Photo Source: Shahram Sharif

So, the space between these last two posts would seem to imply I may have taken this last point rather too seriously!

This point is easy to complete, however.

Once you have finished a project, let it go!  Do not forever edit and harp and niggle at how it could be improved.  Publish, and move on.  If there is a glaring error, you may edit it.  But be sure it is absolutely necessary!  You’re done.  Put your energy to work in new ways.

Who is your target audience?  Remember, the reason you’re writing in the first place is to convey information someone wants to know or to teach them something you want them to know.  Perhaps that seems simplistic, but I think it fairly well covers what we’ve been talking about.  Taking that into consideration, the last thing you want to do is suddenly throw a bunch of phrases and terms at them that they know nothing about!

The importance (and difficulty) of this step can vary, depending on your target audience.  Are you a nerd writing about your software to try to get a non-technical consumer to buy it?  Then you need to keep any technospeak to an absolute minimum.  Use real language, the kind that people encounter every day to get your points across.  Don’t randomly insert acronyms you’re familiar with without thinking very hard about whether they are needed.

If an acronym is absolutely needed, be sure that you spell out what it is the first time you use it.  If you’re writing for an entire website, still give the words the acronym is derived from on each page the first time it’s mentioned.  As on a recent website I wrote, if a word or acronym is an integral part of your company — like the main product — then perhaps you should have a page dedicated to explaining that term.

Many times, the words used to produce an acronym can’t in and of themselves explain it to the common person.  For example, if you don’t know what a RIA is, does telling you that it’s a Rich Internet Application really clear it up for you? If you are using complex vocabulary, make sure that you are using it in the proper sense and the proper context; the reader should be able to figure out characteristics of the word from the sentence around it, even if they don’t get right off exactly what it means.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you dumb everything down relentlessly, until anyone who actually knows what you’re talking about gets bored and has to move on before their brain melts; consider a page you’re writing as a conversation.  You’re talking to real people — just because it’s a composition does NOT mean you should write it for your college English teacher.  As I’ve mentioned before, it is much more important for the largest possible segment of the population to be able to clearly comprehend what you’re saying than for you to get an A on your paper.  I’m sure if your English teacher is reading, she’ll be grateful to you for getting across what you need to say in the simplest and most concise manner possible.  On the internet, there are no extra points for more words, bigger words, or super-complex sentences.  Leave them out.

I usually wait until this point to start worrying about keyword density.  When you’re writing for search engine optimization (SEO), it’s important to think about what words people will use to find the site you’re working on.  Take a step back, and think about the services or goods you’re writing about.  If you were a customer, what words would you use to search for these goods?  If you were a clueless customer?  If you were a very specific customer?  Location might be important to you; for example, a restaurant would need to show up for the area it actually serves.

The best way to use SEO is to integrate it into the site architecture.  From the bottom up, the urls, page structure, and all those little details are fashioned to be efficient at providing search engines such as Google and Yahoo! with all the right stimuli to find your site.  In these cases, I like to work closely with whoever is behind the actual site building, and they can provide me the keywords to use.  Sometimes, however, I generate them myself.  There are a couple of important things to consider.

First, as I mentioned earlier, location.  Where are you, what area do you service?  Second, generic words that people might use to find you; commonly used words that are still specific enough to your industry.  Okay, so you have the most smashing brand name in the country, and you want your ‘Widgettios’ to have name recognition.  But you can’t count on people searching for Widgettios.  What in the world is a Widgettio, anyway?  So you need to think about it more simply — Widgettios count unshelled peanuts and package them in groups of three.  Think about how a stranger might understand your product.  Incorporate words like ‘peanuts,’ ‘counting,’ ‘packaging’ and ‘legumes’ into your text.  Don’t try for too many keywords at once; stick to something between two and six on each page, depending on where it is and how much text you have to work with.

Google AdWords is extremely helpful with keyword generation — they can give you metrics on how often a string or term is searched.  If you use words that are too general and too widely searched, you will be lost in the crowd.  If you use words that are too obscure, no one will ever find you.  So there’s a delicate balance to reach.  Practice makes perfect, as they say, and Google Analytics can help you determine what searches actually find your pages, so you can work on improving any low-performance issues.

