You Can Write Content

byojphd

615 followers

Updated 6 years ago

Hey Universe,

I am by no means what you would call a writer. I did realize that I had to write if I wanted to work in this arena. What I have learned though is that if you are impassioned about a topic, you can write something about it.

The fears that I had to overcome were irrational. I was afraid of being embarrassed. I was afraid of sounding stupid. I was afraid of not being coherent. I was afraid of not being interesting.

Embarrassment

Everyone gets embarrassed at some point. No one is immune. Being embarrassed makes us feel uneasy, ashamed and self-conscious. At that point, we feel that we may have done something socially unacceptable.

Embarrassment often manifests as a result of our insecurities. It manifests when a weakness or an inadequacy is suddenly made public.

For me,I fear making mistakes and I also fear failure.This ties into my pride and vanity. I had to put that aside as I wrote blogs about various topics.

Stupidity

When you are not used to writing, it may feel very awkward. This chips away at whatever confidence you may have. No one wants others to think negatively about them and if one is not confident about what they are doing, self doubt and social anxiety develops.

The reality is that most likely people aren't thinking that you are stupid. You wouldn't be writing an article about something if you didn't have some knowledge on the topic. This is what I had to tell myself in order to move forward in writing about topics of interest.

To overcome self-critical thoughts, I told myself that I did not have to be perfect. I tell myself that what I write about is something that is interesting to me. I believe that if it is interesting to me, it may be interesting to someone else. Like there are no stupid questions, there are no stupid topics.

Coherency

To write better I needed a template to follow. I did not want to ramble in many different directions. At first I had fears on how to be organized in my writing but then it was clear how to address any essay.

High school taught us how to organize our thoughts. Remember the Outline that you were taught.

1) Start with an opening paragraph that explains what you want to present

2) Give a paragraph or two on each point in your opening paragraph

3) Summarize your thoughts in a paragraph or so

4) Conclude your paper with a closing paragraph

I tend to follow this format to keep my article flowing and organized.

Being Boring

Surveys say that the biggest hurdles for bloggers is the fear of being boring. This may be true but that shouldn't stop you from writing.

I write for a couple reasons. First, I know that I am not going to be a novelist so I don't get real "flowery" or metaphorical in my writing. Second, I am truly interested in what I am writing about.

Basically, I write to relay information. This information is in the realm of sports stuff and peripheral topics to sports. It may be historical. It may be relavant to a particular sport. It may be about a person. It may be a review of a product related to sports.

In any case, I write in a way to be conversational. I try to get the most information out there without being to technical or tedious. If I do it right, then the article is not boring.

So this is where I am going to end this. If you are afraid to write, consider some of these points I make. Most importantly though is to write about things that you are interested in.

I hope that this is useful to some of you guys out there. Check out my site at imafantoo.com for what I think is some interesting reading

O