In Search Of Writing Excellence

Another great read. I'll save my insightful comment for when I'm sitting down taking my notes but I just wanted to say in the poll I find it hard to believe over half the readers try to improve their writing daily! Lol. As I'm sure you would agree! :-) Michele Jones

Entertaining, yet very much to the point…now where did I put my trident?

I am inspired to find ways to include more metaphors. Imagination stimulates the mind and one should capture it all on paper.

I remember a teacher telling me once, long ago, that one should never use the same word twice in 3 consecutive sentences (with the exception of words like the or a). I've always tried to keep that in mind. Like you pointed out, it's hard when writing for those elusive online views. This is a great reminder.

Bill, this is very encouraging for me. I quiz myself against the various ways for improvement, as you outline them, and I can truly say that I am making the effort. Thank you!

Good evening Bill , dearest friend.

Such an excellent hub,loaded with all information just for me and your opening statement sternly orders, Michael 'Read No Further.' If I have committed a deadly sin, then let me be doomed, but let this be known that though my presence might be one of those " only interested in increasing your online views" ( my motto has never changed ''I don't place any value on my own life…"")- at least we triggered this article. Where shall I go now.? [ My spot here might be regarded as Pontus Pilate's in the Apostles' Creed], I'm here for learning . Seeking excellence might be for me a sign of arrogant sustaining, while desire to be "better writer"- in your words the best you can be. .. is my goal.

Reading, rereading your hubs brought me to this point of certain understanding what is being expected of an author. In my previous life (wasn't much of requirement how to ) publishing in others, but of English language , now after over a quarter of century not writing /nor publishing at all, - creeping back again to my primary avocation . Sobering reminder "we get distracted and we get in hurry…" - i know the pain. ( this past Summer some projects needed longer hours to finish, and when my body was overtired , the brain refused to cooperate. . . and nothing in hurry could contribute to a success story.

Supplementary to ' read no further' your coming wit a smile gives hope and a spanking doesn't hurts that much anymore.

Awesome and useful.

Wish you a very blessed week.

Greetings Sir! This hub was both enticing and enlightening. I agree with the significance of both a thesaurus and dictionary. As a developing writer, I carry these tools whenever I am attempting to type brilliance. Also, integrating successful imagery is a must, for it keeps the reader engaged; I personally enjoy metaphors more. Anyway, your words have a genuine tone of inspiration. Thank you!

Yes, we are in search of writing excellence, Billy. We would love you to contribute a short piece (article or fiction, 350-750 words) to Roel Resources. You'd be a natural. Take a look: roelresources.com

Excellent writing. Fine command of craft. Inspirational content. A major chord.

Thank you!

When I read this hub, it felt like a full blown jolt as if to arouse the writing fraternity from the deep slumber. You are right that writing should develop continuously so as to produce wonders like Taj Mahal, Pyramid of Egypt , Great China Wall and so on so that whoever reads them gets stunned in an instant. Such should be the beauty and splendor of the written piece that one should but marvel at that. Billy, I am an amateur writer but under the spell of your powerful writing, I gathered courage to respond to you in my own way. This much I have learnt from your not forgettable piece.

Always have such a great tone in your stuff... 8-)

You made some excellent points on improving our writing skills. It is easy to fall into your normal pattern of writing and not seek to improve as you have a pretty good following anyway. But, we don't improve or grow if we are lazy and don't use a little imagination.

Hard work really is the only way to go.

Great advice billy, and yes we are all guilty of this, write the article and quick, we will do it tomorrow, and so on, we all need a kick up the pants, so to speak! lol! great work, nell

Amen to many of your points!! One thing that irks me is when anyone, not just writers, repeat the same word in a single sentence! Seriously? Do they not realize how many other choices they had? Obviously not.

Wonderful hub, Bill! I agree about constantly reaching to improve our writing skills and vocabulary. There is so much to learn, always! I'm grateful for people like YOU that keep inspiring me! Many hugs for the weekend.

I will take to heart your suggestions here. Thank you for granting the use of thesauri. Always felt it was cheating. I am relieved - honest!

I found this very inspiring. Such great advice.

Hm, no one else marked it as funny? I thought it was... funny AND useful. I'm always happy to take writing advice from someone who's a good writer. Keep up the great work.

I like encouragement in search of excellence. I'm always trying to improve. If you're not improving, you're stagnating, and I don't want to do that.

Such great tips again Billy! I find it really hard lately to write something that pleases HP though. It is disheartening when you write something, it's got all of the key ingredients HP requests for a stellar Hub, and then they lowball the score. It's frustrating on here.

