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Most writers, artists, and inventors,
Often use their Moleskines to
Live, love, dream, draw, and write.
Energize their lives and motivate them to
Strive harder to achieve their goals,
Kindle the mind and ignite the creative spirit.
Inspire and get inspired to create and develop,
New ideas, inventions, and innovations that,
Emerge from their Moleskines!!!

Earnest means “serious in intention, purpose, or effort”. It means serious in the pursuit of one’s goals. One of the qualities all successful writers have in common is the earnest desire to write. It is a quality that every writer, who wants to become successful, should acquire.

Like any other creative profession, writing too is 90 percent perspiration and 10 percent inspiration. Every successful writer will tell you the importance of making writing a part of your daily life—a routine activity or habit like sleeping, eating, or bathing.

The amount of time, the exact time of the day (or night), the place, the writing material—all can vary depending on the individual.

Some people choose early mornings to write. Some others write late in the night, after everyone has gone to sleep. Yet another group of writers write both in the morning and evening. Some of them use mornings to write and evenings to revise and edit. Some write for 4-5 hours at a stretch. Some others write for 2 hours in the morning and 3 hours at night. It is a matter of individual preference.

Some people use pen and paper; some use computer; yet another group writes their first drafts or outlines on paper and then key-in the work once they have got their ideas in place. Some writers use a Dictaphone to capture the ideas and later transcribe them on to the computer or notebook. Again it is a matter of preference.

One important thing every writer needs is a writing space—a quite place where he can practice his craft without interruptions and disturbances. It can be a well equipped study, it can be a table in corner of your room, or it can be the dining table when it is not used. You can use any place as your writing space as long as it is comfortable, you can write without interruptions and disturbances, and it is available every day at your preferred time. Some writers have the gift or ability to write whenever they want and wherever they want. But for most writers, writing space is a must for producing quality output.

Irrespective of the location, duration and mechanism of writing, one factor that separates successful writers form others is that they show up to write; day after day, week after week, month after month, and no doubt year after year.

Some days you won’t be able to write anything. You just keep staring at the blank page or the empty screen. Don’t get upset or become frustrated. It happens to all writers. There are good days and bad days. But the important thing is to show up for work—to write, to read, to research, to edit, to revise, to rewrite and to write again.

You can do many things to hone your craft on your bad days. You can read, learn new words and new usages of words you know, read books on the craft of writing, solve crossword puzzles, play word games, and so on. So even if you are unable to write on a particular day, it won’t be a waste of time. You are improving your craft, learning new skills, practicing the ones you already know; all with the aim of improving your writing.

If you are stuck or you don’t have a topic to write about, you can use the prompts available in many books on writing and idea generation. But for a person who keeps his eyes, ears and mind open, I don’t think there will be any shortage of ideas.

It is not very important whether you write or do some activity related to writing. If you write, what you write is not very important. The important thing is to sit in front of your computer or notebook at your allotted writing time every day without fail. Some days you will be able to write and some days you won’t. Some days you will write pretty ordinary stuff; some other days you will write exceptionally well and on a few occasions you will create magic. But for creating the magic, you have to show up and be prepared to capture it.

As they drove away, Gallagher asked, voice slightly muffled, “How did you manage to do such a difficult task so naturally and this fast?”
“Practice, Sean, that is what it takes. Lots of practice,” Martineau told him and turned into the road that led towards Red house.
- Jack Higgins in Night of the Fox.

Once you start and continue practicing your craft day in and day out without fail, your writing will improve and there will be more days when you could write brilliantly and create magic. Once writing becomes part of your daily routine you will find a lot of things to write about as your subconscious mind is always working in the background generating ideas and crafting stories for you. So, as you progress, your writing will become effortless, the ideas will flow smoothly, the words will come marching out and arrange themselves into beautiful sentences and most of the days you will be able to write something worthwhile.

