Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Learning better, to Teach better!

A blog is a place where one writes, for others to read.

Now, why one would want to be read is a question whose answer may vary from one writer to another, but, whatever one’s reason for wanting to be read may be, there is another question that needs to be asked by every writer:

“Why should someone want to read what you write?”

If we look at blogs, it is easy to see that some of our favourite blogs are those which educate us, in addition to entertaining us. In today’s world, there are more than enough sources of entertainment, but the sources of education are few and far between. Most blogs that are popular today are a great source of knowledge for people who want to educate themselves about the subject the blogger writes about.

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Striking a Balance!

Ours is a weird world.

Most of the times we either have too much of a thing, or too little. We hardly ever have the right amount of anything, even words.

A writer’s job is to write. But, how many words are needed to describe an emotion, a scene, or an event is arbitrary. I may do it in a thousand, you may do it in a hundred.

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5 Places to Look for Ideas to Write

When you are writing regularly, you are bound to run short of ideas. It may seem that your mind is full of ideas, but when you sit down to write you can’t hold on to a single one. Not unlike trying to catch the little fishes in a stream  - you see so many of them, but every time you dip your hand in the water to catch one, the hand comes out empty.

Not being able to write when one wants to can be quite frustrating, and can also make a dent in one’s self-belief. Therefore, it is in the best interests of the writer, if he can write whenever he chooses, and to do that a writer should have a repository of ideas to draw upon in times of need.

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Writing – Hobby, or Profession?

In a scene from a movie, a character asks his friend about what he did for a living. The friend replies, “I write.”

“That is alright, but what do you do to earn your bread and butter?” asks the first character again.

“I Write!” replies the exasperated friend.

The scene was meant to raise a few laughs, and it did so successfully.

On a serious note, however, the scene represents the truth for thousands of people who write. A large section of people who write are not sure whether it is a hobby for them, or is it something that they want to do for a living. This confusion is the biggest reason for writer’s block, and writer’s burnout.

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The Arthur Conan Doyle Fallacy!

Most people today know who Arthur Conan Doyle was, even if they have not read any of his works. In Sherlock Holmes, he created one of the most celebrated fictional detectives of all time. Sherlock Holmes had become so famous that when, in 1893, A C Doyle killed the character of Sherlock Holmes, the Strand Magazine – which printed the Sherlock Holmes stories – lost thousands of subscribers.

One may, therefore, wonder, why did A C Doyle kill Sherlock Holmes -  the character that won him a place in the hearts of millions of people across the boundaries of space and time.

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