Most people recommend a 3% to 5% keyword density. Some experts do recommend higher or lower densities, and search engines continue to evolve in an effort to continue to deliver effective results. For the current environment, if you are much lower than 3%, search engines will not rank you high enough; but at above 5%, you risk the text sounding very repetitive and wooden.  To find your simple keyword density, take the number of keywords and divide them by the total number of words in your text.  Word processors are handy for this, because you can use the search functions to find words.  I like to put a * by each keyword, then have it count how many *s I have in the document.  Easy-peasy.

It can be challenging at first to insert keywords into your text; personally, I tend to dislike using the same word in a composition more than a couple of times.  It makes reading more interesting when you use synonyms instead.  But drop those barriers for now, and think about which places you can use the same word, without sounding stilted.  Read your piece out loud, and if you start laughing at how silly it sounds, reconsider.

photo by Elektra Noelani Fisher

Sure, the piece won’t be organized correctly — but that’s one of the wonderful things about using a word processor.  It’s easy to edit your documents.  Who cares if you don’t follow your outline exactly?  The big goal is to simply get as many words on the page as you can, in complete sentences related to your topic. I take my list of objectives and, one by one, I cross them off.  After that’s finished, I can cut and paste sentences or paragraphs, rearrange lists, and clean up the flow of thought.   

Editing for sense is important — but when there’s nothing on the page, there’s nothing to edit. Don’t worry about punctuation, grammar, or sentence order.  That’s the entire purpose of editing. This is a rough draft — treat it like one, not like some precious irreplaceable incunabulum!  Rough drafts are meant to be cut up.  To be rearranged.  To be sadistically mangled until they meet your approval!  

Okay, I admit it.  I love to write something, double-check my spelling once, and be done.  But good writing simply isn’t that easy.  Blog posts are one thing; emails to your mother are another; static type on a website, or your final product to be printed and published around the country (or world!) are different.  If you’re serious about your reputation as a writer, you’ll take the care necessary to maintain it.

Writing is not hard.  What is hard, and what trips most people up when they are writing, is organization.  When you want to write clearly, it is important to have a clear idea of what you are going to say.  Before you begin, think about your idea.  You can think about it with a pen and paper or a word processor, if that helps you to work better.  Make a list, jot down words that you could use, outline your article.  You are about to present your idea to the world — give it a fighting chance by working through your argument. Think about the timeline of the piece and how it should flow.

For example, if your subject is a person and you want to write about their life, say a profile for a website or magazine or some such, you may have a questionnaire they have filled out.  Put the pertinent information in the same document where you are going to write, and check off the important points as you accomplish them.  Keeping track of what you need to cover will help you stay on track if you veer off onto a side issue.

You can also refer back to the list after your first draft, to see whether you have gone too far in any direction, and need to prune your piece.  Perhaps that extra paragraph is the seed for next week!  GoogleDocs is my favorite place to write, because of the complete accessibility from any location and the easy cut and paste and save if I need to put an idea somewhere else.  Also, I appreciate the auto-save.  Can’t tell you how many times I’ve nearly lost several hours worth of work …

If you’re not in a place where you can write, but you have a great idea, put it on paper or save it in an email to yourself, just a basic sentence and perhaps one or two theme words.  You can continue to think about it as you go about your business; I often find that percolation is the best possible thing for an idea that needs to be fleshed out.

Well, the first of the sites I was working on this month is live; there may be more to do on it later, but it depends on whether they give me any more material to work with. Researching the technical bits for each of the websites is fun, although slightly intimidating. People who are vastly more familiar with the subject matter will be reading each of my sites. I’ve been mulling over niches a little bit in my head today, and thinking about how nice it would be to have a specialty. One of the sites I’m doing right now is pretty lonely in the web world – apparently interior decorating in Boise, Idaho, is not a highly blogged about profession. If I can get this one up and running, though, perhaps other opportunities will arise.

I’ve done a significant amount of writing prior to starting this little enterprise. Most of it, however, is fiction. Or poetry. If you ask my English teacher, she may remember the steadfast aversion I had to writing papers or even answers that were complete sentences during my school days. I’ve heard other people talk about being ‘late bloomers,’ and I’m thinking that perhaps I just didn’t quite appreciate the beauty of a well-turned phrase – or, more accurately, the proud and euphoric feelings that arise from having turned that phrase yourself.

