As I was working my way through a stack of twenty-six literary analysis papers this weekend (I know - don’t ask.  It’s my own fault for letting students in over the enrollment cap.), I spent a lot of time thinking about what I and many other English teachers refer to as “the so what question.”

The so what question distinguishes the outstanding papers from the competent ones.  The so what question, as its name implies, simply looks at the interpretive claim you’re making and asks, “So what?” 

Three other ways to phrase the so what question are as follows:  What is significant about your claim?  How does this enrich my understanding?  What are the implications of your claim?  In each case, the reader is asking the writer to look beyond his or her own navel and connect the paper’s idea to a larger conversation in which both the writer and the reader are stakeholders.

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Technorati Tags: significance, so what, thesis, writing

 I called this post meta-diction, because I want to consider the larger conceptual and cultural implications of our word choices.  Many voices within the personal development world espouse the notion that a person can create his or her own reality.  If you couldn’t change your reality, why would you set goals, enhance productivity, and manage time?  All of those aspects of personal development are based on the premise that you can change your life by changing your behavior, attitudes, and outlook.

The way we talk about our reality is certainly a component of much personal development advice.  For example, we seek to eliminate that voice in our head that says, “I can’t…this is too hard…I’m tired…” and replace it with an empowering one. 

So what about a personal development classic:  “passion”?  We’ve all been encouraged to find our passion, that one thing that will give our lives direction and make getting out of bed each day a joy. 

This word gives me the creeps, and I’ll tell you why.

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Technorati Tags: passion, personal development, writing

 A couple of weeks ago, I introduced Writing Power’s Writers’ Circle, a way to get motivation, support, and encouragement from other writers.  As of today, our merry band has four members.  Is it too late to join?  Not at all - the more, the merrier. 

You can jump into the Writers’ Circle any time.  All you need to do is introduce yourself in the comments.  What kind of writing do you do?  What would you like to improve?

Now that we’ve introduced ourselves to each other, it’s time to get motivated.  So, Writers’ Circle members new and old, let’s set some goals. 

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Technorati Tags: blog writing, peer review, writing, writing circle, writing tips

 I was both delighted and overwhelmed by what stood before me.  This was not unusual.  In fact, the same thoughts go through my mind each time I walk through my local library’s stacks.  So much to read. 

I wasn’t until later, as I was staggering to the circulation desk with a pile of books I could barely see over, that I thought to ask myself when I would possibly find time to read all of these.  Hmm. 

Many personal development blogs draw on the assumption that time is a scarce resource.  Some give advice on how to manage your time, while others discuss ways to boost your productivity (thus enabling you to get more done in a given amount of time).  Still others encourage you to establish clear values and priorities for your life, reasoning that since there is not enough time to get everything done, you should focus on the things that matter most. 

I thought of these competing time management/productivity philosophies as I stood in the library’s lobby looking at the dozen books I had chosen.  Clearly, I would have to put some of them back.  The question that entered my mind next had nothing to do with time.  How do I choose?   Given that I didn’t have time to try them all, which ones would I choose to invest some time in?

I started to think about what makes a reader decide that a writer is worth some of the reader’s time.  What keeps a reader coming back to a writer book after book, or blog entry after blog entry?  What makes a certain writer’s work a “must read,” while another’s is skimmed or skipped? 

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Technorati Tags: blog writing, writing, writing tips

 Writing, like exercise, is something many of us want to do more regularly.  Just as we hope exercising will improve our fitness, we hope writing will improve our communication skills.  Exercise also has less tangible benefits like improved mood and increased energy.  Writing, too, can nourish our spirits and expand our life’s beauty. 

A person could even adopt the same types of motivational strategies to both writing and exercise: start gradually, do a little bit each day, choose a format that is fun for you…

Interestingly, the strategy that many people find most helpful when starting an exercise routine - exercise with a friend - applies to writing particularly well.  That’s why I propose that we start our own Writers’ Circle here at Writing Power. 

Why start a Writers’ Circle?  As I have said before, writers write.  To work on your writing - indeed, to be a writer - all you have to do is write.  But as with many things in our busy lives, it can be difficult to find the time to dedicate to writing.  Without some accountability, it’s easy to defer writing projects (and defer them, and defer them…).  Our Writers’ Circle will, I hope, give you some incentive to work on that writing.

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Technorati Tags: blog writing, peer review, writers circle, writing, writing tips

 I stared out at a wall of glum faces.  “What’s going on, you guys?  Didn’t you like the reading?”  The essay at hand was a masterpiece of nuance, one of the most influential pieces in the modern conservationist movement, and I had hoped it would spark a lively and spirited exchange.

“I read it,” said a student in the second row, shrugging.  “But I just didn’t relate to it.”

