Shawn's Writing News

3 Tips for Developing Writing Ideas

Being able to continually develop interesting writing ideas is essential for anybody who is engaged in content marketing. However, even for an experienced and successful content developer, there are those times when their writing process stalls due to a lack of fresh ideas and/or inspiration. Writer’s block as this ‘condition’  commonly referred to as, only becomes worse the longer it exists. When involved in a content marketing campaign, this interruption is not only frustrating, but it also affects your ability to earn an income as well. Quite often when this situation occurs, the solution can be found in simply gaining some type of separation from your work environment.

Here 3 reasons why leaving your work behind will actually help you to overcome the writer’s block that is making your efforts ineffective and unproductive!

Space to Ponder

Getting away from the immediate surrounding environment, will give you some breathing room and a chance for your thoughts to ‘settle’ a bit.  Make no mistake, there is a ‘physical’ association (in your mind) with your work environment and this interruption to the writing process. The longer your writer’s block continues the stronger the association will become! Your first step is to ‘break’ the bond and gain some type of separation from your work space!

Lowers Stress Levels

Now that you have removed yourself from your work environment and everything that reminds you of it, the tension that you felt mounting within will tend to lessen. A more relaxed mind is able to function more optimally and creatively! Since you are currently not trying to force yourself to compose anything much pressure has now been lifted off of you that you did not even know existed. As thoughts begin to flow back through your mind it is much like oxygen being restored to a suffocating body. At this point your focus is no longer on what was stressing you and all your systems are beginning to revert back to normal.

Exposed to New Stimuli – New Environment

Even though the work environment can be conducive to productivity since it is set up to do so, it can also become somewhat stagnating. Having the same surroundings day in and day out does little to stimulate a mind that has grown ‘overly’ accustom to what it sees. An environmental change however  generally introduces new stimuli that can successfully help to ‘kick start’ a mind frozen by writer’s block. It actually takes very little to trigger new thoughts or ideas but your surrounding contribute greatly to this process!

Coming up with new writing ideas is essential for any content developer engaged in distributing information for promotional purposes. A marketing strategy like this requires a constant flow of new content into the marketplace for this technique to be successful. However when the writing process gets bogged down due to a lack of fresh ideas or inspiration, measures need to be taken to help overcome this situation. Remember, it is not only frustrating but it is also affecting the authors ability to earn an income, therefore the ‘stakes’ are even higher! One proven method for overcoming writer’s block is to simply walk away from your work! In doing so, as discussed in the 3 explanations above, the separation you gain allows your mind to relax, and most importantly, once again tap into its ability to think creatively. As you know it is this ability that is so very much needed when engaged in any content marketing campaign.

About the Author

TJ Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina. To learn more about maintaining a continual flow of writing ideas and to also receive a free instructional manual that teaches valuable niche research techniques simply visit:http://blogbrawn.com/

Four Strategies for Finding Writing Ideas by Pam Allyn

Wilton Fondant Alphabet Number Cookie Cutter Cut Outs, Set of 37 $7.50 Fondant Cut-Outs: Alphabet & Numbers. With cut-outs it is easy to make fun 3-D shapes for your fondant cakes and cupcakes. Just roll out the fondant, press down with cut-outs and lift away! This package contains thirty-seven stainless steel letters and numbers measuring 3/4″….

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Writing Workshop $24.99 Writing Workshop is designed for busy teachers who are seeking a comprehensive resource for teaching the writing process. persuasive, expository, narrative, and poetry writing lessons student samples writing rubrics graphic organizers language use and convention lessons writing process lessons assessment checklist daily writing exercises homework suggestions portfolio instructions bulletin board ideas writing enrichment activities

Poetry Writing $12.99 Guide students through the process of writing poetry. Inspire them with creative project ideas. Use templates and frames to help them get started. Share their results in ways that promote pride and a sense of accomplishment.