But, to overcome that, I have the friendships and nice people I've met on here that keep me going. The proof is when people say how interesting and helpful the writing is, I know I've done a good job (regardless of what score I'm issues).

Another gem fro you my dear friend. Each one leaving much food for thought.

Keep them coming and here's to wishing you and Bev a wonderful day.

Eddy.

Another hub I need to bookmark. Bill, you are an excellent teacher. I definitely need to use the thesaurus more and up my game. I am one of the naughty students who tends to just 'write' whats in my head. Trouble with that is, will others want to read it.!!!

The same as usual Bill. First class, I would love to walk along the path in your photograph. It leaves me feeling wistful and wondering.

Graham.

Hi Bill, I also seek excellence like many others. I'm a firm believer that if you're going to do something, then do it right. A good professor pushes his or her students to excel because he believes in them and their capabilities. Thank you for writing this valuable hub.

Thanks for the smile, Bill! Thanks for the useful tips to add to all the others that you've already given us, too. Have a great weekend!

It reminds me of that saying that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. Writing isn't going to come naturally to most people. It's going to take a lot of time and effort to truely find your voice and become better at naturally writing a good, smooth flowing article. Most of us are going to have to go through an iterative improvement process.

haha ... I love it, just as I thought that simile looks a lot like smile ... I read your very sentence stating such! : ) Smiles

All day long I write legal documents, so I have to make the transition from ... boring ... to passionate and interesting for sure, and that takes a lot of practice!

I am always amazed when, as you mentioned about speed, those writers who can write and make one speed up while reading and then come to a complete halt, breathless ... not that is great writing, and it just does not happen.

Love your photos too! Thanks for always encouraging us to improve our writing and hopefully that is what happens when we continue to write.

Blessings,

Faith Reaper

I want to have excellence, so I had to give this a read. You have a way of breaking down what you have to do to be a success in a fun way that is also inspiring.

The content teaches me a lot and additionally, the Hub itself teaches me how to make a great one too! Thank you very much. This is a sure + to my writing goals.

I know that any time I need some inspiration and guidance for improving my writing skills and style, I can always read back through your hubs. You provided some great tips in this one. I'm not sure what you'll think of this next statement, but I'm sure you'll let me know. Using a thesaurus is a wonderful idea yet it can be used in the wrong way. Simply choosing a different word so there's some variety in the text doesn't always help the reader. Sure, the person reading a book or article can learn by looking up the definitions of words they've never seen before; however, you don't want to lose the reader's interest and disrupt their flow by forcing them to use their dictionary too often.

Hi, Bill. Thanks as always for the motivation. I admit, the idea of breaking from the norm has chewed at me for years. But I find myself shy away from that scary, dark forest of something different. I know, I'll start with baby steps!

You are right about the dearth of similes and metaphors, I have fallen into the habit of writing much less imaginatively than when it was simply me and the hardcopy paper and pencil. Reminded and inspired to improve my writing, now.

This is great advice Bill and I am constantly trying to improve my writing. I was a math and science guy in school so this does not come easy to me. What helps me the most is to read and reread my hubs over and over to see if they flow well. How do they sound? Can I change something to improve it? I actually drive myself crazy sometimes debating over a few sentences but like I said, this does not come easy. My hope is that I will continue to improve. My approach to this is that there is always room for improvement.

Have a great weekend.

Bill, damn!!... You are so passionate when you're stirred. All true of course, but not everyone have your passion or indeed your ability to write. Some of us will make it to the promise land and others will keep writing the same old repeats. But yes, we do owe it to ourselves to do the best we can, and with information like you've just shared, many more will succeed. Bless you for fanning the flames. :)

I have no choice to improve everyday because I write and I read every single day and usually I jump from French to English all the time.

I was quite discouraged when I started to write in English because I was making so many mistakes but I know that I improved slowly but surely, but I still have to work hard.

One of the tools I use is http://www.merriam-webster.com/. It's a fantastic tool as a dictionary but also for pronunciation :-)

Have a great weekend!

Excellent advice, Bill, but then it always is! You mentioned two of my favorite writing allies: the thesaurus and the use of metaphors and similes - which often do bring smiles which you so cleverly pointed out. You ARE the man! Hope your weekend is fantastically fabulous.

(ROFLMAO @ mpropp's comparison!!)

Thank you Bill for this inspirational hub. Jamie

I love your similes and metaphors! You have inspired me to use more of them in my writing, and yes, you have inspired me to be a better writer. I have had more comments and follows since I started following you than I ever had before. Thanks, and keep up the good work!

