Writing tips that work Over the years, I have collected some tricks that make it a little easier to write. Maybe they can also help you write a text in record time when needed. Together, these 12 writing tips make up approx. 2000 words. I wrote the journal in 45 minutes using the 72-500 trick and 4 more. Then I spent an hour (and 4 more tricks) editing it. Then the case was ready for final refinement. If I could keep up with a novel, I could write Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in a couple of weeks… at least if I did not have to deliver the same quality and depth as JK Rowling and write my essay. But it is not just if you are going to write a book that you need good advice to get around writing refusal and procrastination: The text must be produced and delivered whether you are a journalist who is to have a case out tomorrow morning, whether you go to school and are to submit an in-depth assignment / special topic before the weekend, or whether you study and the semester assignment begins to pile up. I hope these 12 tricks can make your writing life just a little easier: 1. The TK trick The NRKbeta editorial team's trick Numero Uno is TK. Colleague Ståle Grut calls it a Life Changer. In short, the TK trick is that every time you write and lack detail, you write TK, instead of rushing to Wikipedia. TK says a clear NO to the little voice inside us that says: «But… we are just going away from the text a little bit, please? To-Do Something Very Useful? Relieve the pain by twisting text out of the blank screen? ” And it's good to say no. Because this is exactly how the writing time slowly flows away, while we incur increasingly detached research that complicates the story we are trying to attach to the screen. If you write TK instead, you will not be allowed to lose the thread. You must instead continue to struggle until you are done. And then. Then you are allowed to search through the text for the unusual letter combination TK afterward and fill in the missing precision. Here I describe the method in more detail: Nevermore distracted! (yes I originally wrote TK here to get ahead) and my premium essay. 2. MEMORY NODE trick The next trick - which I also use in my daily life - is not to start writing until I know approx. where I'm going. Then it is easier to keep a steady course through the text. If it is a more complex text, I solve it by using the program MindNode to draw a mind map of the various things I think should be included. Then I pull and drag the elements, and sort until I have something similar to one kind of structure. It is significantly more low-cost and clear to do this before writing. Brain maps can also be made by hand on paper or whiteboard, but that complicates editing. 3. KEYWORD trick For simpler texts (like the one you are reading now) I often manage to write down some keywords on a piece of paper so I have a rough idea of ​​where I am going and what to include. Keywords are a slightly sloppy simplification of the outline the Norwegian teacher at the upper secondary school thought we should make, but which I thought I did not need. After many years, I have realized that the teacher was right all along. Who would have thought… Sorry, Østberg. I was wrong. These are the keywords for the case you are reading now (sorry for the manuscript): 4. NOTEPAD trick When we make articles on NRKbeta, it comes with some housework - headlines must be made and marked, sources must be linked, italics must be entered, quotes must be made - all these are different codes that must be entered. In order not to confuse the writing process, I leave formatting until later and write straight ahead without details in the first place. Then I would rather solve the housework when the text is finished and resume writing world. And in order not to be seduced by the possibility of disappearing into formatting instead of word production, I usually write in Notepad, where everything is with the same ugly Courier font. And if I need to be shielded from all digital distractions, I write on A4 sheets of the pen. Enellerannen (I forgot who, and have already passed away once on Twitter in the search) has said something along the lines of «the role of the first draft is not to be a text that works, but to transfer the idea from something formless inside the head to something that can be edited into something useful. " 5. The 72-500 trick gets me to stop tinkering. It keeps me from worrying about the quality of what's come before Daniel Torday on LitHub Another technique (which inspired this case) was shared on Twitter the other day. The secret is to type in Word, increase the font size to 72pt, and zoom to 500%. You only see a few letters at a time, and can't get hung up on editing. This is the longer story about the method: This is a truly bizarre way to write a novel | LitHub, which I am now trying for the first time. Yep, this text is written like this - we have to taste things before we share. In terms of concentration, I would say that 72-500 is slightly better than the Notepad trick - at least as I write. But the writing style becomes more chatty (or requires more editing) when I can not edit myself along the way. And I think a prerequisite for using the method is that you know approx. where to go before opening your mouth. It thus probably seems bad for people who have not done the groundwork before they sit down to write. 6. THE TIME-ON-THE-DAY trick Not quite related to the other more writing tricks, but it has to. There are different times of the day (and different types of workdays) where one is better or worse at writing. For me, the morning is the best. I usually try to block the calendar before lunch to be productive, and rather take meetings at the end of the day, when the chances of doing something sensible are still wasted. Daniel Pink writes about this in the book When. Here he says something along the lines that the difference at different times of the day is equivalent to having taken a couple of pints of beer. But that does not mean that you do not can write anytime. I wrote this case around noon, and it came out of my fingers anyway. I just had to turn the music on the headphones a little higher and be a little extra strict not to let myself tilt out essay. 7. FOCUS trick Context switching quickly drains my brain of the ability to form sentences. Therefore, I put the phone somewhere else when I have to write, mute job and private chats, close email and calendar, and put on a playlist that is appropriate for the phase of the job I am going to do. For an easily distracted brain like mine, the cost of jumping in and out of what I do 3-4 times, just to answer the other person who could have waited a few hours, is that the brain dries in an hour ahead of schedule. The concentration classic Deep Work by Cal Newport can teach you a lot. The focus trick also helps you complete in fewer rounds, and both for you and the text itself, it has clear benefits. Temperature and tone can often vary slightly from day to day, and you usually spend some time writing warmly and getting into the flow. Thus, you quickly produce a few sections of deer meat at the beginning of each session. If there are many sessions behind the text, there will be a lot of editing and a lot of wastage left on the floor in the editing room (or - if you are sloppy with the editing - you are left with a text that stops and starts several times)