Once you become a ‘daily writer‘ your output—the amount of quality material that you can produce—will improve and soon you will have something substantial to share with others—an article, an essay, a story, a poem or even a book! Happy writing…

Are you a writer or are you one who thinks you are a writer. According to Random House Dictionary a writer is a person engaged in writing books, articles, stories, etc., esp. as an occupation or profession.

A person does not need a published book or article to be a writer. And one does not become a writer just because he or she has published a book or story. The definition of a writer is someone who is passionate about writing, who lives to write and who cannot live without writing. So are you a writer?

Given below are a few tips given by N. M. Kelby in the wonderful book The Constant Art of Being a Writer. These tips helps you in identifying whether you are a writer or some sort of hack working on a pipe-dream. I really think that we all can learn a lot from these tips:

Real writers know that there is a market for all good writing, and so they hone their craft. Hack writers know they’ll be rich and famous if only they make the right connections.

Real writers revise and revise again. Hack writers say that the famed Jack Kerouac never revised and so they don’t have to.

Real writers understand that editors who reject them have made that decision based on their own taste and the marketplace. They know that somebody else will fall in love with their work; they just have to keep trying. Hacks know the editor has no taste and is stupid—and isn’t afraid to tell her that to her face either. Or send her an e-mail to that effect, or twelve e-mails. More is better.

Real writers work, even if they don’t feel like it. This is a job after all. Hacks work when they feel inspired. Writing, after all, is a calling.

Real writers know they can always learn from their mistakes and grow. Hacks know that they are right and refuse change despite what everyone tells them.

Real writers write because they love to write. Hacks write because it is an easy way to get rich.

Real writers know that sometimes you write a weak book. Hacks know there’s a cabal of publishers plotting against them.

Real writers know brilliance when they see it. Hacks know they are brilliant.

Real writers understand publishing is a cooperative and flawed industry. Hacks feel their talent makes them the exception to every rule.

Real writers know it’s easy to get discouraged and sometimes do.

Real writers are leery of praise and know that a publishing contract is the only true sign that the work is good.

Real writers define success by being able to write and know that sometimes that big paycheck never comes.

Real writers follow their hearts.

Hacks bellow, curse, blame, gossip, and snipe. They do anything they can do to hide their broken hearts—except work.

Source: The Constant Art of Being a Writer by N. M. Kelby.

[Source: http://www.mantex.co.uk/samples/rules.htm]

Forgetting the readers and their level of understanding is one of the major reasons for a failed book. But it is one aspect that authors often ignore. So, let me say it once again—READER is the King. As a technical writer, you are the expert; you know the subject well; you know which areas are difficult to learn and which concepts are tough to grasp. So it is your duty as the author to simplify, illustrate and demonstrate the subject and its concepts in such a way the user will understand. If you can write in an ‘easy-to-read’ style so that the reader does not lose interest and can present the topics in an engaging manner then your readers will love your book.

Some of the techniques to simplify the difficult topics and make it easy to learn is the use of examples, case studies, diagrams, illustrations, photographs, tables, graphs, quizzes, trivia, etc. If the examples given are based on your experience, they will give the book a personal touch and that is very important to connect with the readers. The real-world case studies will help the readers to understand how the concepts are applied in real life and how they help in solving real problems.

Studies show that communicating visually, illustrating your message with visuals, is more than six times as effective as communicating with text alone. A single diagram, illustration, or photograph can convey what pages of text can. For example, the organization of an ERP implementation team is best understood if it is given as an organizational chart, rather than trying to explain it using words.

Organization of the ERP Implementation Team

So, use figures and illustrations appropriately and effectively. The photographs that are used should be apt for the situation. The figures should be neatly drawn and should be able to convey the concept clearly instead of confusing the reader. Here the author must take the help of a graphic artist, if he/she is not proficient in creating high quality sketches and clear diagrams.

Tables and graphs are used to present data that is difficult to convey as text. For example, the percentage of different types of software maintenance can be best expressed in the form of a Pie graph.

