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Recently, I came across this article: 10 Simple Ways to Double the Speed of Your Writing I thought I would regard this article as a sort of additional guest speaker, as the writer covers similar tips to the folks we’ve heard in class so far, except that all those tips are more or less compiled in one place.

Anyway, as the title suggests, the article is about how to write faster, something I personally have problems with.  I am the slowest. Writer. Ever.  Most of the things the article says are bad to do, are things I do.  After reading this article a few weeks ago, I was extremely motivated to take these tips to heart!

Of course, I sank back into my old ways, particularly due to the extreme stress I’ve been under lately to finish everything by graduation.  My brain keeps telling me, “FACEBOOK. FAAAACEBOOK” when it should be creating and thinking.  Regardless, there are some great tips in there that I’ll definitely implement…at some point…after finals are over…maybe.

What I’m figuring out is that there’s a difference between reading tips on how to become a better writer and really taking those tips to heart.  For example, number 9: “Replicate the Zone.”  I can think, okay, sure, I’ll do that, or I can actually sit down and do it.  This statement may seem obvious, but I find that most of the time when I write, it’s with surface interest, there’s no actual attempt at trying to write better or more efficiently. Part of being a writer is trying to do well, instead of just mindlessly writing, which admittedly, is what I do a lot.

Even something as simple and obvious as this article, an article whose ideas have been reproduced in various forms possibly hundreds of times, can help, as long as I stay in the right mindset.  I’m also incredibly thankful for the advice from all the guest speakers we’ve had this term.  It’s been great learning how to write from people who already do it for a living.  Sometimes I don’t feel prepared for the real world, but knowing I’m getting tips from individuals with real world experience results in a huge weight off my mind.  This has honestly been one of the most useful classes I’ve taken at SOU, useful in the immediately practical sense, that is.  I still consider taking tons of literature classes useful, but in a different way!

To wrap up, thank you all for your posts and input!  It’s been good.

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This article was interesting to me because it showed how careless people can be when it comes to technology. People seem to forget that computers are machine who do as they are told. They do not have the ability to think rationally so of course a computer that is told to up a price a certain amount depending on other sales and what not would just continue to up the price. Any person who looked at the price would have seen the problem but a computer doesn’t work that way. This article reminds me why people dislike computers. If a computer takes a second too long to load what does the user do? They push the button again, pause, push it again and again. This only confuses the computer and then it tries to open the clicked thing over and over. This would be the equivalent of trying to finish a thought with someone saying, “Tell me now, tell me now, tell me now!” It would not help but hinder the situation. This article was entertaining and goes to show how people are usually at fault not the computers they blame.

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I just wanted to let everyone know that I really enjoyed presentations today. I learned a bunch of new information about publishing and publishing related info. I wanted to point out somethings that I found interesting and I apologize for not knowing everyone’s names so I’m sorry if I got anyone’s names confused. Please feel free to leave a comment to correct me if I put the wrong name to a presentation. I really liked that Melody explained the difference between fantasy and science fiction because I have asked this question multiple times and I get a different answer every time. Melody’s definition was a big help! Hannah’s presentation on travel writing  was interesting. I had never thought of fiction pieces as travel writing pieces because I had never thought or heard of that before but it makes complete sense. Heather’s story about her editing experience was very informative. It gave a new look into how hard editing really is as a job and that it can be just as hard on the editor as the writer. Brett did an awesome job with giving a comprehensive history of e-books, the history of internet, and the combined history of the e-book and internet. Kirsten did an amazing job with showing censorship with a hint of humor which made the presentation that much more engaging. Sam’s presentation on the setup for making a small publishing company was extremely informative. The fact that writers can actually influence the image of a small publishing company was an interesting fact that I hadn’t realized before.

I am breezing through these really fast but I just wanted to give some feedback on the presentations. I thought they were all extremely well written, put together, and delivered. They were informative but entertaining at the same time! Good job all around!