.

However, this is a personally-discovered Psychology (who loves and can write) graduate’s formula in coming up with an article for the net. This is what works for me. I remember replying to a certain discussion in an Internet community wherein one member asked how to improve on his writing. I gave him tips. He replied that proofreading to check whether the grammar is correct or not is no problem since he was an editor before. And lo and behold, when I checked out his profile, he’s from the U.S.

So, the point I want to drive at is how to do an article for the net if English is more of your second language.

First, research, research and research for the basic form you plan your article to take. Meaning, research for titles that you like and have any basic idea about.

Second, write anything and everything that enters your mind. And check out any doubts you have regarding a fact, a term, or even a spelling.

Third, read your jotted down thoughts and rewrite along the way. Sometimes at this stage you’d see a sentence or two or even an entire paragraph that needs to be eliminated or placed somewhere else for it doesn’t go into that direction your topic is already showing you it’s taking. Don’t worry. Ideas don’t fade. They creep up during unexpected times. So, the moment any hesitation towards a sentence or paragraph comes up, don’t think twice. Get away with it.

Fourth, with some sentences or even paragraph/s eliminated, read aloud. Writing an English article, if English happens to be your second langauge, doesn’t just entail proofreading and proofreading and proofreading it by eye. You still won’t get it right.

In reading aloud, grammatical errors that somehow managed to escape you would be more evident. Sometimes a word’s suitability would come into question and you would have to resort to its synonym. This is to avoid redundancy whose very presence can make your article look like an English paper (no offense) than the work of a published writer. This detection can never be done by just proofreading your creation silently by eye. At this reading-aloud stage you’d see that it might be better if a single word would be repeated once, twice or even thrice. This process gives your writing an unexpected personality, an individuality. All of a sudden you’d decide to use punctuations you never thought were missing. And the very taken for granted simple a, an, the and so on…might find a very cozy place or two.

Fifth, after copying and pasting your saved work to your publisher’s webpage do a last read-aloud before sending it.

There you are. Five steps, five few easy steps. I’ve been doing it since. Might seem a few no. of reminders but writing, even writing a plain article takes time. It takes passion. That means your creation requires dedication. Fulfillment comes after its publication. And it takes an English as a Second Language Speaker a total of 2-3 hours to write on topics they know, topics they like. It might even take a day if it was a topic they have no choice but to write. And certainly it would take them forever if they don’t believe any of what they write.

So, till next writing. Enjoy!