"The key to writing fast is knowing and perfecting a few."

Alisa Brownan from projecthappilyeverafter says to be a newspaper reporter, write guest blogs and magazine articles, and she ghost and co-author books. She also claims to spend only 6-7 hours typing daily to write between 5,000 and 10,000 words a week!

Article first appeared on problogger.net and if you like what Brownan advices, then follow her @alisabow:

Here the 6 step system, experienced Alisa Brownan uses to write her articles quite fast:

Step 1: Know what you want to say before you sit down. As soon as you finish any blog, start thinking about your next one. Go over lines in your head.

Step 2: Pick the basic format you will use to organize your blog. Most blogs fall into one of the following organizational templates:

• Q & A – Someone poses a question and then you answer it.


• Tips: You start with a couple paragraphs of explanation followed by a list of tips.


• Story: Once upon a time something happened to me, I learned someone from it, and now we’re at the end.


• List: This might be a list of great websites, great books, or great people to follow on Twitter. This is where we fail way, way too much.


• Quiz or Test: You pose a series of questions or offer a check off list that allows the reader to figure something out

Step 3: Start writing and don’t stop until there are no words left in your head. Don’t stop for typos. Don’t stop for grammar. Don’t stop because you lose your train of thought. Insert quick notes as you write, such as CHECK NAME SPELLING, FIND URL, or WHAT IS THE WORD I WANT HERE? I use that last one quite frequently.

Step 4: Read your blog from beginning to end. Fill in holes. Tinker. Replace your all caps notes with real text.

Step 5: Read out loud once or twice. This will help you catch typos, pinpoint really awkward writing, and help you tighten things up.

Step 6: Post it!

Via Problogger

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An interesting list of 51 mispronounced words it's been posted by DailyWritingTips. A the moment we write this post, comments number by 297, from people who have contributed to the list or have made appreciations on the topic. There is a word of caution, though: "I’m writing from an American perspective" says DailyWritingTips.

At least one of these is, in our view, a lost cause: #21 the two pronunciations of forte. We’ve never heard any English-speaker use it to mean 'strong point' and pronounce it according to French rules — everyone we’ve ever heard pronounces it the Italian way. If you want to get really picky, the masculine form of the French adjective is 'fort' — if it should be pronounced in English according to French rules, then how come English has adopted its feminine form 'forte'? Reasons are lost in the mists of time — let’s just get on with it!

1. aegis - The ae in this word is pronounced /ee/. Say EE-JIS/, not /ay-jis/. In mythology the “aegis” is associated especially with the goddess Athene. It is her shield with the Gorgon’s head on it.

2. anyway - The problem with this word is not so much pronunciation as the addition of an unnecessary sound. Don’t add an s to make it “anyways.” The word is ANYWAY.

3. archipelago - Because the word is from Greek, the ch is pronounced with a /k/ sound. Say /AR-KI-PEL-A-GO/, not /arch-i-pel-a-go/.

4. arctic - Note the C after the R. Say /ARK-TIK/, not /ar-tik/.

5. accessory - the first C has a “hard” sound. Say /AK-SESS-OR-Y/, not /ass-ess-or-y/.

6. ask - The S comes before the K. Say /ASK/ not /aks/.

7. asterisk - Notice the second S. Say /AS-TER-ISK/, not /as-ter-ik/.

8. athlete - The word has two syllables, not three. Say /ATH-LETE/, not /ath-uh-lete/.

9. barbed wire- Notice the AR in the first syllable. Say /BARBD/, not /bob/.

10. cache - The word is of French origin, but it does not end with an accented syllable. A cache is a hiding place or something that is being hidden: a cache of supplies; a cache of money; a cache of drugs. Say /KASH/, not /ka-shay/.

We don't want to steal the whole post from DWT, so for the next 31 words you would have to head over the original post. Any contributions this far?

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Surely you've read a few or at least, one book about how to become rich because it's the human nature to look for pleasure and commodities. I have spent some time with professional coaches that helped me out on personal developing and showed some necessary steps, everyone dreaming of being rich, before they can accomplish and become such a dream.

Now, many of course will be thinking that this is not a dream since many ( very few thought) had worked hard and earned enough money to accumulate millions and millions. Some others will start arguing that this post doesn't even deserve the attention because it is not written by a rich man. We will accept your discrepancies with humility but let tell you what is saying one of the top 100 blogger by Technorati and top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal, Neil Patel.