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Narrative Writing, Grades 3-5 (Meeting Writing Standards Series) $15.99 This standards-based series provides lessons and activities to help students master a wide range of writing skills with enthusiasm and effectiveness.The activities target standards in these areas: the writing process conventions in writing organization and structure of narrative writing expression of ideas, observations and reflections descriptive language that clarifies and enhances ideas various genre including fables, tall tales and personal narrative

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Building Writing Skills: Paragraphs to Stories $8.99 Writing is an active process that helps students develop higher order thinking skills. The practical yet fun-filled writing strategies in this series encourage students to expand their thinking processes and transform their thinking and reading skills into written words. This isn’t just another set of writing lessons. It’s a well-developed strategic plan peppered with fresh ideas and surprising activities that inspire students to do their best! Students learn how to use paragraphs to develop ideas and write a complete story.

Close Up 1927-1933: Cinema and Modernism $29.96 Close Up was the first English-language journal of film theory. Published between 1927 and 1933, it billed itself as “the only magazine devoted to film as an art,” promising readers “theory and analysis: no gossip.” The journal was edited by the writer and filmmaker Kenneth Macpherson, the novelist Winifred Bryher, and the poet H. D., and it attracted contributions from such major figures as Dorothy Richardson, Sergei Eisenstein, and Man Ray. This anthology presents some of the liveliest and most important articles from the publication’s short but influential history.The writing in Close Up was theoretically astute, politically incisive, open to emerging ideas from psychoanalysis, passionately committed to “pure cinema,” and deeply critical of Hollywood and its European imitators. The articles collected here cover such subjects as women and film, “The Negro in Cinema,” Russian and working-class cinema, and developments in film technology, including the much debated addition of sound. The contributors are a cosmopolitan cast, reflecting the journal’s commitment to internationalism; Close Up was published from Switzerland, printed in England and France, and distributed in Paris, Berlin, London, New York, and Los Angeles. The editors of this volume present a substantial introduction and commentaries on the articles that set Close Up in historical and intellectual context. This is crucial reading for anyone interested in the origins of film theory and the relationship between cinema and modernism.

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We Are Three Sisters: Self and Family in the Writing of the Brontes $44.95  While biographers have widely acknowledged the importance of family relationships to Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë and to their writing processes, literary critics have yet to give extensive consideration to the family as a subject of the writing itself. In “We Are Three Sisters,” Drew Lamonica focuses on the role of families in the Brontës’ fictions of personal development, exploring the ways in which their writings recognize the family as a defining community for selfhood.Drawing on extensive primary sources, including works by Sarah Ellis, Sarah Lewis, Ann Richelieu Lamb, Harriet Martineau, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, and Elizabeth Gaskell, Lamonica examines the dialogic relationship between the Brontës’ novels and a mid-Victorian domestic ideology that held the family to be the principal nurturer of subjectivity. Using a sociohistorical framework, “We Are Three Sisters” shows that the Brontës’ novels display a heightened awareness of contemporary female experience and the complex problems of securing a valued sense of selfhood not wholly dependent on family ties.The opening chapters discuss the mid-Victorian “culture of the family,” in which the Brontës emerged as voices exploring the adequacy of the family as the site for personal, and particularly female, development. These chapters also introduce the Brontës’ early collaborative writings, showing that the sisters’ shared interest in the family’s formative role arose from their own experience as a family of authors. Lamonica also examines the seldom-recognized influences of Patrick and Branwell Brontë on the development of the sisters’ writing.Of the numerous studies on the Brontës, comparatively few consider all seven novels, and no previous study has undertaken to examine the Brontës’ writing in the context of mid-Victorian ideas