Percentage Distribution of Maintenance Activities by Type

The relationship between the cost of correcting a bug and the stage of software development where it is discovered is best illustrated using a table. Rather than writing pages of text, one can just give a single sentence—“it is better to find the bugs as early as possible as the cost of correcting the code increases as the software moves from design to production.” Then a table of the cost of of correcting a bug during the different stages of software development can be given.

Quizzes, interesting facts, and tidbits can be included in the book to keep the readers involved and interested. The quizzes will also help the reader in self-evaluation.

So when you are writing something the first thing you should consider is the target audience of the book—for whom the book is written. Once you identify the knowledge level of your readers—beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc.—you can decide on the writing style and the terminology that is best suited for the book. A book for beginners will be boring for an advanced reader; similarly an advanced book would be beyond the comprehension of a beginner. You can specify for whom you have written the book in the preface—Who should read this book?

If you have to include the introductory and advanced topics in the same book, then try to build the concepts and fundamentals in the initial chapters and introduce the advanced topics once the readers have a working knowledge of the subject. Also you can flag the difficult topics and can advise the beginners to skip those topics.

When you write a book or article with readers in mind, your writing style will change to suit the reader. The length of sentences, the choice of words will also change. The number of illustrations, photographs, and the presentation style will also vary. All these changes will go a long way in improving the usability of the book and the value it will deliver. So, when you are writing the next time, think about the readers and what they want.

One of the questions many aspiring writers ask is “When is the right time to start writing?” The answer in a single word is NOW!

A person who wants to write something, may it be a book, an article, a blog post, or even a letter can start writing as soon as he thinks about it.

In the case of writing about a technical subject, you will never start, if you wait for an appropriate or auspicious time. You know the subject, you know what you want to write and you know how you want to write about it. Then why wait? Start now…

Many people make the mistake of putting off the actual writing giving various reasons—I will start writing as soon as I finish this project; I will start as soon as I finish the research; I will start as soon as I finish this novel, etc. But in most cases, there will always be some reason or other to prevent you from writing. You have to get rid of the inertia and make a start. You need to take a conscious effort to do this.

Another common misconception is that you need at least one or two hours uninterrupted hours to start writing. While uninterrupted hours is great time for writing, you will be surprised how much you can accomplish with shorter durations—even five minutes could used productively if you know how to use it.

Every writer should know how to breakdown the work into small units. Some of these units might need a couple of hours while some others might take only a couple of minutes. Once you have the set of tasks with you, you can choose one that suits the time that is available to you.

Suppose you are waiting at the airport or railway station. You have 30 minutes before the journey. You can finish a small chapter or a section of a chapter in that time. While on the plane, train, bus, or car, you can spend your time constructively. You can write if you want; you can read an article or a book that you need for the next chapter; you can organize your notes or thoughts, and so on.

Once you start looking for writing time, you will realize that there are so many slots available for you to write or do something that will help you in writing.

So don’t wait. Start writing and continue writing whenever you can. You can carry a pocket notebook, (I recommend Moleskine), your laptop, PDA, or smart-phone with you. You will be amazed by the writing opportunities and with your improved productivity.

Irrespective of whether you are a novice or a seasoned writer, you can always improve your craft by reading what the masters have written. George Orwell is one such master. One essay that is a must read for every writer is his essay “Politics and the English Language.” Given below are the questions and rules on good writing taken from the essay.

When writing a sentence you should always ask yourself these questions:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
5. Could I put it more shortly?
6. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

When choosing words, follow those rules:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

I usually write the posts for my personal blog straight from the heart, the only thing that I do is check for grammatical, style and usage errors. I usually keep it for one day and then read it once again and if I am satisfied, I post it.

The book reviews, I write, after reading the book a few times. I note down the interesting ideas and thoughts, the good aspects, the areas where the author could have improved, and so on. The next thing I do is to give a ‘one-to-two’ sentence description of each chapter or section depending on the nature of the book. Finally, I conclude the review with my recommendation—for whom the book will be useful and how useful it will be. Usually I also comment on the readability, the layout, the binding, how the book could have been improved, etc.