Poetry is probably what got me started. There’s a lot of work that goes into thinking carefully about the syllables you can use, the rhyming pattern (if any) that you want to have, and choosing each word to portray a very specific and yet complete emotional picture. I’m afraid that I don’t read much poetry. Unless it’s humorous – (like Ogden Nash’s ‘The Centipede’)– or appeals to me very specifically – (perhaps Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 116′) – I have a hard time getting into it.

Fictional writing, though, came rather easily during poetry. I love fashioning vivid images, such as this:

“The rain was pouring down as the automatic doors swished the wet people inside in droves. The line for the metal detectors curled around itself like a python in a toy box in a desperate bid to stay dry.”

Pulpy prose is just fun. I also wrote not-so-pulpy-prose, a few essays of my own volition, and I have always read so voraciously that people sometimes get quite frustrated when confronted with the number of books I have already read.

So, when it came to writing for websites and other forums, I wasn’t too concerned about my ability. However, I found myself consistently coming up against a block when I wrote for assignments. Stiffness. Dry, unpalatable lists. Too many repeated words, and delivery as though I was writing a list of points for myself to hit. It was just ugly. Now, I realize that first drafts are supposed to be bad. Some people even recommend writing them badly on purpose. But when you find yourself on the third and fourth draft of a page, and it still reads like a rabbit trail through sawdust, you’ve got a problem.

There are a few things I’ve found that help me with this issue. I’m using them in my current project, and I plan to enact a resolution with myself to keep it up when I have subsequent gigs.

#1. List your objectives.

Make a list of points. Put a list at the top or bottom of your document to show you what points you need to hit. Don’t worry about incorporating any special words or anything at this point, just try to mentally establish what you’re trying to accomplish in this composition. Don’t make it too much, either. There should be only a couple of main points. I generally find that the sub-points find themselves as I’m writing the next part.

#2. Put words on the paper. 

Spill. Just get everything you need to say down on a page. I really like working with word processors, because it’s so easy to rearrange what I’m doing. I don’t have to worry about where I’m putting something, because I can always cut & paste it to a new section. For example, this started out as my first point in the list!

#3. List your key words. 

For search engine optimized copywriting, you will have a list of keywords to blend into each page. Sometimes they are provided to me, but sometimes I have to extrapolate them based on the market I’m working in and what terms people are likely to use when searching for the product or service I’m offering. I’ll get into more specifics about keywords another time.

#4. Think about who you’re writing to.

Once you have the basic information down on the page, imagine you’re trying to convey it to someone real. I like to concoct a person who doesn’t really know much about what I’m saying. Sure, people with the expertise I’m writing about will be reading my pages – I don’t dumb it down to infinity. But those who know it all aren’t the ones you’re writing for.  Be conversational, and don’t use words that assume too much. Is there an acronym that isn’t commonly used? Spell it out the first time. Are there any technical terms you need? Be entirely sure you need them, and then use them in context so that a new reader can at least read through the word without getting bogged down about the rest of the material. Don’t base your entire piece on an obscure word or phrase. Use it only as necessary.

#5. Read through for clarity.

I don’t usually read things aloud. I read them in my head, enunciating each word to myself. Sometimes, I ask someone else to also read through them for me. I generally look for someone who is familiar with the material first, and ask them if I’ve said anything idiotic. Then I find someone who is new to the field and ask them if anything is confusing, or if anything made them stumble or stop. They might not understand all of the information, or care whether they understand it, but nothing should be so difficult as to cause them to be unable to continue reading. The composition should be easy for them to read and glean information from.

#6. Put it down.

Now, leave it alone. Go away for a couple of hours, forget about it completely, and then come back. I generally find it rather useless to proofread for consistency and errors immediately after writing something. I tend to not really read it, and to assume that things are there when they’re not. If I leave it alone long enough, though, I forget what I was doing, and when I come back it’s almost as though someone else wrote it. I can see where I’ve miscalculated, I can see what needs to move. Sometimes something at the end of the post needs to move to the beginning. My introductory sentences are often the last things I write.

#7. Let it go.