I have this sitting on my desk: "A Synonym is a word used in place of the one you can't spell." ~ Co-edikit~

I was not blessed with a spelling gene, and God knows I hate that red

bitch that lights up my screen. But, now, I have spell check on everything and a dictionary with a thesaurus and synonym app. on my phone. The phone dictionary has voice recognition of words. It has

changed my life. No longer do I suffer from paper cuts on all my finger tips.

Today, on 'word', where I am writing my best selling novel, it told me

my sentence structure was incorrect. We had a nasty, letter slinging fight and I finally let her win. Temperamental technological twit!

Anyway, your article was intensely remarkable with shades of sarcastic

ambition.

How'd I do, huh???

DJ.

Thank you Bill! I certainly feel honored that you think so.

There's so much information here! There is so much to learn and learn and learn! Practice may not make perfect, but it certainly does improve the outcome. The video was a great choice for reminding us of those important writing basics.

My own attempts at improving my writing make me feel more inept than a male virgin on prom night...but I still appreciate the advice and even the reprimands that you so expertly divulge. Happy Friday!

Well said, billybuc! I agree with you completely. There are so many who write the same article over and over, only varying the content--it is like a formulaic sit-com: take outline, change situation; dash off copy. (Oh, gosh--a simile!)

Metaphors, however, can be tricky. With the "dumbing-down" of our schools, and with writers being admonished to write for a 12th-grade level, (which today, is probably equivalent to a 6th or 8th-grade level for our generation), many people don't recognize a metaphor for what it is. They take it literally, then manage to take umbrage at the statement. They don't 'get' sarcasm, either, without the informative literary device of, "...she sarcastically snapped."

With my situation at home, I don't even get to write every day, but when I do, I make the effort to do the best job I can, and come up with better ways to say or illustrate things with words. My thesaurus and dictionary are never far from my reach. I do think the problem with some of the writers you describe is that they don't even know what a thesaurus is!! Well, good news for them: there is one included in MSWord, so if that's where they're crafting their articles, there's no excuse for not using the tool.

(And look at that--in one sentence--they're/their/there--another problem with SO many writers these days, not knowing (or caring) about the difference between the words!) Poor grammar is another turn-off for me. If I start reading an article with these kinds of errors, I usually won't finish reading. Have we dropped so low that these mistakes are so common as to have become accepted, and grant traffic to people who don't know how to put a proper sentence together?

Sorry for the rant; you've touched on a topic close to my heart. I've penned a few such articles myself.

Cheers! Voted up, useful, interesting, shared and pinned!

Friend Bill, I don’t write about dumplings, but I get your message loud and clear. Have you read any of the new low-priced books on Amazon from new writers? Many of these are self-published, I think, and these people have great stories but I’ve seen eighth graders with more imaginative writing skills than some of these people have. I read one series of books (3 in all) because the story was so intriguing, but I told the author the same thing you said in this hub. He wrote in first person and his character was quite a joker with a wife nearly devoid of a sense of humor. I informed him that I really got sick of the phrase, “and she didn’t think that was funny.” There are so many ways to get that point across like “she grimaced,” “she snorted,” “she threw a skillet at me,” anything but “she didn’t think it was funny.”

This author keeps up with the critiques on Amazon, so I hope he got my point. I tried to make the suggestions in a helpful way and not be too hard on him. I loved his story and I told him so. Hope this helps as an example of what you are talking about. I read quite a few of these books because I think these new authors need all the help they can get.

Voted you up++

Jeeze Bill, I've doing everything all wrong as a writer I suppose! Oh well, still learning the craft. Great tips!

How could you possibly become annoying?! Great advice as always; I too often see the same word within a paragraph. Apart from benefiting the reader and therefore the acceptance of a piece of writing if one expresses oneself in various ways, it's so good for a writer to discover new words and try a change of pace. Actually, it's good fun to write something using deliberately opposite styles and mood within it, just to see how it finishes up! Another great reminder of what we should all be doing. Ann

Bill, I sat for a webinar yesterday, hosted by 3 writers/teachers: Roy Peter Clark, Ben Yagoda and Jack Hart. All 3 of them said to get rid of the thesaurus - quit trying to find different words to say the same thing. I was flabbergasted! To me, the thesaurus is absolutely necessary. Obviously, I felt that bit of advice belonged in my compost bin because it's just... well, horse poop!

One thing they did say, and you've said this often, is to read your work silently, then aloud. That way you can hear the flow and make any necessary adjustments.

Finally, the young girl in the video was impressive. I'll bet she's a teacher. One thing that I'm not sure I agree with is maintaining verb tense throughout the story. Watching for tense violation within a sentence is very important, but sometimes our stories begin in the present then revert to the past, then come back again. What are your thoughts on that issue?

Well done Hub, Bill and an excellent video. I add this to my collection of useful writing topics.