For writing product reviews, I use the product for at least a few weeks, sometimes more. I usually don’t read the Reviewer’s Guide given by the product vendors as I prefer to form my own opinions and reach my own conclusions. When I review a product (software or hardware) some of the questions that I seek answers are: who will benefit from the product, who are the potential users, how the product will improve the productivity, how the product could be improved, how it compares with the competing products, and so on. Once I post the review, I usually send a mail to the vendor giving him a more technical review about the additional features that could improve the value to the users, the bugs that I have found while testing, better marketing strategies like a market segment that could use the product but not addressed by the vendor and so on. This has helped me in making many friends around the world.

Writing technical articles for my web sites follow the same process as writing for magazines but does not involve the processes like editorial review, incorporation of review comments, and so on. As soon as I finish the article (of course after editing, rewriting, proofing, and so on), I upload it to the web site.

Writing technical article for magazines is the longest process as it involves many people—sponsoring editor, review panel, writer, copyeditor, layout designers, and so on. Also there are editorial guidelines, which are unique for each magazine. They also vary in detail from a single sentence (the article should not be more than 3500 words) to very comprehensive guidelines as to how it should be structured, what is allowed and what is not, and so on.

All articles begin as an idea—sometimes I get an idea and I will ask the sponsoring editor whether she is interested in that idea; sometimes I give a list of 7–8 ideas and ask her to choose what she likes. The query sent to the editor will contain the title of the article with a one-paragraph synopsis. Two examples are given below:

ERP Alone is not Enough…
ERP packages have certain limitations. These limitations will prevent the organization will reap the full benefits of implementing the ERP systems. ERP systems streamline and automate only one segment of the supply chain; for the rest of the segments, the ERP system should be integrated with various technologies. This article discusses those technologies and explains how to integrate those technologies to the ERP system.

Surviving and Staying Ahead…
How to survive and stay ahead of competition in today’s highly competitive world. The article will cover topics like how to use technology effectively, how to continuously learn (learning organization), continuously improve (Kaizen), how to be agile and more responsive, how to streamline and automate business process and functions, how to use information as a competitive weapon and so on.

Sometimes I am asked to write about a particular topic. In such cases, the editorial board will give a one-paragraph synopsis of what they want. Thus the origin of the idea can come from various sources. Once the idea is approved, the writing process starts. I will describe my writing process with the example of an article that I have written for the BenefIT Magazine — ERP Alone is not Enough…

Once I decide to write the article, I pull up my old notebooks to see if there are any resources that I could use—it could be a book, a quote, an example, or a case study. When I read a book, magazine or journal, I write down the ideas, thoughts, references, and sentences that I like in my Moleskine notebook. So my notebooks are the first source that I check. If there is something useful, then I will look up those resources and make notes—elaborate notes. Here the idea is to gather as much information as possible so that I will have enough material once I start writing.

The next step is searching the Internet for relevant information. My primary search tool is Google, but I also use Clusty, Amazon’s A9, Ask, Alexa, Live Search, and so on. I also search the digital libraries like ACM Digital Library , IEEE Computer Society Digital Library, Web sites of magazines like Harvard Business Review, Scientific American Digital, Nature, etc. While searching these on-line resources, I will take notes—again elaborate ones as before. The only difference is that here I will be copying and pasting the information I want to OneNote.

Once I think I have enough material, I will go through them a few times. Then I will write the first outline of the article, the first and second level headings on a paper. Once I think I have a reasonably solid outline, I transfer the outline to my Moleskine. If it is an article of about 3000–3500 words, I only need to fill one page of the notebook. If the outline goes to a second page, it means the article will be longer. So I try to fit everything into one page. The outline that I created for the article “ERP Alone is not Enough…” is shown below:

Article Outline in my Moleskine (Click on the image to enlarge)

I use a lot of symbols, colors, and images while making the notes. It makes the process more interesting and outcome more satisfactory. Armed with the article outline, I open my mind mapping software—MindManager and create a mind map.