“Unrelatability,” as I have come to think of it, is the kiss of death for many pieces of writing.  If your reader can’t relate to what you’ve written, your great ideas and beautiful phrases are moot.  But “relatability,” like flow, is a difficult concept to pin down.  It took me a five-post series to explore flow (In case you missed them, here they are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ), and I certainly could write five more.

So, what do readers mean when they say that that “can’t relate” to what you have written?  And how can you get more of your readers to relate to what you write? 

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Technorati Tags: audience, readers, writing, writing tips

 One thing I like most about personal productivity/personal development/self improvement blogs is that they try to turn wishes and dreams into plans and actions.  They work to remove the stumbling blocks that keep “someday I want to” from turning into “today I will” or, even better, “yesterday I did.”  In our time-starved culture, where you can be busy from morning to night and still not achieve anything meaningful, stumbling blocks are thick on the ground.

Often, we don’t work on important projects - projects that would benefit our lives on a large scale - because they seem too big, too complex, too much for us to handle.  Despite these projects’ importance, or perhaps because of their importance, they intimidate us.  Although we may not like to admit it, we’re scared. 

Fear is a powerful adversary.  It works to keep us from going after what we want, and many times we don’t even realize that we’re afraid.  It’s easier to say “I’m too busy” or “I’ll get to it after I take care of X and Y.”  But the fear gains power from our unconscious: in order to master it, we must acknowledge it.

Once we define what fears are keeping us from achieving our goals, it’s far easier to find the motivation to push those fears aside.  The idea that we’re letting an often irrational fear dictate our actions is repugnant to many of us.

For me, one of the most powerful ways to go from “someday I want to” to “today I will” and “yesterday I did” is writing.  The following are some simple ways to use writing today in order to conquer those fears and move toward your goals.

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Technorati Tags: freewriting, motivation, Productivity, writing, writing tips

 Writing is not one task with a specific, unchanging set of rules.  Consequently, it’s often counterproductive to classify writing as “Good” or “Bad” because doing so assumes an oversimplified view of what writing is.  Instead of aspiring to the title of “Good Writer,” I propose that each of us should strive to become a more effective writer.

Effective writers know that there are many different types of writing, from proposals to poems, from diary entries to legal defenses.  They realize that different types of writing have different requirements: the elements that make a good poem are not the same ones that make a good encyclopedia entry.  Moreover, effective writers know how to adapt their writing to suit their particular audience, genre, topic, context, and purpose. 

The ability to adapt your writing for maximum effectiveness is an immensely useful skill.  And learning how is easier than you might think.  You’ll need to focus on two things: 1) increasing your consciousness concerning what different types of writing require and 2) gaining the tools to respond to a given writing situation. 

Let’s practice these two components of effective writing using summary, an essential building block in many modes of writing.

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Technorati Tags: how to summarize, summary writing, writing, writing tips

 I have been thinking a lot recently about the intersection between writing and personal development.  How does writing influence personal development, and what is there to gain by thinking about them together?

What I have concluded so far is that writing is a form of personal development.  Writing helps you evolve toward being a better person, even if you’re not writing about enhancing your sense of self, goals, or life direction.

Personal development is a side effect of writing regularly.  Of course, “personal development” encompasses much more than writing.  However, if your goal is to write better, you’ll find that you become more reflective and more conscious as you focus on - and work toward - that goal.

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Technorati Tags: blog writing, clarity, declutter, personal development, Productivity, simple living, simplicity, writing tips

 Okay.  It has been one month since many of us made New Year’s Resolutions, and it’s time for a reality check.  How are they going? 

If you’re like most people, your answer is somewhere between “they’re going okay” and “ugh.”  New Year’s Resolutions are a psychological minefield.  The idea of a New Year’s Resolution is incredibly alluring.  Once the new year is here, things will be different, we think to ourselves.  We believe that when we wake up on January 1, it will somehow be easier to find the motivation to exercise, eat right, keep to a budget, and banish clutter from the house.  Meanwhile, before that shiny new year gets here, we implicitly give ourselves the excuse to party like it’s 1999.  After all, it’s not the new year yet, right?

When you think about it, making New Year’s Resolutions has as much chance of making your life worse as it does of making your life better.  The resolutions are psychologically set up to fail, and if they do fail, we heap on the guilt and self-recriminations.  What a disaster.

So now that the New Year’s hoopla has died down and we’re back to reality, what do we do with our good intentions, our desire to change our lives for the better?  I propose that we start thinking about our New Year’s Resolutions not as challenges to be achieved but as drafts to be revised.  Beginning today, you can revise your New Year’s Resolutions using the same standards you’d use for any other sentence, particularly a thesis sentence.  By revising the way you think about your resolutions, you will change the way you act in response to them, and they can begin to serve the function for which they were intended: to enrich your life.   

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Technorati Tags: blog writing, goal setting, goals, life skills, new year's resolutions, Revision, writing tips