Writing good articles ..

I have been writing for almost fifteen years many different articles pertaining to science technology, politics, motivation, achievements, social development,  infrastructure development, entrepreneurship, management related and so on. Even now I cannot claim to be good at writing, I just do it. I try to do it better everytime.

One of the most important aims in writing is to be able to communicate effectively with the reader.

Writing well is an art that comes only from practice, practice and practice. So if the first draft of the article looks lousy, do not be discouraged, you are on track. As per some of the quotes I have given here, the drafts are always lousy, it is for you to work on and improve.No great writer has written great articles right from the start, it has been a painful and often humiliating start, which slowly gets better.

The three stages I can recollect before writing an article are these three

1. pre-writing or planning stage

2. writing or execution stage and 

3. post-writing or review stage ..

1. Pre-writing stage : 

a. decide your topic - what are you going to write on. For example when I decided that I am going to write on how to write, it registered in may mind as the topic of writing, "how to write good articles ?"

b. draft your basic ideas - what will be structure of your article, what all points will you be writing and what will you be trying to convey to the audience through the writing

c. do some basic research, collect some points, good quotes etc which you can use to substantiate your points and convey your thoughts better to the audience

2. Writing stage

a. assume reader has the intelligence but does not have the basic knowledge on the subject, so an initial warming up of couple of words is always welcome

b. add figures, pictures for better illustration (if taking from a source, acknowledge it)

c. make the writing simple with short sentences, cutting out tough words (Nehru style)

d. never deviate from your topic during the writing

avoid distractions while writing

e. change the location to get a different feel and grip on writing

3. Post-writing stage

a. read the document after a couple of hours or even after a day to correct spelling mistakes, grammar, sentence framing etc.. Generally rework on the document to make it effective

b. invite feedback from readers and try to incorporate them in the writing in its next version or in a follow up article later on.

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One may not be able to follow all these points initially, but over time, it is a good practice. 

Wishing you the best in your writing career which could be very satisfying and could go into your old age, upto 70 or 75 years of age and rewarding too ..

george.