Article Outline in MindManager (Click on the image to enlarge)

MindManager is the leading mind mapping software and my favorite. The advantage of using a mind mapping is the ease of organization and reorganization. I just have to simply drag and drop the topic or subtopic from one branch to the other to reorganize it. Also, mind mapping helps in generating more ideas than a linear note taking or brain storming session. Once the mind map is completed, I export the outline to MS-Word. The exported outline (erp_outline.pdf) forms the basis of the article.

Now you must be wondering whether I am out of mind to do this kind of iterative process. But believe me; with each iteration, the article becoming clearer, more organized and better.

The actual writing takes a few hours. Here all the research and homework I have done helps in completing the article very quickly. When I am writing the first draft, I write from the heart without thinking about grammar, style, organization—write without interrupting the flow. Actually that is a tip that I got from two masters—William Zinsser and Stephen King.

Once the first draft is complete, I go through it a few times with a critical mind. Here the main objective is to find grammatical and usage errors, logical errors, and organize the sentences and paragraphs better. While I am revising the article, I usually get new ideas—a better example, a more meaningful case study, a more precise and concise explanation, etc. I will incorporate those into the article—sometimes replacing the existing ones with the new ones and sometimes adding the new things to the document.

Once the article is complete, I edit it to remove the flab and make it concise. Another reason for editing is to bring the word count to the specified number. After completing the article, I usually leave it alone for a day and then start editing it once again. I find it much easier and more efficient as I can edit with a fresh mind. I am able to edit it better and in most cases improve the quality also. Once the editing is done I use two tools—StyleWriter and Readability Studio.

StyleWriter searches the document for writing faults, including complex words, jargon and abstract words, wordy phrases, hidden verbs, passive verbs, clichés and long sentences. It is an excellent tool in finding the mistakes that escaped the editing and rewriting processes. It also offers suggestions that will improve the readability, make the sentences crispier and clearer.

Readability Studio analyzes the document and calculates the popular readability scores. Some of the scores calculated are New Dale-Chall, Spache, Laesbarhedsindex (LIX), Rate Index (RIX), SMOG, Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, etc. It also generates the reports of difficult words used in the document, words that are repeated many times, and a host of other results that will help in improving the document and making it more suitable for the intended audience.

You can increase the impact of an article with an apt quotation and improve the readability with a suitable illustration. Quotations can be obtained by searching the Internet or from a quotation library. Quotations are ideal for stressing a point with the help of someone else. As Woodrow Wilson, the 28th U.S. President, said, “I not only use all the brains I have, but all that I can borrow.” The quotation library I use is the Ultimate Success Quotation Library. This is a fully searchable library—you can search on subject, author, key words, and so on. You can also add your favorite quotations to the database. For creating illustrations, I use SmartDraw. It is one of the leading graphics packages and is easy to learn and use. You can create professional quality images using it. The image I created for the article is given below:

Image created using SmartDraw (Click on the image to enlarge)

Once the images are incorporated, the final document is ready and I send it (ERP_BenefIT.pdf) to the editor.

The review panel will go through the article and see if it confirms to the magazines standards and editorial guidelines. Once approved, the article is given to the copyeditor. A good copyeditor is every author’s best friend. According to Stephen King, “The editor is always right. To write is human, to edit is divine.” The copyeditor goes through the document and makes it more readable, appealing and interesting. Once the copyediting is completed the edited version is sent back to me for my approval and for checking whether there are any technical errors. Sometimes the copyeditor will mark some queries, ask to rewrite a sentence or paragraph for better readability.

Once I incorporate the changes suggested by the copyeditor and approve the copyeditor’s changes, the article is given to the layout designer who will insert the graphic elements, artwork, and blurbs and produce the final output that will appear in print. Given below is the article as it appeared in the January 2008 issue of BenefIT magazine. It is titled ERP Works Wonders With Multi-Application Support. Compare it with the document that I sent (ERP-BenefIT.pdf) and you will understand the value addition done during the copyediting, layout design and final production stages.

BenefIT Magazine, January 2008
(Click on the image to open the document)