You’ve done it. Let it go. Next time you’ll be even better, but you can’t rework everything into oblivion. Sure, if you find some glaringly obvious error later, fix it. But don’t rewrite the entire thing every time you look at it. Set it aside and move on.

I’ve followed all my own rules while writing this piece – I think it worked. Let me know what you think, or what steps you consciously follow to create masterpieces!

As I got older, I grew better at finding introductory sentences, then making sure I didn’t use the exact same structure for every single paragraph opening.  My inner sentences grew less run-on, and my closing sentences sometimes made actual transitions to the next topic.  Long, fat paragraphs began to fill my pages.

It can be very tempting to write full, complete, healthy paragraphs to publish online.  But ease of reading trumps all in our little game of attention.  If your paragraphs are too long, then they create an intimidating block of text.  “Maybe,” your readers think, “someone else can say this in a better way.”  Regardless of how apt your phrasing is, it will never be read when the sentences can’t be found.

Many people have issues with reading text on a screen.  Take a look at this article on copyblogger.com.  There are a lot things to take into consideration when you’re thinking about accessibility.

There are always several parts to a website we can’t change.  We’re not the designers, after all.  But we can help by leaving clear spaces, and using as little text as possible.  Don’t clutter.  Your English teacher is not sitting around the corner, ready to pounce on your errors.  Okay, I take that back, I think my English teacher might be listening in …  But regardless of structural critique, legibility should be your first concern.

I don’t mean you should ignore grammar rules altogether; but I do believe that this medium demands certain allowances that would not be so necessary in printed form.  It’s much harder to put something over the page to keep your place, harder to use a pencil to mark up what you’re reading, harder to stare at the screen for long periods of time.

In fact, I sometimes think that we, as writers, have it easiest.  For ease of editing, copying, and re-publishing, there’s nothing like bits and bytes that can be overwritten.

Think about your readers.  Put yourself on the outside.  When they approach a website you’ve worked on, does the text dismayingly plummet to the bottom of the page and beyond?  How are they supposed to know whether this is where they should be, if it takes so much effort to simply read the summary of services?  There are places where it’s appropriate to be thorough, but in many cases, especially home pages, you should avoid too much explanation.

Be clear.  Be concise.  Be to the point.

The articles are very informative — ranging from how to maintain interest through vocabulary and action to tips on controlling your own output.  This quote, from last week, was food for my own thought.

“Never save a good idea. When I know I have many article deadlines to meet, it is tempting to “save” a few good ideas for later. New ideas will always come so always give your best ideas.” (September 5, 2008 copyblogger.com, by Jim Estill)

I’ve heard people talk about ideas in several different ways.  Some people complain that it’s hard to come with a good idea; these types tend to hoard their one ‘good idea’ for long periods of time.  Often it is never developed, spending so much time in the mental refinement process that the light of day never gets a peek.  Sometimes people have ideas that they don’t have the ability to manage themselves.  The published authors I’ve heard speak, however, and at least one other person on copyblogger seem to have similar ideas:  An idea is just that.  An idea.  Until you do something with it, it will never be anything else.

Sometimes people are afraid to let their good ideas see the light of day because they are afraid someone else will take it and use it.  However, when a writer has an idea (or anyone else, for that matter), the way that they will write and develop it is completely different from how anyone else would.  Say I wanted to write a book about green space monkeys.  Sure, they’re monkeys, and they’re green, and they apparently have something to do with space, but the ways to implement that are myriad.  Green monkeys who live in outer space and hitchhike on passing starflyers.  Green monkeys from space who return from the 13th moon of Jupiter to terrorize the inhabitants of earth.  Is it a monster story?  An alien encounter story?  A romance between a pilot and a skyway airline attendant?  A fantasy?  A science fiction story?  Now, I do realize that many people have their ideas fleshed out a little further than that, but the point remains the same.  Not only will content differ, based on the writer’s personality and own experience, but the style and efficacy of their words will vary.

I’m the same as anyone — I have good ideas, then I fear that, maybe, I won’t be able to do what I want to with them right now.  What I can achieve in writing now may be so far below what I could achieve in five years as to not bear comparison.  However, I won’t get better if I don’t write.  And I won’t learn how to develop good ideas if all I work with are mediocre ones, because I’m afraid of failure.

So, let’s jump in.

– Heidi