Writing - The Icing On The Cake

A lot of potential opportunities for success ride on my ability to write.  Well-written articles on eHow could yield me better ad revenue.  Having a strong writing voice could help me land a guest post on a high-traffic blog.  When given the opportunity to market things, being able to do so in a way that grabs the potential customer's attention is very important.  Last but not least, my writing here is important to me too.

Reading back over the posts I've made here so far, I'm a little discouraged at the quality of my writing.  I think I still get the basic point across most of the time, but my copy isn't what I'd consider compelling.  I guess this is proof that finding my voice is going to be more difficult than I thought.  I sound a lot more formal on here than I do in person, I guess out of a subconscious desire to sound professional.  But combined with how much I harp on about how I'm not an expert on any of the stuff I talk about, I don't sound professional at all - just insecure and slightly robotic.

I've also noticed a lot of what I write is too dense.  I've noticed while reading other (successful) people's blogs that they make their paragraphs short and direct.  Even in very long posts, the information is doled out a little at a time.  They still manage to be informative and funny, just in much smaller bites.  That's one area where I know I need some editing.  Hopefully knowing really will be half the battle here, and noticing my own writing flaws will be enough for me to fix them.

I admit that I've mostly been writing by the seat of my pants.  I had ideas of how I wanted to set up these first few posts - talking about the various methods I've used or am learning about to make money, and then using those posts as a jumping-off point.  But since I am new and inexperienced, I felt the need to try to shove as much potentially valuable information in front of the reader as possible - as if to say "I'm good enough, subscribe to me!"  In trying to jam-pack so much of the information swimming around in my excited head, I edited very little.

So now I plan to step up my game.  Trying to come across as the likeable human being I am when I write.  Writing things that won't hurt your eyes to read.  Deleting things and choosing better words.  Starting with this post, I'm working on becoming a better writer.

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