Author / whyididntwritetoday

by whyididntwritetoday

47 ways to turn your brain into a bulging bicep of creativity…

Here’s a riddle. What’s usually soft, occasionally hard, often truthful but frequently full of lies?

You’ll probably be thinking of a few different things. Depending on how far into the gutter your mind is you might even have visualised something after just reading the first two clues.

What am I on about?
The picture didn’t give it away?

Why, the humble book of course. They can either be hardback or paperback, and will either be non-fiction or fiction. Although, I guess some lines can occasionally blur – namely, in the autobiographies of celebrities who want to seem larger than life.

If you want to have ideas, you need to read. I often talk to people who want to be authors, journalists, copywriters, etc and I ask them what they read. It’s surprising how often others don’t read much or stick to the same type of genre/the same news source.

The more you put in your brain, of different themes, the more you’ll get out of it. I try and read as much as I can, and I’ve done this on and off ever since I was first taught to read. Now I’m older I never stop reading. I’ll always have one fiction and one non-fiction book on the go.

Horror stories, thrillers, philosophy, business books, pop psychology…all of these have disappeared into my metaphorical meat grinder of a brain.

Hopefully someday soon I’ll churn them all out in a masterpiece that will cement my claim for being the greatest writer who ever lived.

Or, at least it’ll get me onto the New York Times Bestsellers List.

In short, if you want to write and create you need to read.

Fill ya mind with new stuff.

P.S If there’s a day where you don’t feel like reading watch some films…but not Con Air and Die Hard on repeat.

by whyididntwritetoday

100 ways to win an argument with yourself…

How many times a week do you argue with yourself?

By that I don’t mean to ask how often you sit in the corner of the pub and talk about politics to yourself. And, come on – who needs to spend time doing that when the internet has a pulsing community full of people waiting to argue over opinions and theories?

What I mean is…how often have tried to convince yourself to do something? To exercise, to get up earlier…or to write?

How often have you sat in front of your computer – ready to unleash your creative genius onto an empty Word document? Only to find that your games console was more appealing, or perhaps the lure of daytime TV was too much?

Is a day to yourself even a day to yourself without catching the Frasier double bill before ‘enjoying’ an episode of Jeremy Kyle?

As with many blogs today this one is, again, about motivation and how you need to fight that inner voice of distraction. After all the people you see as successful, they didn’t get there through not being bothered.

You know what quote I really like?

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”
– Laozi, Chinese philosopher (circa 600 BCE)

You’ve probably seen this on hundreds of t-shirts, mugs and posters. Quite rightly too. It is motivational and it is inspiring.

But what Laozi was really saying, to me, is that most people can’t be bothered, most people are inactive when it comes to following their dreams. So, the brave soul who makes that first metaphorical step may well be the one who gets to where they want to be.

I use this quote not to inspire me, but to remind me that there are loads of people around me who can’t be bothered.

For as long as they stay that way, there’s less competition for me.

Next time you have that argument with yourself, where the voice of laziness or procrastination tries to steer you away from your goals – think about our friend Laozi.

Not just his quote which has been demeaned by cheap coffee cups – but the fact that so many others won’t make that step…meaning that you’ll already be standing out if you do.

Will you remember the day you lost yourself to daytime TV or the day you kept your focus and started the ‘thing’ that cemented your dreams for you?

by whyididntwritetoday

6 tips on how to write good English from the bloke who did ‘1984’…

You can write, right? You can construct a sentence, hold your audience and get your point across? Or at least you like to think so? Even the best of us can improve though, you should take a look at this…

As you may have seen, the novel ‘1984’ has had something of a second birth recently – due to a mixture of the current political climate and the simple fact that true classics never die. Like fashion, classic books tend to be reinvented by shifts in culture.

It’s been sitting in bestseller lists since it was first published in 1949. I vividly remember the first time I read it, some thirteen years ago.

I’m not sure if you were aware, but Orwell actually came up with a few succinct rules that anyone who wants to write English (well) should follow. I thought I’d share them with you on this Tuesday Evening, and I’ll add my own two bits underneath each one.

– Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Be original and don’t sound like every other soul out there. This is especially relevant now, as with the internet everyone has a voice and a platform to broadcast it from. Any two-bit writer (ahem) can start up their own blog with a silly name and starting typing! To stand out, the majority of your words need to be cliche free.

– Never use a long word where a short one will do.

Long words may go down well with an academic audience, but not every audience member is going to have a MENSA membership. Big words tend to break sentences up and if a reader snags too much while looking at your piece their minds and their eyes will soon wander…and you don’t want them to go off and buy ‘The Sun’, do you?

– If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Less is more. With every sentence you write you’re fighting to keep your reader, so don’t drone. Be your own editor too – look everything over, and don’t be afraid to cut bland words out. You’ll also be surprised at how many typos you make when you look back at what you’ve done.

This isn’t your ‘6000 word’ University essay – you don’t need to ‘pad it out’.
(Ignore this if you’re still a student – pad away!)

– Never use a passive where you can use the active.

Active makes for exciting writing. Who gets off on reading boring stuff?
Active: The dog bit the man.
Passive: The man was bitten by the dog.
See this example here? Admittedly it’s not the longest sentence either way, but the former grabs you right away – it’s snappy (pun!) and to the point, and you’re instantly waiting for the next sentence. Whereas the latter feels a bit slow, and you have to almost compute it before you read the next sentence.

– Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Goes hand in hand with your audience – by all means use exciting words and turns of phrase – but if everyone was well-versed in jargon they wouldn’t call it jargon. Think of the internal frame of the business you work for – would your average joe (or reader) know all of your office slang and corporate terms?

Err…wot’s ROI?

– Break any of those rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

I Googled what barbarous meant. It means brutal. I guessed that because it sounded like ‘barbarian’ and barbarians aren’t known for being gentle, especially Conan.

Come on – you were wondering why I had a pic of Arnie instead of Orwell, right?

If you’re interested in Orwell’s essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’ check it out here.

by whyididntwritetoday

What took you off the sofa today?

The writing that connects with you emotionally is the best. You must have had it before where you’ve read a few sentences, and had to look up from the page and take a moment to reflect on how much you can relate to it.

Not only that but great writing can also change your perspective on so many things, or at the very least give you an insight  into why others’ perspectives differ from yours.

Sorry if I’m stating the obvious, but sometimes in life I feel we need to be ‘Captain Obvious’ occasionally and remind ourselves of the things that we take for granted.

But where do you get the ammo? I mean sure, some of us are born with a natural affinity for words – some people can construct a sentence with enough flare and gusto to match a West End show. But, without having the right topic to talk about – flowery writing is just flowery writing. Almost like a piece of average art – hung up in a corner of your house that you never really look at, pleasing to the eye but otherwise useless.

To me, it comes from experience – I love reading stories about faraway lands and cities I’ve never seen. But the ones that get to me the most, with the devil in their detail, are those that are written by people who have actually gotten out of their sofas and been there.

So this is one of the things I’m going to do to make sure that I write more, and better. I’m going to push my boundaries, get out of my sofa more and take in more of what life has to offer.

As we all know very well, it’s so easy to get involved in solving life’s day-to-day problems that you can sometimes lose sight of the great stuff happening around you.

by whyididntwritetoday

When the world zigs, zag.

It’s a Saturday morning, and I thought I’d kick off the day by sharing this image. It’s one that I always go back to, in a effort to remind myself that sometimes the greatest ideas are the simplest.

It was 1982 and everyone was wearing blue jeans, as they had been for many years. Levi Strauss was considered the market leader and zillions of people all over the globe would visit their stores to get their jeans.

However, there were rumours that denim was going out of fashion and so Levi’s wanted to play a daring ace card…they wanted to launch black denim. Something pretty alien to their customers at the time.

They approached advertising agency BBH and thus the poster above was born, and it was a rip-roaring success.

Many fashionistas like to go against the grain, and be different from ‘sheep’ the world over so the image of the black sheep going against the tide appealed to them.

Not only that, but the clothes we wear are a form of expressionism and we all like to think we’re an individual – just like the black sheep in that picture.

Looking at this also makes me want to go out and buy Levi’s jeans…why must I be such an easy target for advertising bigwigs the world over?