Francesco Gavello - Speed Blogging

The Internet gets more and more new blood every day. Some of those guys actually write about topics they love and enjoy.

If that’s the topic you are writing about and you don’t enjoy it – you can’t compete with them. They’ll kick your virtual butt with hardly any effort.

There’s one more reason I think this type of post is more popular – controversy.

Anytime I rank something, I get above average comments about my flawed methodology or all the people, places and things I left off the list (usually it’s egos getting the best of people – sometimes I really do screw up).

Either way, controversy is great for drawing attention to your posts, right or wrong.

Let’s start at the beginning. And that means starting with the brain, because that’s the main machine we use for writing.

Whether it’s having great ideas, or choosing a structure, or dancing with words – it’s all to do with brainpower. So a simple way to write better is to boost the performance of your brain.

After all my years of teaching and being taught, I am convinced there is only one specific, reliable tip writers in training can be given: read your stuff aloud, if not literally, then with an inner voice attended to by the inner ear.

It is the only sure way to spot the clinkers, the rum rhythms.

I write all the time, every day.

The thing is, I write quite often in my head, and only sometimes into a keyboard or onto paper.

That’s how it is when you’re a writer. You’re talking to a friend and they say something with an interesting turn of phrase, and you forget everything else they’re saying. You hear one thing though someone said something else and it sets you off down the rabbit hole. Alice, of Wonderland fame, was curious.

There would be no book were she not such a nosy investigator of things that weren’t her business.