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”The Stars Belong to Everyone”: The rhetorical practices of astronomer and science writer Dr. Helen Sawyer Hogg (1905–1993). $49.99 Astronomer and science writer Dr. Helen Sawyer Hogg (University of Toronto) reached a variety of audiences through different rhetorical forms. She communicated to her colleagues through her scholarly writings; she reached out to students and the public through her Toronto Star newspaper column entitled “With the Stars,” which she authored for thirty years; she wrote The Stars Belong to Everyone, a book that speaks to a lay audience; she hosted a successful television series entitled Ideas; and she delivered numerous speeches at scientific conferences, professional women’s associations, school programs, libraries, and other venues.;Adapting technical information for different audiences is at the heart of technical communication, and Sawyer Hogg’s work exemplifies adaptation as she moves from writing for the scientific community (as in her articles on globular cluster research) to science writing for lay audiences (as in her newspaper column, book, and script for her television series). Initially she developed her sense of audience through a male perspective informed largely by her scholarly work with two men (Harlow Shapley and her husband, Frank Hogg) as well as the pervasive masculine culture of academic science.;This dissertation situates Sawyer Hogg in what is slowly becoming a canon of technical communication scholarship on female scientists. Toward this end, I discuss how she rhetorically engaged two different audiences, one scholarly and one popular, how Sawyer Hogg translated male dominated scientific rhetoric to writing for the public, and how science writing helped her achieve her professional goals. Complementing the archival research in addressing the questions of this study, I employ social construction analysis (also known as the social perspective) for my research methodology. She was ahead of her time and embodied the social perspective years before its definition as a rhetorical concept. In short, my study illuminates one scientific woman’s voice,

”The Stars Belong to Everyone”: The rhetorical practices of astronomer and science writer Dr. Helen Sawyer Hogg (1905–1993). $49.99 Astronomer and science writer Dr. Helen Sawyer Hogg (University of Toronto) reached a variety of audiences through different rhetorical forms. She communicated to her colleagues through her scholarly writings; she reached out to students and the public through her Toronto Star newspaper column entitled “With the Stars,” which she authored for thirty years; she wrote The Stars Belong to Everyone, a book that speaks to a lay audience; she hosted a successful television series entitled Ideas; and she delivered numerous speeches at scientific conferences, professional women’s associations, school programs, libraries, and other venues.;Adapting technical information for different audiences is at the heart of technical communication, and Sawyer Hogg’s work exemplifies adaptation as she moves from writing for the scientific community (as in her articles on globular cluster research) to science writing for lay audiences (as in her newspaper column, book, and script for her television series). Initially she developed her sense of audience through a male perspective informed largely by her scholarly work with two men (Harlow Shapley and her husband, Frank Hogg) as well as the pervasive masculine culture of academic science.;This dissertation situates Sawyer Hogg in what is slowly becoming a canon of technical communication scholarship on female scientists. Toward this end, I discuss how she rhetorically engaged two different audiences, one scholarly and one popular, how Sawyer Hogg translated male dominated scientific rhetoric to writing for the public, and how science writing helped her achieve her professional goals. Complementing the archival research in addressing the questions of this study, I employ social construction analysis (also known as the social perspective) for my research methodology. She was ahead of her time and embodied the social perspective years before its definition as a rhetorical concept. In short, my study illuminates one scientific woman’s voice,

‘Call Me Hank’: A Sto:lo Man’s Reflections on Logging, Living, and Growing Old $29.95 ‘My name is Henry George Pennier and if you want to be a friend of mine please you will call me Hank.’ So begins ‘Call Me Hank,’ the autobiography of Hank Pennier (1904-1991): logger, storyteller, and self-described ‘halfbreed.’ In this work, Pennier offers thoughtful reflections on growing up as a non-status Aboriginal person on or near a Stó:lõ reserve, searching for work of all kinds during hard times as a young man, and working as a logger through the depression of the 1930s up to his retirement. Known only to a small local audience when it was first published in 1972, this expanded edition of Pennier’s autobiography provides poignant political commentary on issues of race, labour, and life through the eyes of a retired West Coast Native logger. ‘Call Me Hank’ is an engaging and often humorous read that makes an important contribution to a host of contemporary discourses in Canada, including discussions about the nature and value of Aboriginal identity. To Hank’s original manuscript, Keith Carlson and Kristina Fagan have added a scholarly introduction situating Hank’s writing within historical, literary, and cultural contexts, exploring his ideas and writing style, and offering further information about his life. A map of place names mentioned by Hank, a diagram of a steam logging operation, a glossary of logging terms, and sixteen photographs provide practical and historical complements to Pennier’s original lively personal narrative.Pennier’s book preceded the proliferation of Aboriginal writing that began with the publication of Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed in 1973 and provides a markedly different view of Aboriginal life than other writings of the period. It also documents important aspects of Aboriginal participation in the wage labour economy that have been overlooked by historians, and offers a unique reflection on masculinity, government policy, and industrialization.