There is not such an incredible revelation but he goes right to the point of what is expected for a regular person, in order to perform in the direction the money flows. After reading his post here, please don't go: Damn it! I have none of these. Now I will never become a millionaire.

QuickSprout asserts that you can become rich only if you meet these four criteria: Inheritance, Stunning physical attributes, Knowledge, Creativity and Willingness.

The co-founder of these three Internet companies: ACS, Crazy Egg, and KISSmetrics, closed his post being quite strict on his postulates, "Hopefully you fall into one of these categories or else the chances of you becoming a millionaire are probably worse than the lottery... If you aren’t you better learn to, or don’t waste your time trying to become rich."

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Grammar, Obama's Speaking
Photo by -raggle-

Andy Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears in the Huffingtonpost, The New Yorker and The New York Times, and at his award-winning humor site, borowitzreport.com. He wrote a very English teachers essay last week that let many speculating of the President-elect Barack Obama's style of speech.

Teachers in the grant with Antioch University had chose areas of their practice, to research via inquiry projects that examined both quantitative and qualitative student data, and aligned with best practices in teaching English Language Learners.As consequence, Antioch University released a free curriculum for working with English Language Learners which included strategies to cope with the complete sentences stirs controversy that Borowitz speaks in the Huffingtonpost.

The modeled strategies that TLC project proposed may:

Be adapted for use in K-8 classrooms;
Employ multiple teaching techniques for English learners, including those described in the CREDE standards (in Teaching Transformed, by Tharp, Estrada, Dalton and Yamauchi, 2000), and in Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2004);
Are collaborative and constructive;
Build trust and relationships among participants; and
Help participants learn about and reflect on the experience of English learners

There is nothing alienating in here and we don't think that "talking with complete sentences there and also too talking in a way that ordinary Americans like Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder can't really do there, I think needing to do that isn't tapping into what Americans are needing also" as Borowitz cites.

Obama is a very educated man and we all love hear a person like him talking in such a perfect manner. We disagree with Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota when he says that "Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement,...If he keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an elitist."

Wow! Now results that if Mr President speaks correctly, it may sound jarring for some. Is this what students are learning as Critical Thinking?

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From our experience, we do know that writing web documents is a different process from writing for print, and if you simply move your print documents onto weblogs, you are not using the medium to its best advantage. Be aware then, If you are including textual information on your blog, you should rewrite or adapt your materials to the style of the genre.

Bradblogging is a good place to find online resources about how to write on your web site and he advices on many topics for those in the blog business. If you happen to visit Bradblogging, as you should do, you will feel immediately compelled to stay, browse, scan and subscribe. Why? The presentation of his page is eye-catching, design, graphs, pictures and the length of posts, so short that you won't spend more than a few second to get to the point. I encourage every blogger to write short posts, web readers are lazy and don't always appreciate to read long posts.

So, you have to find ways of how to invite your readers to stay over and one of them is the text presentation, the good use of bold text, which was analysed by Bradblogging and that we cite here:

"Text that sticks out of the article will draw the reader’s eye.

Easier time for the reader to scan your article for important keywords and/or phrases.

Not everyone has time to read your article. They can grasp a basic sense of what your trying to say through bolded text.

Bolded points and information will make the article more pleasing to the eye.(Bradlblogging secret success.)

Your brain can create a bridge between bolded phrases making the actual reading part take much less time.

Finally, with the extra time that a visitor saves by scanning one of your articles, they could either: Subscribe, Comment, Read/Scan Another One Of Your Articles or
Buy an Advertisement"

How do you write your posts? Do you think is useful to abide by these rules?

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This post was written to attend book writers but can be easily translated to the work many freelancers are trying to perform and it's based on the Chronicle of Higher Education writer, Lynn Worsham:

- Familiarize yourself with the types of articles that a journal publishes and only submit work appropriate for that journal.

- Pay close attention to the tone and style of work published in the journal and try to duplicate it in your own work. ...

- Placing your work in the context of articles previously published in the journal is good scholarly practice and helps make your article a better "fit" for the journal.

- Follow the journal's submission rules — exactly.

- Develop a healthy attitude toward rejection. You know from the outset that competition is fierce, so maintain a positive attitude.

Can you add something else to the list?

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