writing Articles

Are you the type that prefers to sit in the back of a class, never raise your hand, ask a question or--yikes!!!--stand up in front of the class? Do you think you are a bad writer? NOW is the time to get serious and take advantage of professional coaching and tutoring from an accomplished writer and speaker. You can do it and I can help. Relax--it's not so bad.

You will be pleased with the sense of accomplishment, leadership and pride derived from speaking before a crowd or writing a terrific paper or report. That's it!

We all have that one friend who says, "I had the idea for eBay. If only I had acted on it, I'd be a billionaire!" That logic is pathetic and delusional. Having the idea for eBay has nothing to do with actually creating eBay. What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan.

Stanley Kubrick gave this advice to aspiring filmmakers: "Get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all." Kubrick knew that when you're new at something, you need to start creating. The most important thing is to begin. So grab your pencil, put it to the paper, and start writing.

Forgoing sleep is a bad idea. Sure, you get those extra hours of studying or writing right now, but you pay in spades later: You destroy your creativity, morale, and attitude.

Once in a while, you can pull an all-nighter if you fully understand the consequences. Just don't make it a habit. If it becomes a constant, the costs start to mount:

Stubbornness: When you're really tired, it always seems easier to plow down whatever bad path you happen to be on instead of reconsidering the route. The finish line is a constant mirage and you wind up walking in the desert way too long.

Lack of creativity: Creativity is one of the first things to go when you lose sleep. What distinguishes people who are ten times more effective than the norm is not that they work ten times as hard; it's that they use their creativity to come up with solutions that require one-tenth of the effort. Without sleep, you stop coming up with those one-tenth solutions.

Diminished morale: When your brain isn't firing on all cylinders, it loves to feed on less demanding tasks. Like checking your e-mail/Facebook/Twitter accounts, making meaningless lists, or aimlessly paging through your textbooks. When you're tired, you lose motivation to attack the big problems.

Irritability: Your ability to remain patient and tolerant is severely reduced when you're tired. If you encounter someone who's acting like a fool, there's a good chance that person is suffering from sleep deprivation. Frustration is the enemy of anyone who is having difficulty studying for a course.

These are just some of the costs you incur when not getting enough sleep. Yet some people still develop a masochistic sense of honor about sleep deprivation. They even brag about how tired they are. Don't be impressed. It'll come back to bite them in the butt.

Writing was a very fun activity with my students. Their writing assignments would be posted on the bulletin boards and walls in the hallways. Writing was an enjoyment. They could write about the things they wanted to. They would draw many different things and write about their drawings. Writing helped them to learn to write paragraphs and compose sentences. It was a great joy to see their faces to see their work displayed for others to see.

Sometimes copying can be part of the learning process, like when you see an art student replicating a painting in a museum or a drummer playing along to John Bonham's solo on Led Zeppelin's "Moby Dick". When you're a student, this sort of imitation can be a helpful tool on the path to discovering your own voice.

Unfortunately, copying is usually more nefarious. Maybe it's because of the copy-and-paste world we live in these days. It's too easy to steal someone's words, images, or thoughts instantly. And that means it's tempting to take shortcuts in your education by being a copycat.

That's a formula for failure, though. The problem with this sort of copying is it skips understanding--and understanding is how you grow. You have to understand why something works or why something is the way it is. When you just copy and paste, you miss that. You just repurpose the last layer instead of understanding all the layers underneath.

If you're a copycat, you can never keep up. You're always in a passive position. You never lead; you always follow. You give birth to something that's already behind the times--just a knockoff, an inferior version of the original. That's no way to live.

How do you know if you're copying someone? If someone else is doing the bulk of the work, you're copying. Be influenced, but don't steal.